To “Tut” or Not to “Tut”

Tags

articulation, blowing, flute pedagogy

As I frequently tell students, the tongue is used to start a note, rarely, if ever to end a note. So if there is a distinct “T” sound on the release, you are going to have some really nasty sounding note endings. Not to mention big problems single tonguing any faster than moderately slow. All that tongue noise from the tongue flailing around in your mouth isn’t tone. Or as my teacher Tom Nyfenger was wont to say, “Tonguing is the anti-tone”. Related to the tongue stop is the jaw drop release, which will slow you down even further. In both cases, you will get a distinctive popping sound on the release.

If you hear a popping sound on the release, the first thing to determine is how the popping sound is being produced. It’s either going to be because of a “tut” style of tonguing or by dropping the jaw to end the sound. If you discover any other methods of creating this kind of release, please let me know. How are you going to address and correct this habit with your students? The fastest way is to have them do some kind of articulation exercise without tonguing! I use Reichert Seven Daily Exercises #2 (available on IMSLP), but any kind of scale or arpeggio exercise can be used. Start on an easy key like F, rather than a key that goes really low on the flute like D. Play each note with a forceful puff of air without the tongue. Keep the embouchure in position without opening the aperture after every note. If you observe a chewing type motion with the jaw, the student is involving more resources than are necessary. The less motion the better. Direct the students to think of still/poised rather than rigid. Have the students work on placing the air precisely for best tone on each note without the tongue. Learning to do this takes some practice and determination, because it requires real precision of placement for the best sound in every part of the flute. When you reintroduce the tongue, make sure the tongue is only involved in starting the note, not ending it. Also be sure to continue having the strong puff of air with good placement behind the tonguing. There are many additional ways you can vary up the exercise with different rhythmic patterns in all keys. Here’s a link to a video I did on various ways to practice good placement and tonguing.

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.

Building Technique

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blowing, flute fingering, flute pedagogy, practicing

There is more to technique than just moving your fingers. In fact, good technique on flute integrates a number skills and types of awareness. This includes:

• Balance of the flute and hand positions – if the flute isn’t properly balanced, then students develop all kinds of compensating behaviors to keep the flute from rolling back.
• Blowing – without steady air speed and pressure, the greatest finger technique is not of much use because we won’t hear what is being played.
• Coordinating fingers and tongue – have you ever heard a student try to play a fast passage while their fingers and tongue are out of phase? Even with decent finger technique, it isn’t very effective to be tonguing behind the ictus of the note.
• Knowledge of scales and arpeggios in all 12 keys – make it a priority that your students get beyond the keys of F, Bb and Eb. Help them learn to think in sharps for sharp keys and flats for flat keys.

Get your flute students technical exercises just for them, or at least for woodwinds rather than brass. The venerable band technique books are either more focused on brass skills like lip slurs and/or are limited in scope in their technical exercises for flute. There are many excellent technique books specifically for flute that target the developing flute player, including books by Trevor Wye (The Practice Books) and Patricia George and Phyllis Avidan Louke (The Flute Scale Book). There are also great scale and arpeggio exercises in all keys and different patterns and note values (quarter, eighth, sixteenth notes) in the PC/Mac version of Smart Music. In Smart Music, you can assign scale exercises for assessment, set it to loop through the circle of fifths and change articulation patterns.

Tone work is a vital part of technical practice. Please note that brass style lip slurs and Remington exercises may be useful in an ensemble setting, they are not particularly helpful in developing characteristic flute tone. For developing flute tone there is no better exercise than practicing octaves slowly. Students can focus on directing the air properly and pay attention filling the space between the notes with steady air. I recommend waiting until high school to introduce the Moyse long tones. The younger kids usually don’t have the maturity to understand how to explore tone, focus and continuity with the Moyse long tones.

The important thing is to help your students develop good home practice habits that include regular tone and technical work. If kids are practicing 30-40 minutes a day, 10-15 minutes focusing on technique will make a huge difference in their skill set.

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.

Legato and Staccato Blowing

Tags

articulation, embouchure, flute pedagogy, phrasing and inflection

Somewhere in the five years of practicing between completing my master’s degree and beginning my doctorate, it dawned on me that there are two basic kinds of blowing, legato and staccato. Each type of blowing has a distinct function and infinite variability. For intermediate to advanced players, each type of blowing really should be cultivated separately, with attention to detail to make both styles readily available in a player’s palette of expressive tools.

Legato blowing – Probably the most basic type of blowing for wind players, but also an exacting discipline to master at any level of playing. It is important to understand the necessity of learning to blow between the notes and not just on them. For beginner to intermediate flute players, there is no better tool for teaching legato than playing basic Octaves. Upper intermediate to advanced players should do Moyse Long tones and use short excerpts from lyrical melodies in multiple keys to further hone their ability to play through a line rather than just on the notes.

Staccato blowing – This type of blowing, while it usually involves tonguing, is air based rather than tongue based. Most intermediate players are ready to start studying this as a distinct playing skill. There are many existing exercises that can be adapted to practicing staccato blowing. I especially like the Reichert Daily Exercises #2 because it’s not long and you can rest and evaluate between takes and keys. Here are some useful variations for practicing this type of blowing/articulation:

• Breath articulation only – ha, ha, ha. Use abdominal kicks. Compels you to be really precise in shaping the aperture to maintain good tone. You absolutely must focus on the middle of your lips and how you are gripping the air stream, otherwise the tone will be fuzzy and/or crack
• Staccato tonguing – ta, ta, ta. This is still more breath based than tongue based as with the breath articulation. The tongue merely adds some extra clarity to the ictus
• Dotted rhythms, reverse dotted rhythms and double dotted, reverse double dotted rhythms. Really challenging to maintain the 3 to 1 or 7 to 8 ratio while maintaining a clear ictus for each note.

In the context of normal playing, it is often the case that one needs to switch instantaneously between legato and staccato blowing, depending on the context of the phrase, style of articulation and interpretation of piece. These exercises can help your students get off to a good start mastering these two distinct and complementary skills.

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

Helping Beginners to Tongue

Tags

articulation, embouchure, flute pedagogy

Beginning flute players have a number to hurdles to overcome right at the very beginning including shaping the aperture, blowing, directing the air, balancing the instrument in their hands and tonguing. Kids seem to be most resistant to attempting to tongue because it appears to them to be difficult to coordinate that with the blowing and everything else they are learning to do.  In the worst case scenario, kids give up on tonguing after a few halfhearted attempts. I run into this resistance all the time with beginners, but have learned over time that a little creative problem solving has given me some tools to help kids over the hump so they can add articulation to their arsenal of flute playing skills.

Probably the most useful tools involve taking the skill of tonguing away from trying to do it on the flute and practice tonguing with a representation of the flute. These can include:

• A regular drinking straw
• A coffee stirrer straw, either oval or round
• Putting you index finger on your chin where you would put the flute
• A PneumoPro

In each of these cases, start by having the students shape the flute aperture (or grip the straw) and blow a continuous stream of air for as long as they can. Never mind about tonguing with this first drill. If you are using a PneumoPro, have them see if they can isolate just one pinwheel when they blow (It doesn’t matter which one at this stage, only that they can narrow it down to just one pinwheel.) Then practice starting to blow by saying “Too” as they start the air moving. Tongue should strike behind the top teeth where teeth and gums meet. You can do this in rhythm if you like, especially on a longer value like a whole note. That way they can begin each breath with “Too.” The final step with this kind of drill is to have the students blow steady air, starting with “Too” and continuing to say “Too” while maintaining the flow of air: “too, too, too, too, too,” in quarter notes (crochets) and/or eighth notes (quavers).

After the kids can do all these drills on their “pretend flute,” have them go through the same process on just their headjoints. Be sure to have them bring up the headjoint into position from below. Finally, you can do these drills on one note such as B or Bb in the staff.

A word or two about spitting rice. I’m not a fan of it for a couple of reasons. 1) It encourages tonguing between the lips which then disrupts the shaping of the blowing aperture and hence affects tone quality. 2) You can spit rice with just the air in your mouth. You don’t actually need to blow and tonguing while blowing is the entire point of the exercise.

Be sure to use these drills as much as needed in the first weeks of playing. Like it says on your shampoo bottle, “Lather, rinse, repeat,” until all your flute students are tonguing consistently. They will sound better sooner if you do.

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

How to Play Accents Without Cracking and Other Mysteries of Flute Articulation

Tags

articulation, blowing, embouchure

First of all, tonguing is not articulation in and of itself. Or as my teacher, Thomas Nyfenger, liked to say, “Tonguing is the anti-tone”. Tonguing is a component of articulation, but it’s far from the main component. Many people think if you need an accent, you should just tongue more forcefully. I can’t comment on whether tonguing harder works for other winds and brass, but I can assure it is absolutely the wrong thing on flute. I can guarantee you the note will likely crack, not to mention sound rude, crude and unrefined. Remember, tonguing is not tone. And the flute embouchure is a lot more fragile than other instruments. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that flutists have to both create the mouthpiece with the lips and shape an embouchure simultaneously to direct the air. Lips are more flexible than metal or hard plastic. If you tongue explosively behind the lips, they will flare and lose their ability to focus and direct the air accurately. 

The main event for good articulation on flute, including accents and staccato is how you use your air. The tonguing is for defining the ictus of a note only. If you are using your abdominal muscles to control the force of the air stream, you discover several things including:

• The quality of the airstream is what gives an articulated note its particular character
• In order to develop consistent staccato or accents, you need to work on the accuracy of focus and placement of the airstream (means embouchure control)
• You need to develop two different kinds of basic blowing, staccato and legato. Everything beyond that (including accents) is a variation of these two types of blowing.

You can take any scale or arpeggio exercise and adapt it to work on staccato and accents. Set a metronome to mm=60 and play the exercise in eighth (quavers) notes. 

1. Play detached with breath accents and no tongue. This forces you learn how to shape the embouchure and aim the air precisely. Use forceful puffs of air using your abdominal muscles.
2. When you have good control using a HA articulation, add the tongue. Just tip the note with the tongue and continue to use the breath to generate the articulation.

At the risk of sounding preachy, I strongly believe we need to talk about the quality of articulation, never about attacks. Articulation implies defining and making things clear. Attacks, on the other hand, imply violence even though we aren’t using the word in that kind of context. I really believe if you talk to kids about attacks, they will tongue too hard. And for myself, I was a chronic over-tonguer well into my post high school education.

If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. 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.