You Wouldn’t Think it Makes Much Difference But……..

Tags

dynamics, embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute posture

There are a number of seemingly insignificant habits your flute students can get into that make a bigger difference than you might imagine to intonation, tone quality and technique. Some of these are more visibly obvious than others. All of them can negatively impact your flute players, both individually and as a section. Keep an eye and ear out for these things in your flute students for a better sounding section.

• Pressing the flute too hard against the chin – This makes a big difference. If you can’t move your bottom lip, you are pressing too hard. When the flute is resting on your lip, make sure you can move your lip to be able to say a “W”. If you can’t make the “W” shape, back off on the pressure against your lip. If you can’t move your bottom lip, controlling dynamics and play high notes will be too difficult.
• Flute too high on the chin – Affects both tone quality and pitch. Sound will be small and probably sharp. If you have to pull the headjoint out more than 5/8″ (1 cm), the flute is probably too high on the bottom lip.
• Covering too much of the blow hole – There shouldn’t be any more than a 1/3 of the hole covered by the bottom lip. Any more than that and the tone will be dull and likely flat
• Angle of the lower end of the flute in relation to your head – This means that you get the best sound from your instrument when you can see the lower end of the instrument in your peripheral vision. If you have the end of the flute in line with your right ear, you won’t be able to get maximum resonance from your instrument
• Balance of the flute in your hands – Position the headjoint on the body so the weight of the rods is more on top. That way your fingers are free to move and you won’t be having to “hold” the flute to prevent it from rotating backwards.
• Resting right knuckles against the rods – Just bad for the flute and for technique. Bad for the flute because sweat and body oils can work into the mechanism causing binding and even rust. Bad for technique because you can move your fingers much more quickly from the joints at the base of the fingers than from the second joints.
• Thumb position on right hand – For best technique and hand position, thumb should be under and behind the flute, more or less under the F key. Thumb should never be in front of the flute (check the headjoint alignment and balance) or up under the F# or G key.
• Thumb position on left hand – For best technique, left thumb should be open in relation to the rest of the hand, straight and relaxed. Let the thumb fall on the key wherever. This can be anywhere from the thumb knuckle to the the tip, depending on size and length of the thumb. Top joint should not be bent. The Bb key arm is intentionally recessed around the B key on flutes to accommodate different size and shape thumbs.

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 Dreaded Nay Palm

Tags

blowing, dynamics, flute pedagogy

What is the dreaded nay palm? Every band flute player is well familiar with the so-called nay palm. That’s when their band director is always asking them to play quieter because they can’t hear the……you name it, trumpets, low brass, clarinets…… By the way, my old teacher, Thomas Nyfenger coined this expression with more than a little irony. Trust me, every flute player has experienced the nay palm at one time or other.

First a bit of reality. There is no way the flute can ever compete in terms of volume of sound with any other instrument in the band. Never. Even if we have a well developed, mature and characteristic sound are we ever going to be able to overpower any other wind instrument? It’s just simple physics.

Secondly, the flute section usually sits right under the conductor. So the person on the podium will hear the flutes first just because the flutes are sitting right under their nose. Is it possible that it’s not really that the flutes are playing so loudly, but that the other instruments are seated further away? You can get a better sense of the balance of volume of the flutes in relation to the rest of the ensemble by getting further away, like in the auditorium. Then I think you will find that the flutes are generally not loud enough and any flute features in the music get lost in the bigger room.

A while back, I was playing with pick up ensemble that supported a local chorus. Most of the time it was an orchestra and we sat in the traditional orchestra configuration. The conductor never once said anything to me about playing “too loudly” through many oratorios and choral works. Just one time did we have a band rather than an orchestra. Now I was sitting directly under the same conductor and I was repeatedly told I was playing too loudly. I have to conclude it was where I was sitting in relation to him rather than how I played. It was the way I play in either case.

For your flute players, the biggest issue with always asking them to play quieter is that they usually develop problematic compensations because they don’t actually know how to play quietly, with a supported sound. Here are some of the most egregious:

• Pinching and squeezing the aperture
• Clenching jaw with teeth too close together
• Barely blowing
• Closing the throat

All of these are guaranteed to cause pitch and tone problems. Compound that with being told to roll in or out to tune and you wind up with a real mess on your hands. And playing is not so fun or rewarding for the students.

How can you help your kids? Here are a few suggestions:

• Make sure your students understand the fundamentals of good sound including size and shape of the aperture and placement on the lower lip
• Experiment with where your flutes sit in relation to the podium to be able to get a better sense of the balance of the ensemble even in the band room
• Encourage your flute players to blow. Just using sufficient air will ensure better pitch.
• Teach your flute players about supporting the air column. When you use your core muscles to drive the air, the air is moving fast enough to play more softly without losing pitch control.

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.

Playing Softly Without Pinching

Tags

breath control, dynamics, embouchure, flute intonation, flute pedagogy

Once you have confidence that your students know how to blow with a steady air stream in at least two or more octaves of the flute, it’s time to help them develop a dynamic palette from piano to forte, so they can begin to practice and understand balance and style. How many of you have tried teaching your students to play more quietly only to have a host of weird compensating behaviors magically appear, not to mention having the pitch go haywire? Things like:

• Pinched aperture, shrill tone and sharp pitch
• Rolling in/covering to much of the blow hole, dull tone and flat pitch
• Clenched teeth, tight sound lacking resonance, probably sharp
• Tight throat, strangled, dull tone and probably flat
• Slow air resulting in flat pitch, trouble placing and controlling high notes, thin, bleating tone

Ok, so the problem with all of these “solutions” is they miss the point that makes the difference and you wind up with all kinds of compensations that just make a poor situation worse. The point is to understand that there is a difference between the quantity of air and the speed of the air. Youngsters and anyone who doesn’t really ‘get’ flute have trouble conceptualizing the difference between air quantity and air speed. In fact, for kids speed and quantity are the same thing. The way I explain it is that until you understand better, air speed and air quantity function like a bad marriage, needy and codependent. One cannot exist without the other, but to the detriment of the both partners.

In order for a player to be able to control dynamics and pitch, air speed and air quantity need to get a divorce and be able to operate as separate entities. The speed of the air stream has to be maintained (supported) while the quantity of air determines the relative volume of the sound. You need to maintain the air speed/pressure using the abdominal muscles while decreasing the quantity of air you are blowing. Here are a couple other concepts to incorporate into the mix to get good dynamic and pitch control:

• Maintain the oval shape of the aperture without flattening it out
• Maintain the position of the flute on your lip without rolling in or out
• The less air you blow, the more you need to raise the blowing angle towards more straight across the blow hole to maintain pitch
• Keep back teeth apart and mouth cavity open
• Keep a relaxed and open throat. Think of how your throat feels right on the edge of yawning
• Keep the speed of the air, just less 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.

Three Essential Skills

Tags

dynamics, flute embouchure, flute technique

You already know that blowing on a flute has many variables, maybe a bewildering number of variables. In speaking with a flute playing colleague who is also a band director recently, she told me that busy educators are looking for two or three simple steps they can follow to help their students play their instrument easily. So here are three essential things to communicate to your flute students at every stage of their development:

1. Find the optimum position for the flute on bottom lip. Do this by bringing the flute up from below to about where lip and chin meet. Avoid rolling down from the center. This places the blow hole too high to get a full, characteristic sound. The Legend of Kiss and Roll, Teaching Great Flute Sound, What is Transit Time
2. Balance the flute in your hands. Turn the headjoint slightly back to align between the key cups and the rods, rather than directly with the key cups. This puts the relatively heavy rods more on top so the flute can rest in your hands. No bracing needed even with all the fingers off the keys (like with C#-Db). It’s All About Balance, Balance and the Right Hand, Balance and the Left Hand
3. Shape the blowing aperture enough to focus the air stream and experiment with blowing angle. There is a subtle and intricate balance between top and bottom lip that is always adjusting to change registers, dynamics and control pitch, not to mention create different colors. Independence for Lips!, Warm Air, Cold Air

Try these three pointers with your students. Let me know how it works for you.

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

Tags

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.

What is Transit Time? And Why You Should Care

Tags

dynamics, embouchure, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy

When it comes to understanding how to teach your students to play with characteristic flute tone, it comes down to being able to teach your students to conceptualize the transit time and maintain consistency in the transit time. So what is transit time? It is the time from when the air exits the aperture to when it hits the strike edge of the blow hole. Having the optimal transit time has everything to do with whether the sound is focused and in tune rather than being dull, shrill, diffuse and out of tune.

In this blog, we have been looking at this issue in as many ways as I can think of over the last two school years. These articles include “The Value of Consistency“, “To Roll or Not to Roll“, “Independence for Lips“, “Why do my Flutes Sound Thin and Squeaky in the Third Octave?“, “What do you do with your corners?” and “The Legend of Kiss and Roll“.

Here is a video to demonstrate consistency in the transit time contrasted with rolling in and out. You will notice that when I am being consistent with my embouchure, I never cover more than about a third of the blow hole. You will also see that I often reach quite far over the embouchure hole with my top lip (I do have an overbite), but that the relationship of the bottom lip to the opening and blowing edge is consistent. When I roll the flute on my bottom lip, notice how much not only the pitch changes, but also the tone color. You will see that the amount of the blow hole you can see goes from less than half open to completely open. However, you can see when I restrict the movement to just my lips forward and back, I can still manipulate the pitch, but the amount of coverage of the blowing hole (approximately 1/4-1/3) remains the same. There is not nearly the change in color doing it this way than if I’m rolling the flute in and out. This is because when I am moving my lips independently, I am still maintaining consistent transit time, thus preserving the tone quality even while adjusting for register, dynamic or pitch.

There is no question that learning where to place the flute on your bottom lip and learning consistency in the transit time is a challenging idea to conceptualize. But it is also really the crux of the matter when it comes to producing characteristic flute tone. We have to rely on ourselves to develop that consistency rather than on the equipment as with reed or brass instruments.

Have a great summer, everyone. I may pop in occasionally over the summer with an announcement or two. And I’ll be back in the fall with more flute tips for you. 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

Tags

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.

Intonation and Dynamic Control

Tags

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.

To Roll or Not to Roll: That is the Question

Tags

dynamics, flute embouchure, flute intonation, flute pedagogy, flute tone

Do you ever feel as if getting your flute section to play in tune is like herding cats? Have you ever told your flute students to roll the flute in or out to adjust the pitch? Me and my flute teaching colleagues are all holding our ears and crying, “Noooooo!” Why the extreme reaction, you might ask? The answer is because rolling in and out to change the pitch is a chewing gum/rubber band solution for the issues of pitch awareness. It really doesn’t address the underlying issues of embouchure formation and pitch awareness. The student might be more in tune for the moment, but they won’t really learn what “in tune” really means and rolling in/out has a really negative impact on tone quality. And the next time they play the same passage, you are back to where you started because it will be just as out of tune as it was before you asked them to roll in or out the first time.

What are the tone problems caused by rolling in and out? If you roll in, you wind up covering the blow hole too much. This will make it flatter, but it also makes the tone dull, small, lifeless and impossible to play with any kind of dynamic range. If you roll out, the pitch will be somewhat sharper, but the tone will be thin, weak, won’t project and makes it impossible to play with any dynamic range.

It is essential to understand that correcting pitch problems means correcting embouchure and placement issues. Embouchure flexibility, dynamic and pitch control are basically one issue. As developing flutists, we all have to learn consistency in where we put the flute on our bottom lip/chin and how we direct the air. The best place to put the flute is where you can get the most resonance from the flute. This is different for each person because of the endless variation in size of lips, teeth and oral cavity. The only way to achieve a good, in tune sound is through experimenting with blowing angle, how much to open or cover the blow hole and teaching students lip independence. When students are not energizing the air column sufficiently (supporting), you see all kinds of compensating behaviors including pulling corners, pinching the aperture, closing the throat, clenching the teeth. All these behaviors cause pitch problems.

Here are some general guidelines for pitch and dynamic control:

• To raise the pitch, push the bottom lip forward to raise the airstream, while making sure the top lip is directing the air at the blowing edge.
• To play more softly and in tune, raise the air stream
• To lower the pitch, reach over with the top lip to direct the air down more
• To play more loudly and stay in tune, blow down more
• Be sure to blow with an energized air column (support) at every dynamic level.
• Stay relaxed in the throat, jaw, cheeks and use a focused air stream through the aperture in the lips.

Try this exercise with your students individually and in sectionals. Use a tuner and maintain the pitch with crescendo and diminuendo using the guidelines above.

If you find these entries helpful, subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. Feel free to comment and 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.

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.