Dr. Cate’s Flute Camp goes Virtual

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flute camp

We’ve been doing Dr. Cate’s Flute Camp the old-fashioned way for 20 years in a school, at a music dealer, in person. Now due to the world being a completely different place since March, Dr. Cate’s Flute Camp is going virtual. And you know what? I’m really excited for this new opportunity to help keep students playing their flutes, give them some ensemble experience, explore the basic skills of good flute playing, learn about different types of flutes from around the world, and learn how to properly take care of their instruments.

Instead of the full day format we’ve had in the past, we are condensing the instructional part of the day down to two hours. During the course of each one week camp, each student will also get a 30 minute lesson from one of our highly qualified staff. We are also expanding the number of available sessions to three for junior high students and three for high school students, starting the week of May 18.

If you or your students can benefit from an online camp experience over the summer, go to fluteline.com and follow the links to Dr. Cate’s Flute Camp and the easy online registration. You can read all about our award winning staff and learn more about our camp activities. Price for each session is only $100.

Troubleshooting Tone and Pitch Issues

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beginning flute, embouchure, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute tone

Because there are so many variables involved in flute embouchure, there are an infinite number of problems that students can manifest in their tone quality and intonation. And as instructors it might seem we have to virtually be psychic to deduce the problem and offer solutions to our students. This is because so much is affected by things going on in the body that aren’t obvious from looking at a kid. Over the years I’ve been collecting a laundry list, so to speak, of tone/intonation problems and their solutions. Here are some common ones for beginner to intermediate students.

Problem: Windy, airy tone that is sharp

Solution: The aperture is too large and the blowing angle is too shallow. Blow through a smaller aperture and angle the air down more. You can achieve a steeper blowing angle by putting the flute lower on the bottom lip and reaching over with the top lip more, while maintaining the smaller aperture. The Legend of Kiss and Roll, Independence for Lips!

Problem: Dull tone quality, flat pitch

Solution: There is too much bottom lip covering the blow hole, and the flute is probably too high on the bottom lip. Move the flute lower on the bottom lip and roll out. There shouldn’t be more than 1/3 of the blow hole covered by the bottom lip. Also check alignment of the headjoint and balance of the flute. That alone can cause a student roll in and cover too much of the blow hole. It’s All About Balance

Problem: Strangled or pinched tone, can be flat or sharp depending how high or low the flute is on the bottom lip

Solution: This requires some sleuthing on your part because you have to identify the source of the constriction. There are at least four places I can think of that cause a pinched sound: 1) The lips themselves with a flattened and pinched aperture, 2) clenching the jaw with teeth too close together (common with kids who have braces, especially with rubber bands), 3) the back of the tongue is too high, constricting the airway, and finally, 4) the kid can actually be closing off the throat itself, as in activating the gag reflex. It takes some practice and discernment on your part to tell the difference which of these four constriction points are causing the problem. I can tell you that each one has a distinct quality that identifies it from the others, but it does take carefully listening and practice to recognize each one. Getting the Cart Before the Horse

Problem: Trouble producing third octave notes even with the correct fingerings

Solution: Third octave notes seem scary to kids. To them it seems like the natural thing that in order to control the third octave, they should roll in and pinch. After all, who wants to hear screeching high notes? This is precisely why they are having trouble. The solution, paradoxically, is to open up the blow hole a bit, support the air column more from the body core, and relax the grip of the aperture slightly. The speed of the air column itself will ensure the high note speak with ease. Warm Air, Cold Air

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.

Shaping a Flute Aperture

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beginning flute, embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute tone

It seems to me that understanding how to shape a flute aperture with your lips is likely the biggest mystery for non-flutists who teach beginning flute players. Surprisingly, this is one of the simplest concepts to grasp if you know the trick. The trick is to shape your lips as if you are saying the sound of the letter “W”, as in “what” or “wonderful”. Notice a few things when you do this:

• Your awareness is focused on the middle of your lips, almost as if you are gripping a drinking straw
• The corners take care of themselves and seal themselves. No attention needed
• Your lips naturally form an elliptical opening
• The perimeter of the resulting aperture is actually rather firm

For yourself and your students, try starting out without a flute headjoint. Put an index finger under your lip and say, “what” or “water” a number of times. Then shorten it and say “waaaa”. Then just shape your lips for the “W” sound and blow through the resulting opening. Voila! Flute aperture 101.The next step is to shape your lips and tongue behind the teeth where gum and teeth meet on the top while blowing through the aperture, “too, too, too……”, keeping a steady air stream. Finally, go through the above process with a flute headjoint on your chin.

Of course there is more to getting a characteristic sound than just shaping the aperture. And there are seemingly more variables than specific immutable features to making a good sound. Pretty much the headjoint itself is the only constant. People, their lips, size of their teeth and oral cavity are unique to themselves. Remember to:

• Bring the flute up to the bottom lip from below to rest where the chin and lip meet. Adjust up a little for a very full bottom lip, adjust down for a thin bottom lip. Avoid the so-called kiss and roll because this puts the flute too high on the bottom lip for everyone. It’s a one size fits all solution that fits no one. The sound will be thin, light and probably sharp.
• Keep the blow hole open approximately two thirds. This is easier to do if the flute is a little lower on the chin than higher for most people. Having any more of the bottom lip in the blow hole than 1/3 will make a stuffy, dull and flat sound.
• The corners will take care of themselves, provided your lips are shaped as if to make the “W” sound. Really! Try for yourself.
• Roll your bottom lip (not the flute!) out a little to go up the octave or raise the pitch. Reach over a little with your top lip to play low notes or lower the pitch.

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.

The Sequential Nature of Flute Fingerings

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flute fingering, flute pedagogy

What is the home scale of the flute? Has this changed as the flute evolved into its modern form? How does this relate to traditional band keys? What effect does learning band keys first on flute have on understanding the sequential nature of flute fingerings?

Historically, the flute has been built with the D major scale being its home key, i.e. starting with all keys closed (minus the foot joint) and lifting one finger at a time in sequential order. With the advent of the modern keyed flute in the mid-1800’s and the addition of the foot joint, you could make a case for the C major scale becoming the home key of the flute today because that is the scale we play by lifting up each finger in direct order from bottom to top on our modern, Boehm system flutes.

I have to say I’m not a big fan of teaching Bb before B natural, despite band pedagogy being so heavily weighted toward flat keys to accommodate the transposing instruments. The main reason for this is I think that teaching Bb first creates an obstacle for kids grasping the idea that the nature of fingering on the flute is sequential, fingers lifting or closing keys in order to go up and down the instrument. And this is despite the fact that I advocate teaching the 1 and 1 Bb before teaching the thumb Bb, as I’ve outlined before. You could teach thumb Bb to maintain the sequential nature of the scale, but then you can cause other problems down the road when it comes to teaching any scale with adjacent Bb and B, regardless of enharmonic spelling (especially the keys of Gb/F# major, B major and chromatic scales). You don’t want kids getting into the habit of sliding their thumb between the B and Bb. That is a really damaging habit to good technique in the long run.

Despite the fact that the major band methods start kids with middle F, Eb and D, I vehemently disagree with this. Good flute tone is based on building from the low octave and up. The middle octave is an overtone, a harmonic of the first octave. You really can’t equate it to what works for brass instruments where you need to start in the middle of the series and work outward. The other problem is that Eb and D are ridiculously hard for beginners. They are some of the longest notes, in terms of length of tube to activate, on the flute.

A better formula for building a successful flute section is to teach B, A, G in the low register. Then add C, being sure to work on balancing the instrument. Then add low F and E. After that, teach E, F and G in the middle octave, relating them to the low E, F and G using octaves. Finally fill in the D, Eb and Bb. By the time the kids get to the D and Eb in the middle register, they have a good grasp of how to move enough air to really activate the tube and playing these notes isn’t nearly as difficult as trying to start from there.

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 Flute Technique

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flute balance, flute fingering, flute pedagogy, flute students, flute technique

Technique is one of the more straightforward aspects of playing the flute, and relatively easy to teach. As with every other aspect of playing, it does need to be monitored carefully as students develop. Probably the most important thing to monitor regarding technique is the student’s set up  with regards to balancing the flute and left and right hand positions. This makes all the difference to long term success for building useful flute technique for kids. And, of course, that the students are using the correct fingerings, i.e., 1st finger up for middle D and Eb, using right hand little finger for everything except D, right hand third finger for F#, correct high note fingerings (they are all different, see The 5 Most Common Fingering Mistakes)

We all know scale and arpeggio exercises are essential. In my own studio, I introduce scales and arpeggios as soon as the student knows Bb and can play all the naturals from low F to middle F. Depending on what flute method I’m using, the first scale students learn is either F or Bb major. I prefer to use method books that introduce flats and sharps equally. (My favorites for working with band kids are the Gekeler Flute Method and the Flute Student books by Fred Weber and Douglas Steensland. There are also really good flute specific methods available now, notably by Kathy Blocki, inventor of the PneumoPro, and Patricia George/Phyllis Louke). So the order of learning scales becomes F, C, G, Bb, D, Eb, A, Ab, E, Db, B, Gb/F#. As students learn the scales, we always review them in circle of fifths/fourths order so kids get functional harmony in their ear, even if they haven’t got a clue about music theory. So, for example, if we are learning Bb, we will play G, C, F and Bb so our ear is grounded in Bb for all the melodies we will play at the lesson in Bb. Likewise, if we are working on the key of D, we will review scales starting on Bb, F, C, G and then D, which nicely sets us up for the D major tunes we are studying.

If you have an organized way of introducing both flat and sharp keys, students can be playing all twelve major scales and arpeggios one octave within the first year of playing. I also strongly encourage you to have students read notes rather than just note names when practicing scales and arpeggios. It really reinforces key awareness to have them also play simple melodies in the keys they study. Depending on how quickly the students assimilate the third octave fingerings, you can expand scale and arpeggio practice to two octaves. It might take two to three years to get to the point where they can play all twelve scales two octaves, but when the students have that kind of technical mastery, they will have tools for dealing with more advanced band/orchestra literature, MEA audition etudes and solo repertoire.

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

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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

Getting the Cart Before the Horse

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beginning flute, dynamics, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute students, flute tone, vibrato

And the unintended consequences

There is no question that developing a wide dynamic palette and intelligent use of vibrato are essential skills for any aspiring flute player. Dynamics and vibrato add dimension and polish to the playing of individuals and within a flute section. However, I advocate waiting a bit before introducing these skills with your youngest players. Why? Because it is so critical for beginning flute players to master good embouchure and blowing skills first. Keep in mind that flutists don’t have a mouthpiece per se. We are relating to a simple hole that sits under our bottom lip. Our lips are our mouthpiece. Lips need to be trained to provide proper resistance, as we have discussed in other entries on this blog. And strong, supported blowing is an issue for any wind instrument beginner. Give your students the opportunity to solidify these skills before you introduce dynamics and vibrato.

When you ask your flute students to play with dynamics before they have mastered the basics of blowing and embouchure, the consequences can be quite dire, even to the point of them quitting altogether. Short of quitting, kids get into all kinds of compensating behaviors in order to do what you are asking of them. The kids resort to various kinds of constriction of the air stream, all of which sound really bad. They include pinching or biting down on the aperture (think about the sound of letting the air out a balloon while stretching the opening of the balloon), clenching of the teeth (also a tight and constrained sound, in extreme cases can lead to TMJ problems), and closing the throat. Once kids form the habit of constricting the air to play more quietly, it is a huge task (and often unsuccessful) to convince them that there is a better way to control their dynamics by controlling the amount of air and the blowing angle. Kids are smart. If it sounds bad and feels bad (which is how any kind of constriction feels), why continue? It is discouraging and frustrating for them. They will find other outlets for their creativity that are more rewarding.

There are similar problems that occur when you try to start kids playing with vibrato too soon. It has been shown that flute vibrato emanates from the epiglottis, the flap of tissue that blocks our wind pipe for us to swallow. It pulses but doesn’t completely close off the wind pipe when we play the flute. Again, it is absolutely essential for a student to develop a strong, steady, supported air column before introducing vibrato. If they don’t, the vibrato will be the most noticeable thing about their tone and it will not be possible to control the speed or amplitude of the pulse. Too heavy a vibrato is definitely worse than playing with a straight but supported air column. Teaching vibrato too soon is also a distraction and discouragement to ever learning steady blowing. Why set kids up for failure and disappointment?

Teach your students to blow and how to develop a flexible, sensitive embouchure first. This can take a year to two years of playing. Then adding in dynamic control and vibrato is a relatively simple job. In fact, there’s a good chance that these skills will just magically appear in your flute players if they are well grounded in the basics of sound production and musical phrasing.

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 and workshops click here.

Relating to the Flute

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beginning flute, flute embouchure, flute intonation, flute pedagogy, flute tone

Tracking down the origins of Kiss-n-Roll

Frankly, I have been puzzled why the Kiss-n-Roll approach to flute embouchure is still a thing among school music educators. There is so much information available, flutists teaching flute methods classes and so many flutists who care deeply about how students learn flute embouchure discussing how to correctly teach students how to relate to the flute that it seems amazing that the Kiss-n-Roll is still around at all. People like Patricia George, Phyllis Avidan Louke and Jennifer Cluff have written and blogged about teaching basic flute embouchure. On this blog, I’ve written on this very topic at least three times in the year and a half I’ve been doing it.

Then last weekend, I had a very interesting insight into the pervasiveness of this phenomenon. While I was up in Wisconsin doing clinics and presenting at a flute festival, I had an enlightening discussion with a band director at one of the schools. His main instrument is trombone. He showed me what he understands about teaching flute embouchure. When he demonstrated, he rolled the flute down from the middle of his lips and made a sound typical of a beginner to intermediate flute player. I asked where he had learned the Kiss-n-Roll. He said he thought no one in particular had told him to do it that way, it just seemed the easiest way to relate to the flute. And that is when the lights went on for me. He is trying to relate to the flute lip plate the way he knows how to relate to his trombone mouthpiece! Doing this makes the flute seem less foreign, more familiar to what he already knows and can do well.

Here is the harsh reality, folks. Rolling the flute down on the lip into playing position is never going to help your students develop a truly characteristic flute tone. Why? Because it places the flute too high on your lip to get the maximum resonance out of the instrument. The transit time (time from when the air exits your lips to when it hits the strike edge of the embouchure hole) is too short. The sound will always be small, often windy, sharp and unfocused.

So what happened when I asked the band director to try bringing the flute up into position from underneath as I’ve discussed numerous times on this blog? Bingo! He instantly had a stronger, more focused flute sound than I think he had ever achieved in the past. Granted, it took him out of his comfort zone as far as how to relate to the flute. The difference in the sound he made was a huge improvement.

Parting words for today? You cannot relate to the flute embouchure plate in the same way you relate to your brass mouthpiece. There is not going to be direct contact with your lips. Bring the flute up from below and learn to feel the inside edge of the embouchure hole about where your lip and chin meet (this can vary with the size and thickness of your lips). In order to get the best sound out of a flute, you need to let go of your attachment to the feeling of having contact with the middle of your lips. When you understand this and can explain this to your students, you will see a huge difference in the tone quality your students can achieve. The flute is a completely different animal from any other winds or brass. To achieve a characteristic tone, it is necessary to learn to relate to the flute on its own terms.

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 and workshops click here.

Developing Better Breath Control

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beginning flute, breath control, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute students

Good breath control is an important issue for any wind instrument, but can be especially problematic for flute players because we don’t have a mouthpiece like the other winds and brass. As I tell my own students, everyone else has a mouthpiece and we have a hole. It is no wonder that breath control becomes such an issue for flute students, especially in the early stages.

A long time ago, a voice teacher pointed out to me that breathing to sing or play a wind instrument is different from regular breathing in one significant way. The relative speed of the breathing cycle is reversed. Here’s what this means. As you are sitting there reading this post, notice that you inhale relatively slowly and exhale quickly. When we sing or play a wind instrument, we need to inhale quickly and exhale much more slowly, and at a controlled rate. Teaching this to youngsters is a tricky thing. If you ask kids to take a deep breath, they will probably lift their shoulders and tense their necks. As you know, you have to relax through your trunk and allow everything to open up (ribs and abdomen) and allow the diaphragm to contract downwards. (N.B., you can’t make your diaphragm contract anymore than you can make your heart beat. The diaphragm has the same kind of nerve endings as your heart. It just does it’s job. It will work most efficiently in the breathing cycle if you focus on being relaxed and open through your chest and abdomen.) To demonstrate to kids how to breathe naturally, I have them lie on the floor on their backs with their knees bent. Then I have them pay attention to how their abdomen rises and falls with their breath. Finally, I have them reverse the cycle by inhaling quickly and exhaling slowly while still lying on the floor. When we sit up again, they have a much better sense of how to take an easy, full breath.

In orchestra, I’ve always been envious of the ability of oboe players to spin a long line. They can seemingly sustain their blowing forever compared to what we can do as flute players. Why is this? It’s because they have the natural resistance of blowing into the tiny reed opening. We flute players need to create more resistance in order to have better breath control at every stage of our development. For beginners this means learning to shape a really small aperture with our lips, about the size of the opening of an oboe reed in fact. The aperture needs a fair amount of firmness to create the resistance necessary to spin the air column and sustain our blowing. As young players develop, they need to learn to pay attention to how efficient they are being with the air. Even if the aperture is the correct size and firmness, it is endemic to the flute that we frequently blow more air than is necessary. Provided the flutist is taking in enough air, the trick is to get more sound by using less air more efficiently.

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 and workshops click here.

Common Beginner Problems

Tags

flute pedagogy

Anyone who works with beginning flute players recognizes the obstacles and hurdles they have to overcome in order to learn to play. Perhaps you, yourself have experienced these issues when studying flute in methods class in college. These include breath control and the related huffing and puffing, along with not tonguing.

Let’s look at the breath control/huffing and puffing problem. This is primarily an issue involving how the student is shaping the aperture. The larger the aperture, the windier the sound and the more trouble the student will have with sustaining the air stream. They will also have trouble with changing octaves. The trick is to help the kids discover how to blow through a smaller aperture, sooner rather than later. When they learn to shape a smaller aperture, it is much easier to help them learn to sustain their air, even while tonguing. Here are several ways you can help them demonstrate to themselves how to shape the aperture:

• Get some open, but flat coffee stirrers and give each kid one. Have them put it between their lips, either in the middle or off to the left (for kids who have a teardrop top lip) and blow. Have them blow on the straw and tongue as well.
• Show them the opening of an oboe reed. It’s about the same size as a useful flute aperture. The aperture should be roughly oval in shape with the opening about the same size as an oboe reed.
• Have them practice playing pretend flute on their index finger, shaping a small aperture. They can then move the other fingers back and forth across the air stream. A good, strong air stream will feel focused and the temperature will feel cooler if the air is moving at the correct speed.

A related and all too common problem for young flute players in band is using a hoo articulation rather than actually tonguing. Do you know that I have judged solo and ensemble contest and heard kids who have been playing two to four years and are STILL not tonguing? This is completely unacceptable and when I judge contest, I judge accordingly. I can understand having this problem for 1-3 months after starting, but you, as the teacher really must insist they learn to tongue. I don’t have to tell you kids will take a pass on necessary skills if you don’t monitor them closely.

Tonguing correctly has a lot to do with having the proper size aperture. If the aperture is too large, tonguing behind the teeth is quite difficult. Try tonguing where your teeth meet your gums through an oversize aperture and then through a small aperture. You will see that tonguing is easy if the size of the aperture is correct. It’s almost impossible through a larger aperture. So if you help your students develop the correct size aperture, you will soon have everyone tonguing in short order. Insist that the kids tongue and you will see the quality of the sound your beginner flutes make improves exponentially.

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 privately on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.