You already know that blowing on a flute has many variables, maybe a bewildering number of variables. In speaking with a flute playing colleague who is also a band director recently, she told me that busy educators are looking for two or three simple steps they can follow to help their students play their instrument easily. So here are three essential things to communicate to your flute students at every stage of their development:
- Find the optimum position for the flute on bottom lip. Do this by bringing the flute up from below to about where lip and chin meet. Avoid rolling down from the center. This places the blow hole too high to get a full, characteristic sound. The Legend of Kiss and Roll, Teaching Great Flute Sound, What is Transit Time
Balance the flute in your hands. Turn the headjoint slightly back to align between the key cups and the rods, rather than directly with the key cups. This puts the relatively heavy rods more on top so the flute can rest in your hands. No bracing needed even with all the fingers off the keys (like with C#-Db). It’s All About Balance, Balance and the Right Hand, Balance and the Left Hand- Shape the blowing aperture enough to focus the air stream and experiment with blowing angle. There is a subtle and intricate balance between top and bottom lip that is always adjusting to change registers, dynamics and control pitch, not to mention create different colors. Independence for Lips!, Warm Air, Cold Air
Try these three pointers with your students. Let me know how it works for you.
As always, if you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances, click here.
Dr. Cate's Flute Tips 
Dear Cate: I used to play the flute and then I had jaw surgery with left me with minimal feeling in my bottom lip and chin which means I can’t really feel the flute. I went to practice one day and couldn’t figure out why no sound was coming out so I held the flute there and went to look in the mirror. I saw that the flute had shifted position and I was no longer blowing into the embouchure. I sadly sold the flute. do you have any ideas that might be of help so that I might be able to play again? Thanks, so much for your help! Sincerely, Samantha Black
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Hi Samantha, so sorry to hear of your experience. I’ve overcome a long term, potentially career ending hand injury, so I completely understand your desire to play again. And I understand the frustration of not being able to do what you love. The idea that came to me was to have a brace to hold the flute in the correct position on your face, rather like the one on the so-called glissando headjoint invented by Robert Dick. If you need ideas for people who might be able to design and install such a brace on a headjoint, send me an email and I’ll be glad to pass on some names. I know how happy you will be when you can play again.
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I started flute, as my third instrument in high school. Unfortunately I’m self taught and high school was almost 20 years ago. My first two instruments were single reeds. I run out of air quite quickly, have been trying to work on my embouchure & aperture (sp?). My main issues are running out of air and playing anything above a D. I do have fuller lips. I teach beginners of all basic woodwind instruments, though my primary focus is the clarinet (which I’m classically trained). I know for sure my students tend to have similar issues.
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