Piccolo for Flute Students

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beginning flute, embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute students

The conventional wisdom is that is necessary to wait two or three years before starting students on piccolo. Actually, I think starting flute students on piccolo is more a matter of measuring readiness by evaluating embouchure and blowing skills rather than the amount of time a student has played. What are these skills? First of all make sure the student is blowing sufficiently fast air. Also it is important that the student has good control over the size and shape of the aperture. If the student meets these two criteria, they will do fine with piccolo. On the other hand, if a student is already pinching, rather than supporting, to play higher on the flute or trying to overpower the piccolo by blowing harder, it can actually be detrimental to their flute playing. This is why it is so important to make sure embouchure and blowing skills are well developed before introducing piccolo.

How can you help your flute students adjust to playing piccolo? In several ways. The piccolo should be placed higher on the bottom lip than flute. This is because the transit time (the time from when the air exits the aperture to when it strikes the blowing edge) is somewhat shorter than on flute. Conversely, the larger the instrument, the lower on the lip it goes for the same reason. The other major thing to get used to is the different register of the instrument. It is an octave higher, so the low register sounds like the middle register of the flute. Have the students play tone exercises like octaves or long tones and slow scales to acclimate themselves to the differences.

What about starting students on piccolo before transitioning to flute? At the risk of upsetting my flute playing colleagues, I would like to put it out there that this may not be as crazy an idea as it seems. After all, the student gets to learn immediately about a well shaped aperture and moving the air fast enough to get a good sound. Though I have to admit I have never started anyone on piccolo, I have started students on an $8 fife made by a major manufacturer of school recorders with good success. This fife is in the same octave as piccolo and when the students transition to flute, it is a breeze. There is none of the usual struggle to either shape the aperture or figure out how to direct the air at the blowing edge. It is a very easy transition. A respected former classmate of mine started on piccolo and has agreed to talk about her experiences as a beginner on piccolo. Look for her remarks in the comments.

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.

Flute Embouchure for Beginners

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beginning flute, flute embouchure, flute tone

The problem with the flute is that there is no mouthpiece so to speak. In fact, our lips are our mouthpiece. If your primary instrument is any other wind or brass, you are used to engaging with something you either put in your mouth or that is in direct contact with both your lips. How do you teach beginners to shape the aperture and direct the air properly in the absence of a mouthpiece?

First of all, let’s start with something we all can relate to: a coffee straw. It’s about the same size and shape as a good flute aperture. Another good visual reference is the opening of an oboe reed.

Take the coffee straw and put it in between you lips and seal your lips around it. That’s pretty much it, except we are wrapping our lips around the airstream rather than something we can hold in our hands. You can even try blowing through the coffee straw. Keep blowing and remove the straw so you can feel the airstream moving through the aperture you just made with your lips. Then take the headjoint and bring it up into position from below, feeling the edge of the blow hole against the edge of your bottom lip. Aim the air at the blowing edge with the aperture you are making with your lips. You should get a sound right away.

Another way to understand how to shape the aperture is to study the shape your lips make to say the sound of the letter “W” in English, like “water” or “weather”. Blow the air through this opening. You can even have the kids say “woo woo!” to get the idea.

Some important points to keep in mind with shaping the embouchure:

• It is all about orbicularis oris
• Anything that involves stretching the lips laterally is to be avoided. This includes smiling and even frowning.
• See all those other cheek muscles? Forget about them
• Channel the air through the wet inside of the lips.
• You may need to purse your lips slightly as you would when giving someone a kiss.

Actually Bogey and Bacall said it best, “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and…blow”. Check it out when he whistles. Bogey would have made a great flute player! You can’t smile and whistle or smile and give someone a kiss at exactly the same time. The muscle groups are working against each other. Same for playing the flute.

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.

What to Look for in a Beginner Flute

Tags

beginning flute, flutes

What brand of flute do you recommend for the beginners in your band program? Why that particular one? If your response is, “That’s the one we’ve always gotten” or “This was the one that was recommended by my woodwind methods teacher when I was in college”, it might be worth reevaluating your choice because there have been so many improvements in student flutes in recent years. There are also brands on the market now that didn’t exist even five years ago.

There are three main things that you should consider when making a choice of which brand to request from your local dealer. First is whether flute has a modern scale. There are old and venerable brands who haven’t changed their scale since they started making beginner flutes back in the day. The problem with the older scale is it was designed to play in tune at below A-440. In order to get the flute to play at A-440, the headjoint was shortened. Consequently, the low register is flat and the high register is sharp. When a beginner starts on an old scale flute, the student becomes acclimated to hearing the flute out of tune. For example, a screaming high Db and low Eb doesn’t bother them because that’s what they are used to. On flutes with an updated scale, the entire key schematic is slightly shorter so the entire range is better in tune. The newer quality brands have a modern scale. And slowly, the older brands are retooling and incorporating better scales in their beginner flutes.

The second factor to consider is sturdiness. Like the proverbial Timex watch slogan of old, can the flute “take a licking and keep on ticking”? There has been a disturbing trend in recent years to use softer metals to save money in manufacturing. I’ve had way too many experiences in the past few years of seeing bent Ab keys, as in wrapped around the flute body, bent trill keys, twisted main line keys, footjoint keys bent open a 1/4″ or more. While it is true that these things happen because of mishandling by students, it is safe to say that the metals are too soft if the keys can be bent back as easily as bending a paper clip. Another dubious manufacturing trend is having adjustment screws anchored in a nylon slug rather than into threaded metal. In my experience, these screws slip much more easily and constantly need to be adjusted. Lastly, check the quality of the plating. Does it hold up well or does it pit or start to come off, showing the copper under layer?

Thirdly, the quality of the cut of the blow hole can make a huge difference in developing a characteristic sound. There have been huge innovations in headjoint technology in the time I have been a flutist. Most flutists will tell you that the newer brands tend to have better sounding headjoints, though there have been recent improvements in the older brands as well.

In conclusion my suggestions are: Learn as much as you can about all the quality brands available on the market today, both old and new. If you are intensely brand loyal but have concerns about some of the issues raised here, talk to the manufacturer representative in your area and voice your concerns. They do listen. If they hear the same concerns from enough people, things change for the better.

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 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.

It’s All About Balance

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beginning flute, flute balance, flute fingering, flute technique

Something we have all observed is how tricky it is for young flute students to balance the flute in their hands and finger at the same time. Maybe you, yourself have experienced this learning flute basics in methods class and lessons. Unlike other woodwinds, there is no thumb rest to help with balancing the instrument. Back in the 19th century, flutes were often made with a left hand crutch (in fact, modern bass flutes usually still have a left hand crutch). For whatever reason, the crutch was deemed unnecessary and hasn’t been part of flute manufacture in a very long time.

To understand how to help our students balance the instrument better, it is important to understand that the rods that hold the keys are very heavy in relation to the rest of the flute. If we line the blow hole up directly in line with the middle of the left hand key cups, as is frequently taught, the weight of the rods is always dragging the flute backwards, causing the student to play with the blow hole too covered (which also causes flatness of pitch and a dull tone). It also encourages poor hand positions with over-flexed wrists, right hand fingers against the rods and a right thumb that protrudes in front of the flute.

Here’s what I do with my own flute:

As you can see, I line up my blow hole slightly to the left of center, between the keys and the rods. This puts the weight of the rods closer to the top of the instrument which enables me to balance the flute between the first joint of my left hand, right thumb and right pinky (if needed). The flute also rests against my chin. This gives me complete freedom to move my fingers as needed without having to “hold” the instrument to prevent it from rolling backward. The banner photo on this blog shows me doing this very clearly. There is a wonderful video put up by Jennifer Cluff demonstrating all these points at this link: http://www.jennifercluff.com/blog/2008/04/hand-arm-strain-and-flute-headjoint.html Be sure to check it out.

The last thing I want to say about this topic for now is that this is one of those concepts about which professional flute players can disagree, and sometimes quite vehemently. The argument from the other point of view claims that turning the headjoint back causes one to cover the blow hole too much. This would be true if the keys were tilted slightly back. However, if anything, the keys are pointed slightly more forward than straight up at the ceiling, so one gains many advantages in being able manipulate tone, intonation and color.

If you find these entries helpful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back next week for another flute tip. Your comments and questions are always welcome. Find me on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.

Teaching Bb fingerings

Tags

beginning flute, flute fingering, flute pedagogy

Let’s face it, Bb on flute is one of the thorniest fingering issues on the flute. As you already know, there are several different fingerings for Bb on flute. Which fingering do you teach your beginners? When do you introduce the other options?

So what are the different fingerings? There’s the so-called 1 and 1 or forked Bb fingering, the thumb Bb fingering and the side-key Bb. Unlike other woodwinds with multiple options for many notes, it’s the only note on flute for which there are so many choices.

Here is my recommendation for teaching Bb to beginners. Start with the 1 and 1 Bb. Why? Because starting with the thumb Bb causes more problems than it solves even though it is an easier fingering. I strongly believe that 1 and 1 Bb should be taught until chromatic scales are introduced because chromatic scales and any example with adjacent B and Bb (such as in the keys of Gb/F# or Cb/B) need to be fingered with either the 1 and 1 Bb or sometimes the side-key Bb. I am willing to put up with a little lumpiness in the technique centered around the G-Bb combination until the student has learned to play chromatically. To my mind, when students are taught thumb Bb first, more often than not I find they slide between the thumb keys in chromatic scales and passages, which is a much bigger technical problem. A sliding thumb is an impediment to smooth technique in most cases.

Thumb Bb should be taught after students master a basic chromatic scale. Since flutes primarily play in flat keys in band, it actually is a smoother fingering for intervals such as A-Bb, Ab-Bb, G-Bb or Gb-Bb. You may find some initial resistance to learning the new fingering, but the kids soon discover it is an easier fingering in most flat keys.

Choosing the best fingering for Bb can be a bit like voting. Often the choice is very clear, a good candidate and a bad candidate. Unfortunately it can all too often be like have a slate with a jerk, an idiot and a crook and you have to choose the least offensive of the three. After you get past the basics, help your students learn to choose the best fingering based on the context of what they are playing.

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The Legend of “Kiss and Roll”

Tags

beginning flute, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute tone

For many band teachers who learn to teach beginning flute, the so-called “kiss and roll” method of teaching students to form an embouchure is what they are told is the quickest and most effective way to learn to direct the air into the blow hole at correct angle. From my perspective as a flutist who has taught many beginning flute players, this method is based on a fantasy. The fantasy is that we all have the same size and shape lips. If we center the blow hole between then lips and roll it down, it will be in the best position for making a focused sound on the flute.

In reality, the “kiss and roll” method causes more problems than it solves. For the majority of flutists, the end result is that the flute winds up too high on the bottom lip. This results in a small sound which is often sharp. It is also impossible to develop fullness and power in the tone because the transit time (the time from which the air exits the aperture to when it hits the blowing edge of the embouchure hole of the head joint) is too short. Another persistent problem is that students continue rolling the flute down into position long after the need for such a crutch has passed. It becomes an annoying and unnecessary mannerism at best, and a real impediment to developing a mature, characteristic tone at worst in more experienced students.

So what to teach instead? Bring the headjoint into playing position from below by bring the curve of the lip plate to rest against the chin. Then bring the edge of the blow hole up to about the bottom edge of the lip. The crisp edge of the lip plate is very easy to feel at the transition between the lip and skin of the chin. Then teach the students to aim the air at the opposite edge of the lip plate to make a sound. Depending on how full the bottom lip is, the best position can be higher or lower on the lip.