Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Trills

Tags

flute fingering, flute pedagogy, flute technique

Your flute students (and other woodwinds) are usually going to be asked to trill by the time they have been playing a year or so. Trills provide the flutes and other woodwinds the opportunity to add brilliance and excitement to a score. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but a trill is a rapid alternation between adjacent pitches, up either a half step or whole step from the notated pitch (never down). The next question is how does one know whether it’s a whole or half step? One word answer – context. Here are the basic rules for trilling:

• Trill to the next note above the notated pitch in the key except….
• If there is an accidental next to the tr sign, then trill to the accidental indicated or….
• If the note being trilled is itself an accidental, again trill to the next note in the notated key unless there is an accidental next to the tr, as previously noted.
• Anything bigger than a whole step is considered a tremolo, not a trill.

In the absence of direction, kids will come up with the darnedest things, especially in the case of trills. They know they need to wiggle something, so they do….any adjacent finger will do. Doesn’t matter if it is up or down. They think because they are wiggling a finger, they are trilling. And it sounds just awful.

Here are some pointers about trill fingerings. Many trill fingerings are obvious like F to G, G to A. No special fingering chart needed. However, a large proportion of trill fingerings are not “normal” fingerings. Trill fingerings are a collection of cheats, hacks and other tricks you would never use to play a regular note. They idea is we are trying to simplify the fingerings to be able to wiggle as few fingers as possible, with only one finger being ideal (but not always achievable). The alternation is rapid enough that the listener won’t hear it’s a cheater fingering. Some notable examples include C to D (first trill key), Db to Eb (second trill key), E to F# (finger E and wiggle the right first finger). Trills that include Bb almost always require using the thumb Bb. Third octave trills require using harmonic fingerings. Having a good trill chart is not just a good idea, it is essential. I recommend the Woodwind Fingering Guide (It’s available on the web. You can see it on your phone in your pocket. No excuses.)

One small performance practice caveat regarding trills in music written before 1800. It is considered correct to start the trill on the auxiliary pitch rather than the notated pitch (except when approached from the scale degree directly above the notated pitch). If you are interested and have time, check out the Quantz treatise, On Playing the Flute. There’s an entire chapter on trills in the Classic, Pre-Classic and Baroque periods.

Lastly, for trills to sound good, you need to remember to blow. You can be furiously wiggling your finger, but without sufficient blowing, there’s no point. In this respect, trilling is like tonguing. It is very easy to get distracted by the wiggling finger or the tonguing and forget that the very foundation of flute playing (indeed any playing any wind instrument) is blowing, keeping the air column moving and energized.

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 Ornaments in Flute Music

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flute pedagogy

Woodwind players, but especially flutists, have to deal with a lot more ornaments earlier on in their playing experience than brass or percussion instruments. There are a number of symbols that are very useful to know about so you can help your students learn to properly execute these ornaments.

Let’s start with trills. By far the most common ornament in flute music. You will see trills in band repertoire, flute literature from all musical periods and small ensemble music. First of all, you always trill upwards, always. How do you know what note to trill to? You trill to the next note above in the key. This can be a half step or whole step. There is one big caveat. If there is an accidental next to the tr symbol, the accidental supersedes the key signature and you trill up to that note instead. In flute specific repertoire, there is another caveat for music written before approximately 1800. It is frequently correct to start the trill from the auxiliary note above the note being trilled whether or not there is a written appoggiatura (small grace note without a slash). Your students unlikely to see this in band literature, but in solos, etudes and chamber music.

Trills often use what would normally be considered cheats or fingering shortcuts. It’s important to emphasize to your students that they need to look the fingering up if they are not sure how to correctly execute it. Lots of kids think trilling is just about wiggling an adjacent finger, whether it is to the correct fingering or not. Make them look it up. With everyone having a device in their pocket these days, there is no excuse for not having the correct fingering for trills. My go-to site for all things fingering, including trills, is the Woodwind Fingering Guide. There is also now a free app for flute players that is really complete for standard, alternate and trill fingerings called Fingercharts.

This example from an Andersen etude has three very common ornaments, namely grace notes (the little notes with slashes through the stem), turns a.k.a. gruppettos (looks like a letter “S” on its side) and mordents (a short jagged line above the note). Grace notes come immediately before the note it ornaments and actually steal just a small fraction of the value of the note preceding the note with the grace note. Play them as close to the note it ornaments as possible. In music before about 1800, the graces fall on the beat and steal a small amount of value from the ornamented note. Mordents are no big deal. Essentially they are a one wiggle trill, up and back down very quickly.

Turns are the most complex of these common ornaments. At the simplest, they consist of the note being ornamented, the upper neighbor, the note and the lower neighbor before exiting to the next written note. The complexity lies in using the correct rhythm. A simple example would be:
Here is an example with a mordant and a turn in another Andersen etude. Note that when the turn falls inside a dotted rhythm, it usually is executed with a triplet. Also note that the sharp under the turn symbol means to raise the lower neighbor half a step. An accidental under the turn means alter the lower neighbor. An accidental above the turn means alter the upper neighbor.

The last ornament we are going to look at is the appoggiatura. In music especially from the Baroque and Classic Periods, there are frequently small notes that look remarkably like grace notes with one distinguishing difference. There is no slash through the stem. Especially common in the music of Mozart and Haydn, you also occasionally run across appoggiaturas in music from the 19th century. The main thing that distinguishes appoggiaturas from regular grace notes is that the appoggiatura subtracts value from the note it ornaments. In this example from the Mozart Concerto in G major, this passage is played as straight 16ths, slur two, tongue two.

Finally, in this example from an etude by Kummer, there is a turn following a dotted half note, executed as a half note with a 16th note turn, followed by a half note appoggiatura. Play the appoggiatura as a half note followed by a quarter note.

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.

Intonation and Dynamic Control

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dynamics, flute intonation, flute pedagogy

How many times have you heard your flute students play sharp when the dynamic is forte and flat when the dynamic is piano? I’m pretty sure it is one of those examples where you would say, “If I had a nickel for every time I heard……., I’d be rich”. So how can you help your students learn to play in tune regardless of the dynamic marking? The answer lies in helping them understand how to change the direction of the air at the different dynamic levels, rather than rolling in and out, as is commonly taught in school music programs.

The first aspect you need to address with the students is developing a consistently fast air stream regardless of the quantity of air one is blowing. I explain it by saying that when we first start playing, air speed and quantity are like a married couple going hand in hand. Air speed and air quantity need to get a divorce, go their separate ways. The air speed (and the size of the aperture) is pretty consistent regardless of dynamic or register. What changes with different dynamics is the quantity of air and the direction of the air stream. How can you teach this kind of steadiness of the speed of the air stream? I like slow melodies (like the chorales so many bands use to warm up), Remington intervals and slow scale exercises. Pay particular attention to not just blowing on the notes but blowing between the notes.

Here’s an example of a simple scale exercise you can use with all your winds. You can adapt it for keys your students know and/or use it for teaching unfamiliar keys (for flutes in band, that would be sharp keys). I believe the only way you can really learn to blow with steady air is to play slowly. Finger technique is a distraction to learning to blow steadily, so remove it and encourage your students to pay attention to how the air moves through the line and between the notes.

Secondly, the guidelines for staying in tune through all dynamics are for loud dynamics, blow down more by reaching forward with the top lip, and for soft dynamics raise the air stream by pushing the bottom lip out more. Remember Independence for Lips? Getting good control of the direction of the air takes attentiveness and practice. Here is an exercise I recommend doing with a tuner. First, have the student establish a good baseline pitch for the given note at mezzo forte. Then have them start the same note as softly as possible, with a light and fast air stream, gradually get louder and then diminuendo again while maintaining the pitch center. Do this exercise first with a tuner, but with more experience, try it by ear to further train your ear. Finally, have the student try diminuendos of different lengths, first longer duration and then gradually shorter note values.

Helping your students learn to play in tune at any dynamic level is about making sure they understand the necessary physical skills and helping them developing their ears.

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.

Transitioning to Open Holes

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flute balance, flute pedagogy, flute students, flute technique, step-up flutes

There comes a time for more ambitious young flute players when they need more flute than their beginner instrument can provide. They need a better headjoint to continue to develop their tone, a lighter mechanism for more technical facility and open holes both for sound and to be able to play more advanced literature. What frequently happens when a student gets a step up instrument however, is they play their new flute with plugs in the holes and never fully make the transition to open holes.

First off, let me say there really isn’t a right or wrong way to introduce playing with the holes open. It really depends on the student. If you have a kid who has good basic hand positions where their fingers are gently curved and centered over the keys, the transition will be relatively quick and painless. You can recommend they go ahead and try playing without the plugs right away and see how they do. Some kids do this quickly and pretty painlessly. They experience a few days of having a little trouble covering everything, but also have a developed enough sense of observing themselves to figure what they need to cover every hole accurately.

It can be more complicated if the student is bracing the flute against the rods with the thumb in front on the right hand or their left wrist is in front of the flute and left fingers straight and on the edges of the keys. What’s great about getting a new flute with open holes is that it is an opportunity for students to develop better hand positions, provided they are properly supervised and encouraged. With a kid like this, I think it is better to gradually wean them off the plugs one at a time. Give them a week per plug to adjust. And slowly you will see that their hand positions improve as they learn to cover each new hole.

What order do I recommend for removing the plugs? F key, A key, E key and then either of the fourth finger keys, D key and G key. The last two are by far the trickiest. It’s actually not such a big deal if the student never takes either of the last two out. A lot depends on the size and shape of the fingers and palm of the hand. Another factor is whether the flute has an inline G or offset G. It is generally easier to learn to cover the G key hole with an offset G.

Finally, encourage your students to use the pads of their fingers to cover the holes rather than the tips. There is much more flesh to cover the hole on the pads of the fingers. If students are trying to use the tips of their fingers, it is going to cause a lot of hand position and balance issues. Make sure the headjoint is aligned between the keys and the rods. Check that the right hand is behind the flute with the thumb under and somewhat behind the flute. The left wrist should be under the flute, not in front and the thumb should be open to the rest of the hand and relaxed. It will likely mean that the thumb engages the thumb key closer to the first knuckle than the tip (that is why the Bb key arm is recessed on most flutes as it travels above the B key).

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.

Being the Flute Police

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embouchure, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute posture, flute students, flute technique

Now that your students aren’t beginners anymore, what do they need to keep developing their flute and musical skills? The flute police! I’m joking, of course, but in a way I’m not. The interactions with and interventions by their teachers, both their band directors and private instructors (if they have one), during their first two or three years of playing are really critical for determining how long they continue playing and the level of competency they achieve.  In order to keep my own students on track, here’s what I have to be constantly vigilant about for them:

• Embouchure, embouchure, embouchure – make sure they are shaping the right size aperture, know where the flute is placed on their bottom lip, and that they understand how to change the direction of the air without changing the size of the aperture.
• Blowing – as important as embouchure. You can have a great embouchure, but it’s not of much value if you’re not putting air into the instrument. Likewise, a student can have great technique, but it is of little use if you can’t hear them due to insufficient air. Be sure to teach kids to drive the air with their abdominal muscles (often referred to as “support”).
• Balancing the flute and hand positions – turn the headjoint back and turn the mechanism more forward just a little so the weight of the mechanism is more on top, rather than dragging the flute back. Left hand and wrist under the flute to support the weight, right hand behind the flute with fingers extended. Right thumb under and more on the back side of the instrument.
• Posture – align shoulders over hips, whether sitting or standing. Turn head left about 45 degrees and bring the flute up into playing position. The plane of the body and plane of the flute intersect near the left shoulder. The end of the flute should be in line with your nose rather than in line with your right ear (you will be amazed at the difference in the sound with just this one simple adjustment).
• Technique – teach the kids the patterns of music including scales and arpeggios in all major keys. Teach your flute students to play in sharp keys. I get it! Band repertoire puts the flute parts into flat keys in order to accommodate the transposing instruments. However, you severely limit the playing options available to your flute students if they never play in any other keys besides F, Bb and Eb until they get to high school. And teach them the correct fingerings in the third octave.
• Counting and rhythm – be sure to teach kids to count for themselves rather than learning rhythm by rote. In more than 30 years of teaching lessons in schools, I have seen band teachers whose students have excellent counting skills and those whose students couldn’t count their way out of a paper bag until someone “shows them how it goes”. The student who understands rhythm and can figure out music they are learning on their own is much more likely to stick with playing long term. They will be able to benefit from your instruction about ensemble skills more readily because they will be more flexible and adaptable.

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.

When Do You Start Teaching Dynamics?

Tags

dynamics, flute embouchure, flute intonation, flute pedagogy

The short answer to that question is, “It depends”. What does it depend on? It depends on a student’s ability to blow with a steady air stream and to differentiate between air speed and air quantity. Learning to differentiate between air speed and quantity takes time for the student and an understanding of sound pedagogy from the teachers who work with the student.

When a kid starts on the flute, the first job is to learn to direct the air properly to hit the strike edge of the blow hole. Then they need to learn to change the blowing angle to play in the different registers. Often at this stage the student is blowing through a large aperture, expending a lot of air, huffing and puffing, making a fuzzy sound and having trouble sustaining anything longer than two or three beats. As they continue practicing, most of the time the student learns to blow through a smaller aperture, control their breath and make a clearer tone.

Is this a good time to start introducing dynamics? I would say no, absolutely not and here is why. You can do more harm than good for your kids because they start trying to do what you are asking without having the skill set to play with dynamics correctly. Kids will pinch the aperture, which can make them play sharp. They start rolling the flute in and covering more. This will make the pitch flat. They try to control the air by squeezing their throats. Do you really want your students to sound like they are strangling? And they don’t really know anything about managing the air stream so they wind up trying to control the dynamics with their lips, tongue, throat, size of the oral cavity, etc. Kids are enormously creative in their solutions but the results for both pitch and tone can be devastating. And they wind up building in habits that they may never overcome.

A few pointers for teaching dynamics:

• Never mind about dynamics for a least the first year to two years of playing.
• Teach them to blow with a steady, supported air stream always (using their abdominal muscles to drive the air).
• Teach them that the size of the aperture stays pretty much the same throughout the range of the flute.
• Show them that the air speed and air quantity are not the same thing. You can play very softly provided that the air column is moving quickly enough with enough pressure.
• Dynamics on flute are controlled by a steady air speed and varying the quantity of air, not with the embouchure. The embouchure’s job is merely to point the air in the correct direction. Think of a garden hose. The actual source of the water pressure is far from the nozzle. The nozzle directs the water wherever it is pointed.

Your students will develop a wide palette of dynamic expression if you spend time helping them learn to control the air column in the first couple years of playing. It all comes down to how you manage the air.

If you find these entries helpful, subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. Please comment and feel free to ask questions. What do you want to know about flute pedagogy? Maybe the answer to your question will be the next flute tip. Find me on Facebook or email me your questions at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.

Developing a Seamless Legato

Tags

flute embouchure, flute intonation, flute pedagogy, flute tone

It was brought home to me again this weekend how important it is to develop a seamless legato regardless of which wind instrument you play. At the University of Texas in Brownsville I had the pleasure of working with some very fine young flute and clarinet players at the South Texas Flute and Clarinet Festival. We were looking at a couple melodies from Marcel Moyse’s Tone Development Through Interpretation. Each student had to be encouraged to move faster air through the instrument to begin to be able to play longer lines and create a seamless legato. If you don’t get the air moving with enough energy, there will certainly be pitch problems and the player won’t be able to shape the phrases because the air isn’t there to create the contour of the lines. With the flute, this task is complicated by the fact that we channel and direct the air with our lips rather than having a mouthpiece that does this for us.

Above and beyond moving sufficient air through the instrument, it is vital to learn how to blow through the intervals rather than just on the individual notes. In my experience, this seems to be a really big hurdle for young players just learning to blow with enough air. You can hear them letting up on each note before playing the next. Here are some general observations about practicing a seamless legato:

• It is easiest to connect adjacent notes, i.e. whole and half steps
• Upward intervals are generally easier to connect than downward intervals. This has to do with the change in air speed in different octaves. It takes a little extra push to go to a higher note. To go down, you have to let up a bit while maintaining the energy of the blowing.
• Maintain the speed of the air while changing fingers
• Think of note groups being like a physical gesture, continuous and fluid like a dancer

Here are a couple of exercises you can share with your students to get started:

Long tones – have the students take their time, focus on their blowing and pay attention to the connection between each pair of notes. They can also learn to concentrate their air stream and pay attention to the blowing angle for maximum resonance.

Expanding intervals – this is similar to the octave exercise but with more opportunity to hear how the air is moving through both small and large intervals. It is a long exercise, so pick one or two anchor notes and encourage your students to work slowly and aim to make each group a seamless gesture. Have them do a different anchor note each day. The experience of blowing through the intervals changes with where they lies on the flute.

I’m traveling this week, so I will also do a demonstration video to illustrate these points when I have a little time in a day or two.

If you find these entries helpful, subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back next week for another flute tip. Please comment and feel free to ask questions. Maybe the answer to your question will be the next flute tip. Find me on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.

Teaching Double and Triple Tonguing

Tags

articulation, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute students, flute tone

Just as with brass instruments, double and triple tonguing is an essential skill for intermediate to advanced flutists. Every single day I am grateful for being able to have double and triple tonguing in my tool kit of playing skills because of how it simplifies rapid tonguing passages, whether I’m performing in an ensemble or playing recital literature.

The main issues for good double and triple tonguing are:

• Air – yes, how you use your air is probably the most important part of effective double and triple tonguing. If you don’t blow sufficient or fast moving enough air, all the tricky tonguing in the world will be worth nothing if not supported by a fast, controlled airstream. Simply put, no air equates to no sound. Encourage your students to practice tongued passages slurred to make sure the air is moving freely. Remember, my teacher, Tom Nyfenger, said tonguing is the anti-tone.
• A well shaped aperture – as has been stated before, articulation is inherently percussive and disruptive to the shape and size of the aperture. It is essential to increase the firmness of the grip on the airstream to play with good tone when double and triple tonguing.
• The actual tonguing needs to be super efficient. Instruct your flute students to think about both the consonant sound being used and the vowel sound associated with it. T and K are good, but at fast speeds, D and G are better. Have them think of a really light vowel sound like I or E. A, O or U put the tongue too low in the mouth and greatly impact the actual speed of tonguing because the tongue has to travel from the top to the bottom of the mouth with each tongue stroke. The better one gets at double and triple tonguing, the further forward both the forward and back tongue strokes become. When I’m double and triple tonguing, I’m using no more than the front third of my tongue.
• Triple tonguing options – I think you have to try them all to see what works for you. For me, TKT TKT is the only thing that has worked consistently. Other options include TKT KTK and TTK TTK. I really think there isn’t one correct solution on this one. Everyone is different. Encourage your students to experiment sufficiently to see which on works best for them.

Some final thoughts: Your students need to make practicing double and triple tonguing a part of their life. Encourage them to practice when walking down the hall to class or when they lie down on their bed at night. Double and triple tonguing become easy and natural if you do it all the time, whether with the instrument on your face or without the instrument. And Less is More. Good multiple tonguing is about using as little of your tongue as is possible. If your tongue is flapping around in your mouth wildly, your tongue will fatigue more quickly. Teach your students to be an expert in efficiency. They will learn to tongue faster and with less fatigue.

If you find these entries helpful, subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back next week for another flute tip. Please comment and feel free to ask questions. Maybe the answer to your question will be the next flute tip. Find me on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.

Using Vibrato For Expression

Tags

flute pedagogy, flute tone, vibrato

It usually takes about a month to six weeks of practicing basic vibrato exercises for a student to begin to start using vibrato naturally in their regular playing. Other than making sure they are doing the exercises at increasing speeds, up to about sextuplets at mm=60, no other supervision is really needed. Sometimes you will have to encourage students a bit to get them to try incorporating vibrato into longer note values, but it often happens quite naturally without the student being aware that they are doing it.

When you can hear that they are beginning to use vibrato as another component of their tone, you can begin to provide some guidance on how to use vibrato to enhance expression and musical inflection. Here are a few things in no particular order that you can offer to help students to use their new vibrato more expressively:

• There are two basic components of vibrato, speed and amplitude. The speed can vary somewhat (usually faster rather than slower) but the biggest expressive component is the depth of the fluctuation. More amplitude in the fluctuation means greater intensity, volume and excitement in the sound. A narrow amplitude is more appropriate for simple melodies or for creating an ethereal, floating color in the third octave.
• Some judicious vibrato is great for showing inflection (very subtle) of strong and weak beats. Also intensity of vibrato can be used to show the apex or arrival point in a phrase.
• Avoid slow vibrato, especially in the low register. Nothing like a slow, sagging or limp vibrato for putting the brakes on the momentum of a phrase.
• Vibrato is a tool to be used with discretion, not a constant. Constant vibrato at the same rate and intensity, no matter what, is no more interesting than a totally straight tone.
• For Pete’s sake, please don’t tell a student to put seven pulses (for example) into a note. Vibrato is not about mechanics but about feeling, expression and inflection. Show them that the note needs more vibrato because it’s the apex of a phrase, and help them learn to feel the necessity of that rather than providing a mechanical solution.
• Teach your students to observe the hierarchy of beats with how they inflect the strong beats. In short, weak leads to strong 4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3, etc. Proper use of vibrato will follow naturally.
• Make sure your students are blowing sufficient air along with the vibrato. Playing with vibrato requires being able to move more air than just making a basic sound. If there isn’t enough air, the pulses will sound kind of squarish and won’t add anything to the warmth or quality of the sound.

Here are a few examples from the band literature to illustrate the above points.

If you find these entries helpful, subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back next week for another flute tip. Please comment and feel free to ask questions. Maybe the answer to your question will be the next flute tip. Find me on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.

Why do my Flutes Sound Thin and Squeaky in the Third Octave?

Tags

flute embouchure, flute intonation, flute pedagogy, flute tone

It is no secret that band flute players struggle with sounding thin, shrill, sharp and squeaky in the third octave. Knowing alternate fingerings to correct pitch can help, but won’t entirely solve the problem. What do you need to know to help them overcome these tendencies? The answers lie in what you can show your students regarding embouchure, air speed and a supported air column.

• “Looser lower, tighter higher” is a myth with regard to flute embouchure. A close corollary is “warm air low, cold air high”. Neither is correct or even accurate. How it really works is that basically the size of the aperture is pretty consistent from octave to octave. What is changing is how the air is being directed, higher or lower, with the lips moving independently of each other. Reach with your top lip to blow down more in lower octave or playing forte, push the bottom lip more forward to raise air stream to go up the octave and correct flatness when playing softly.
• Place the flute lower on the chin and open the blow hole slightly. No more than a third of the blow hole should be covered by the bottom lip. This increases the transit time (the time from which the air exits the lips to when the air strikes the blowing edge), which increases resonance and depth of tone.
• To create an open resonant tone in all octaves is the most compelling reason why you want to teach students to bring the flute up into place on their chin rather than the old “kiss and roll” method.  The “kiss and roll” places the flute too high on the lip, with a small, thin, shrill sound being the result.
• Teach your students to open their teeth and relax their throat behind their embouchure. The flute needs to rest against your chin and consequently, your bottom teeth, but the jaw and throat need to be relaxed and open as possible. (Shhhh….Don’t tell the orthodontists, but I frequently tell students wearing rubber bands on braces to take them off when playing so they can relax their jaw, provided they put them back in as soon as they are done playing.)
• BLOW, doggone it! Let me qualify this….there is a big difference between the quantity of air and the speed of the air. The quantity of air has to do with dynamics. On the other hand, the speed of the air is pretty consistent in all registers and at any dynamic level. The speed of the air is controlled by our supporting muscles (abdominals and muscles of the pelvic floor). Providing the supporting muscles are driving the air column, one can maintain an open, clear sound in any octave or at any dynamic.
• Students often think they can “support” their sound with their lips. They pinch or bite down on the aperture, clench their teeth or close their throat rather than use their supporting muscles. Think of how a garden hose works. The actual water pressure come from pumps that are far removed from the nozzle of the hose. The nozzle is responsible for directing the water wherever it is needed. If you close down the nozzle most of the way, the water sprays out in a wide pattern. If you open the nozzle most of the way, you get a strong directed stream of water because of the force of the water pressure.

Bottom line? The basis of good tone in the third octave is based on developing a good tone in the other two octaves. You can’t really separate the third octave out as a separate entity. If you have a strong, supported tone in the lower octaves, you will have an open, clear and supported sound in the third octave as well.

If you find these entries helpful, subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back next week for another flute tip. Please comment and feel free to ask questions. Maybe the answer to your question will be the next flute tip. Find me on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.