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.

Flute Go Juice

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articulation, dynamics, embouchure, flute pedagogy, vibrato

We have spent a great deal of virtual ink on this blog exploring flute embouchure, articulation, intonation, technique, dynamics and vibrato. While all of these things are essential to good flute playing, we’re overlooking the elephant in the room, namely blowing. Indeed, if you don’t have good mastery of blowing, you aren’t going to be able to articulate well, play in tune, control dynamics or play with vibrato. All the blah, blah about embouchure is meaningless if you are not moving air through the embouchure into the flute. Technique is worthless without the air behind the fingers.

A few thoughts about blowing as it relates to teaching kids, in no particular order:

• Beginners – give me a kid with an enthusiastically windy sound any day over a kid that is timidly tweeting little peeps. It is much easier to help the first kid refine their sound and become more precise with how they direct their air than to get that shy kid who is barely making any sound to actually put some air into the instrument.
• Students who come to the flute from a piano background often have to be cajoled into blowing more. My conjecture about this is that they are used to thinking of the sound being generated by their finger technique. You need to help them understand their fingers make very little sound , but that their go juice on flute is the air stream.
• Hold off on teaching/expecting dynamics until you are sure the student has sufficient mastery of steady blowing to be able to understand the difference between air speed and air quantity. Getting to this point can take up to a couple years, depending on how much they play in band/practice on their own.
• Encourage your students to blow freely and refrain from using what my teacher, Tom Nyfenger, called the nay-palm, shushing your young flute players in the front row to hear the brass line behind them. The flutes are not impacting the balance of the ensemble they way you think they are. The reason they sound loud to you is they are sitting right under your baton. This is so incredibly damaging to developing young flute players. The truth is, a flute will never be able to compete in terms of volume of sound with most any other instrument in your ensemble, not a trumpet, a saxophone or even a clarinet. By shushing them and not instructing your flute players how to play more quietly, the kids develop all kinds of negative compensating behaviors such as pinching the aperture, squeezing in the throat, clenching their teeth and just not blowing. The consequence is that the flutes sound terrible and have horrendous intonation problems. These problems are then compounded if you then tell them to roll in or out to fix the pitch. All of these problems with evaporate if you encourage your students to blow in the first place.
• If your students know how to blow well, learning to play with vibrato, developing lively articulation and meaningful technique is part of a natural progression of acquiring skills. Good blowing and a steady, supported air column facilitate all these skills. You have to have the go juice first.

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.

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.

The Sins of Articulation

Tags

articulation, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute students

What would you consider to be the biggest sins your students could commit with regard to tonguing and articulation? Have you ever noticed these habits among your school flute students? What can you do to help your students articulate correctly? Me and my flutist colleagues have a laundry list of articulation problems that are extremely common among flute students who have never had a private flute instructor. (Flutists, by all means, jump in with a comment if you have one I’ve overlooked.)

• Not tonguing at all, even after playing for three or more years. I’ve met kids that were really skillful with breath articulation and no tongue at all! Yes, it might be tricky to tongue while shaping the aperture, but you really have to insist they get it. Have them practice by putting their finger under their bottom lip (pretend flute), shaping the aperture and tonguing where their teeth and gums meet. Then have them do it on just the headjoint. Not tonguing is to be expected in the first 3-4 weeks of playing. Make sure they get it in that time. Otherwise, not tonguing becomes an ingrained habit. It becomes much harder to create the new habit of tonguing the longer they play.
• Tonguing too hard. The flutist’s aperture does not respond well to hard tonguing. Tonguing too hard causes the aperture to lose focus and direction. The result is a harsh, spread, unfocused sound. Teach your students to do accents and staccato with a stronger breath pulse behind the tonguing rather than just slamming the tongue harder. It’s a much more musical and elegant approach to articulation.
•   Tongue stopping. In other words, using the tongue to stop the sound as well as start it. Tonguing is TA or DA, never TUT. I have heard rumor that some band teachers are actually telling their flutes to tongue this way in order to get the kids to release together, especially in marching band. If you want them to release together, teach them to stop blowing together. A release should be like releasing a bird by throwing it up in the air, not like chopping something with an axe. Tongue stopping is a very difficult problem to correct so please don’t let them start doing it in the first place.
• The jaw drop release, abruptly opening the jaw to stop the air. Nearly as bad as the tongue stop release, and in my experience is something a lot of kids come up with on their own as a solution to being asked to do a quick release. Teach your students to maintain the aperture shape and just stop blowing.

On the flute, good articulation is based mostly on breath management with just a little bit of tongue for definition, a clear ictus. In fact, I would say there are two distinct types of blowing — legato and staccato. Good flutists can go back and forth between the two types of blowing instantly based on the demands of the phrasing and indicated articulation.

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.

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.

A Few Thoughts on Articulation

Tags

articulation, embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute tone

On the flute, good articulation comes down to two things: a well shaped embouchure and a lively, energized air column. What it is never about is tonguing harder. In fact, tonguing on flute should always be soft. Let the force of the air column create forceful articulations such as accents, not the tongue.

First of all, where in the mouth does the tongue strike? The best place for most people is where the upper teeth and gums meet on the roof of the mouth. The trick to good articulation on flute lies in making sure the embouchure is well shaped before one blows and tongues. And, of course, the articulation and air have to happen simultaneously.

It is practically ubiquitous among young players that they are not shaping the embouchure completely before they blow, resulting in a more diffuse ictus to their articulation, especially the first few notes they play. Once they have been playing for six months to a year, if you spend time with your students on learning to shape the embouchure with breath articulations, you will see amazing results in the quality of their articulation and tone in a very short time. You can use any technical exercise to do this using a “HA, HA” articulation. It is best if the exercise uses the same duration notes throughout.  Any exercise in quarter notes (crochets) or eighth notes (quavers) is good. Working on exercises based on the “HA” articulation clearly demonstrates the importance of a strong, supported air column to create a palette of articulations such a lively staccato, forceful accents, lifted releases, energetic detaché, bell tones (indicated by staccato under a slur), etc.

Secondly, the very nature of articulation is that it is percussive in the mouth.  This may not be as big an issue for an instrument with a mouthpiece and/or reed (I would be interested to hear more about the nature of articulation on other wind instruments). It is a HUGE issue for the flute because, if you recall, our lips are our mouthpiece. In fact, my teacher, Thomas Nyfenger used to tell me, “tonguing is the anti-tone”. If one tongues too hard, it makes the lips flare resulting in a less focused tone. Tonguing too hard makes for a lot of cracked notes and a harsh, strident tone on the flute. Take it from me, a recovered over-tonguer in my youth. But then I didn’t have the intervention of a flute specialist to show me differently until I went to college. It’s critical to be sure to grip the air stream firmly, especially in the low register, to maintain the tone. Generally, good tone is strong air correctly directed for maximum focus and projection.

Finally, please notice that I don’t use the word “attack” to describe articulation. What gradually occurred to me in my own development as a flutist, was that the word “attack” implies violence in any other context besides music. As a habitual over-tonguer, I realized for myself this was exactly the wrong word to use for articulation. I’ve found it is more challenging to find ways to talk about articulation without using “attack”, but the musical result has been worth the effort.

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.

Solving the Problems of Releasing on Flute

Tags

articulation, flute embouchure, flute intonation, flute pedagogy

You would think that releases are an easy thing on flute. After all, you just stop blowing.  It seems simple enough, but as we flute players know, there can be a bit more to it than that. There are two basic kinds of releases — short and long — which obviously depend the on tempo and style of what is being played.

Surprisingly, the short release can be fraught with the potential for picking up some really nasty habits for beginners and less experienced students. This can happen very easily if you don’t give the kids some direction about how to release but just ask for a quick release. I’ve identified two main problem releases among flute students: the tongue stop and the jaw drop. In both cases, the higher the note, the more pronounced the effect; neither attractive nor musical. The tongue stop is created by jamming the tongue into the aperture to stop the air. The jaw drop is created by abruptly opening the jaw, which also stops the flow of air.

The best way to do a short release is indeed to just stop blowing. Tongue stays low in the mouth, maintain the shape of the aperture and position of the jaw. Also, let me say that while using the tongue to release may be correct on other wind instruments, it is not correct on flute in most cases. The only cases in which it might be correct would be in certain advanced jazz/popular contexts, and then only in the hands of an already thoroughly trained flutist. Here is a quick demo of correct and incorrect short releases.

Have you ever noticed that in slower and more lyrical contexts, your students let the pitch drop when doing a slow release? Why is that and what can you tell the kids that will help them do that tapered release without sacrificing pitch? The answer to why the pitch can droop is that as you blow less, the speed of the air column is also diminishing somewhat. To compensate, you need to raise the blowing angle either by pushing out your bottom lip a tiny bit or even raising your head slightly. Personally, I’m not a big fan of raising your head, but for some people, this works well. This skill is the same as being able to change the blowing angle to change register (as discussed in The Very First Notes), though a bit more subtle. Here is an exercise your students can do either on their own or in a class setting to learn how to control the pitch in slow, tapered releases:

If you find these entries helpful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back next week for another flute tip. Please comment and feel free to ask me 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.