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

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

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 Value of Consistency

Tags

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

If you play a brass or reed instrument, there is a certain kind of consistency built into how you blow into the instrument by the mouthpiece itself. The internal dimensions and type of material of the mouthpiece play a huge part in determining tone quality on the instrument. The reason why there are so many kinds of mouthpieces for any given instrument is because we, ourselves are so variable….in terms of lip size, teeth size and shape, tongue size, and size and shape of the oral cavity and internal dimensions of our throat. And it is also partially why there is constant research and experimentation in the design of mouthpieces (another reason being because tastes in tone quality change with time). Brass and reed players are aiming at producing a characteristic and consistent tone for their instrument, as well as improving response and flexibility. If you want to improve the tone quality, try other mouthpieces.

The big difference with the flute is the player has to relate to a hole. It’s rather like having kids. As you well know, kids don’t come with directions. “Congratulations! You are a new parent. Go!” Nobody can tell you exactly how to relate to that hole. And yet flute players need to develop a consistency of approach with how the flute rests on the chin/bottom lip and maintaining the optimal distance between the aperture of the lips and the blowing edge (known as the transit time – the time from which the air exits the aperture to when it strikes the blowing edge). If you change it up by rolling in and out, you have no control of tone quality, tone color and intonation.

Here’s the challenging thing about learning correct placement and blowing angle…Each flute player has to discover this best place for themselves because of all the other inconsistencies of lips, mouth, tongue, teeth and throat. It’s somewhat akin to learning a string instrument, except maybe a bit less daunting. With strings, every parameter of playing is up for grabs including placement of the bow between the bridge and fingerboard, bow angle, placement of the fingers on the fingerboard for correct pitch, bow speed and pressure. Or like trombone, where one needs hear the pitch to know where to correctly place the slide for the note to be in tune. With the flute, we need to learn consistency in order to maintain the correct blowing angle and have control over tone quality, intonation and color.

Finally, I’d like to share a couple videos with you of flute players who know the importance of being consistent with maintaining the correct relationship with the blowing edge under extreme circumstances (i.e. while dancing). If these players didn’t understand this relationship as thoroughly as they do, they would not be able to maintain their beautiful tone throughout their performances. Here is Zara Lawler with Neil Parsons and Hilary Abigana of the Fourth Wall Ensemble. Be sure to check these out because you will see clearly that no matter what else they are doing, these players maintain the flute in relation their aperture at all times. There is no rolling in and out.

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.

 

Solutions for Common Third Octave Problems

Tags

embouchure, flute balance, flute embouchure, flute fingering, flute intonation, flute pedagogy, flute students, flute technique

The third octave on the flute is an interesting phenomenon because of the embouchure issues it presents and because of the technical and acoustic properties of the instrument. It is definitely not as straight forward as the lower two octaves in terms of the mechanics of the flute. The reason for all the cross fingerings and venting in the third octave is because each note is combining the harmonics of two lower pitches to reinforce the sound of each note. One of the easiest to conceptualize is the fingering for high E: T12|12(Eb) It is combining the overtone series of both E and A. In fact, if the air speed is insufficient, an out of tune A will sound below the intended pitch with this fingering. You can get to the high E by playing harmonics on either E or A. For E it will be the 4th partial and for A it will be the 3rd partial. The two combined make the standard fingering for third octave E (among flutists it is generally agreed that the E is better in tune without the Eb key).

Be sure your flute students know the third octave fingerings. It isn’t enough for them to just overblow a 1st/2nd octave fingering. They will be playing harmonics rather than the correct third octave fingering. The real fingerings will always sound more solid and will be easier to play in tune. Give them a way to practice these fingerings and test them on the practicing you assign. The kids need concrete ways to build their facility in the third octave.  Here is one way to practice third octave technique.

Then there are the common embouchure issues you see with kids. It is common for students to struggle with buzzing rather than playing the desired pitch in the third octave. What causes the buzzing? Their lips are stretched laterally, from corner to corner. If your kids are pulling their corners, there is a really high probability that they will buzz in the third octave. Have them pay more attention to how they are shaping the aperture in the middle of their lips (like how your lips are shaped to blow a kiss or to drink through a straw), and forget about the corners. Remember to blow!

Another common problem is trying to control the third octave by flattening the aperture, rolling the flute in and pinching. Usually what goes with this is insufficient blowing. Oh no! High notes! Cue the Psycho shower scene music! The results are going to be really sharp and likely unsuccessful beyond high E or F. They will be lucky to get to a G. You have to help unwind them. Flute lower on the chin, roll the flute out a bit, relax the corners, shape the aperture (think of saying “W”) and blow more. Make sure the flute is aligned properly, check hand positions and balance. It seems paradoxical that rolling the flute away from you a little bit would improve the response and intonation of the high notes, but it works like magic. Check out this device (Flute Tutor) that can help enforce this positioning with your students.

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.

Being the Flute Police

Tags

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.

Where it All Started, The Legend of “Kiss and Roll”

Tags

beginning flute, embouchure, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute students

It has been a really busy week for me at the Chicago Flute Festival helping flutists learn about the Rhino Flute Resonator. There has been no time to blog this week, but I would like to share with you the very first article I wrote on Dr. Cate’s Flute Tips, entitled The Legend of “Kiss and Roll”

“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.”

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.

Helping Your Students Adjust to Playing With Braces

Tags

embouchure, flute embouchure, flute tone

Getting braces can be a pretty traumatic experience for a student who plays the flute. I have had kids come to their lessons in tears after getting braces, swearing they would never be able to play the flute again. It is always nice to be able to send them home happier, with an understanding of what they need to do to regain their tone and maybe even having recovered most of their tone within the span of a lesson.

What do you need to know to help your flute students adjust quickly and easily to playing the flute with braces? Like everything else that has to do with flute embouchure, it is about directing the air properly. When there are braces in your mouth, everything you thought you knew about how to direct the air has changed.

First, it is important to get your lips out and around the braces so the aperture can be shaped again. It is going to take some experimenting to discover how to do this. Most kids find they can’t bite, pull or pinch the corners with all the hardware in their mouth.  This is a good thing, since they shouldn’t be doing that anyway! See “What do you do with your corners?” It can be helpful to go back to blowing through a coffee straw so they can understand how to shape the aperture again.

Students often find it helpful, at least initially, to use dental wax to keep new braces from cutting the inside of their lips. I also often recommend trying Morgan Bumpers. These aren’t for everyone because it adds a little more thickness, but some students like them, especially on the bottom brackets. It is economical to try and worth considering.

The next issue to be grappled with is the difference in blowing angle. Many kids can accomplish this through trial and error with some guidance. They need to be reminded that the object of the experiment is figure out how to direct the air at the blowing edge again. Have them work with the PneumoPro as well. Remember, the top and bottom lips need to move independently so you can change the direction of the air.

A mechanical solution that can help many kids, at least initially, is to layer either masking or blue painter’s tape on the edge of the lip plate that rests against the chin to adjust the blowing angle. Figure out how much tape is needed by adding one layer at a time, up to 5 or 6 layers. For some kids, this may be all the intervention that is needed initially. I would suggest helping them wean themselves off of using the tape over the course of a month or two and to experiment on their own with lip flexibility and blowing angle.

Finally, some slow and thoughtful practice on Octaves and scales go a long way to help students get their bearings again on the flute with their new embouchure.  Here are some great comments by students from the website of another flute teacher that I thought were really helpful http://flutekeys.com/braces.html.

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.

The Benefits of Good Tone in the Low Register

Tags

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

You might think that it doesn’t matter if your beginners and intermediate flute students can play with a good sound in the low register. After all, most band literature written for the first three years of playing rarely goes below an A or G. However, flutists know that good tone in the low register is the basis for a full, singing sound in the other two registers. Without some focus and body in the tone in the low register, the middle and high registers can sound thin, reedy and pinched.

Let’s just say at the outset that the philosophy of flute tone that recommends a “looser” embouchure in the lower register and a “tighter” embouchure the higher one goes doesn’t work. The result of this approach is that the low notes sound unfocused, wooly and without projection. The upper register sounds pinched, thin, sharp and strident. With such huge tonal defects, the flute section doesn’t blend well with the rest of the ensemble. The tone color is too different. You may find it surprising that, in fact, just the opposite is true. A strong low register is based on gripping the aperture firmly and blowing with a supported airstream. A clear open third octave still depends on a supported airstream, but also a somewhat more relaxed grip on the aperture. You can let the speed of the air do the work for you.

How can your students develop these skills? The classic exercise is the long tones devised by Marcel Moyse after he heard Nellie Melba vocalizing. Let me say though, this exercise works best with students who have been playing several years. The kids need to have a little maturity to understand why they should take the time to work slowly, evaluate what they are doing, compare and experiment with how they are blowing and shaping the embouchure. In my experience, this exercise is good for mature 14 year olds and up. 

What can you do with the younger students? The old standby octave exercise is unmatched for helping beginners and intermediate students learn to focus and direct the air in every register. Because one is playing a lower and higher note, naturally it follows to compare the sound quality of the two registers. Both registers improve. The student doesn’t even really need to be terrifically self-aware to benefit from practicing octaves. If done regularly, it can just improve without a lot of conscious effort of the part of the student. It does help to be able monitor the students periodically and comment on ways they can experiment with the exercise.

When you help your students develop their low register tone, your entire ensemble will benefit because the flutes will have a more characteristic sound that blends better with other sections and they will play better in tune in all registers.

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.