Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

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gerardo1000
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Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by gerardo1000 »

My usual bohem C flute embouchure does not work with my new Aulos Stanesby Junior baroque flute. The sound that I get is weak, not full, with no color. While I was in the store to purchase the flute, the guy played it for me and he was able to get a warm full sound. Unfortunately the place is over one hundred miles from my home, so I can't go back there and ask for a few "embouchure lessons" ! Can any baroque flute player give me some tips to improve my embouchure ? This would be much appreciated. Thanks !
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by fatmac »

Baroque? I have a keyless flute, & have found I need a different embouchure from that which works on my Boehm. Online instruction says to place the flute on your chin under your lower lip, cover the lower third of the hole with your lower lip as a starting point, & develop your tone from there, it seems to be working for me. :)
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by an seanduine »

Where to start? You might download Quantz's treatise On Playing the Flute from the Project Gutenberg site. He literally 'wrote the book' on playing Baroque Flute. :D

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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by Peter Duggan »

fatmac wrote:Baroque? I have a keyless flute, & have found I need a different embouchure from that which works on my Boehm.
Baroque flutes have tiny embouchures and are more demanding in that respect than either 19th-century-style (so-called 'Irish') flutes or Boehms. You've got a much smaller sweet spot to hit, but need focus without tension/speed/pressure. Quantz is certainly helpful, but noting his own caveat (from my copy in Edward R. Reilly's translation) 'that it is not an easy matter to give certain and specific rules for a good embouchure.'
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by Peter Otto »

I'd say the two major attention points are: more focus and relaxed lips. Quantz is indeed a good starting point.

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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by Tonehole »

gerardo1000 wrote:My usual bohem C flute embouchure does not work with my new Aulos Stanesby Junior baroque flute. The sound that I get is weak, not full, with no color. While I was in the store to purchase the flute, the guy played it for me and he was able to get a warm full sound. Unfortunately the place is over one hundred miles from my home, so I can't go back there and ask for a few "embouchure lessons" ! Can any baroque flute player give me some tips to improve my embouchure ? This would be much appreciated. Thanks !

The Boehm C embouchure is coarse, crude and too diffuse for the baroque traverso. I trained on an AF3 Stanesby copy like yours - it is the better starter baroque traverso for progression.

It takes years to develop a baroque traverso technique - even reading Quantz' treatise teaches little unless you have a baroque specialist tutor. It is like starting flute all over again and no Boehm player is ever competent at the baroque traverso without training. Just because it is a flute, does not mean it can be played well even with Boehm or conical experience.

If you are going alone, the embouchure requires you to understand the importance of the traverso hold. Try moving the angle of the flute and rotating the flute headjoint in and out. It is not held like the Boehm flute and figuring out the traverso hold reduces the problems of the embouchure.

For the embouchure, I find it better to really pull your lips across your face with the facial muscles in a relaxed way but deliberate way. Study the images of Jed Wentz when he plays and see what he does as a traverso player - it does not look relaxed, but is a way of streaming the air through the tiny 8mm embouchure. A Boehm has a massive embouchure in comparison and allows for plenty of blowing mistakes - the traverso reveals defects in embouchure quickly. As you get better, you can loosen up, otherwise if you start too loose, the focussing stream requires real concentrated direction and remains weak, fuzzy and with mostly sizzling wind noise from diffused blowing and low volume as you describe. When you find the sweet spot, practice it before developing lipping control of the tone pitch to alter the note that you hear.

Bring the teeth forward together, and tongue forward behind the teeth position, and articulate the notes with the T-K-T-K or D-G-D-G which becomes pronounced as fluency develops. The focussing stream of air also requires your traverso balancing position to become like the image on the front cover of Quantz's treatise - the angle of the traverso, embouchure turned out slightly and tilted off angle requires experimenting to find the sweet spot for the focussed airstream. If you can't find a teacher, your learning will take much longer. It's not like a simple system or Boehm flute which can be picked up and blown easily and played loosely. The sweet spot for getting the tone right is more narrower.

This is the way of the traverso - funky and cool.
gerardo1000
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by gerardo1000 »

Tonehole, thank you SO much for your detailed reply ! I will start practicing following your tips !
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by fatmac »

Peter Duggan wrote: Baroque flutes have tiny embouchures and are more demanding ....... You've got a much smaller sweet spot to hit.
Thanks for the explaination, I've only seen a couple of pictures, & didn't realise. :)
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by chas »

Peter Otto wrote:I'd say the two major attention points are: more focus and relaxed lips. Quantz is indeed a good starting point.
I agree, but I'd use the word flexible rather than relaxed. It took me a long time to come to grips with this because focused or tight is apparently the opposite of relaxed or flexible.

But one thing about the baroque flute is every note needs to be blown differently. As Tonehole said, you need to blow more downward, but how much depends on the note. And as others have said, since the embouchure hole is so small, the aperture in your lips needs to be very narrow side to side. That's the focused or tight part. The need to blow different notes differently is the relaxed or flexible part.
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by gothicoboist »

Check out this video from phenomenal Baroque flutist Kate Clark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXJzZ-SOErc
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by cac »

Several points:
(1) you have a very good flute -- excellent tone and intonation (I have one and it compares favourably with my grenadilla von Huene)
(2) if you have a good tone and embouchure on the Boehm flute, don't worry. Your lips will find their way in a week or so. If you don't, then get some instruction on either flute first. You don't need a lot of tightness in your embouchure, but you do need enough to focus the air into the hole (remember to blow down, not across).
(3) Very important: depending on your lip and chin, you may need to place the player side of the embouchure hole a bit into the soft pink part of the lower lip, not on the edge between the lip and the skin below the lip as you do with the Boehm flute.
(4) Very important: turn the headjoint in so that a line from the far edge of the embouchure hole goes through the middle of the tone holes on the middle joint. Quantz actually recommends turning it so that the far edge of the embouchure hole lines up with the close edge of the tone holes (i.e. turned in the full diameter of the embouchure). Some Irish flute players, with much larger embouchure holes, turn in this amount also.

Chet Creider (have played baroque flute since 1968)
gerardo1000
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by gerardo1000 »

Thank you SO much for the fantastic tips!
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by gerardo1000 »

Chet, I have a question, maybe a naive question. If I decide to focus on learning the baroque flute, how much will I be limited in the range of music that I could play, compared to a Bohem flute? I mean: is it possible to use the baroque flute to play also other kind of music, like jazz, classical, pop, Irish? I know that the traditional silver flute is incredibly versatile, but I find myself very attracted to the baroque flute. I am 67 and will never be able to be an accomplished player of both kind of flutes.
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by fatmac »

If I may make a suggestion, why not consider a Celtic keyless, which would be easier to get to grips with.

I just bought one recently, made of delrin, (easy to maintain, & not too expensive).

As a beginner, I seem to be getting the hang of it, whereas, I'm still a long way off with my Boehm.

(Learning to play some music is my retirement hobby.)
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Re: Please help me with baroque flute embouchure.

Post by Peter Duggan »

gerardo1000 wrote:Chet, I have a question
While I'm not Chet...
I mean: is it possible to use the baroque flute to play also other kind of music, like jazz, classical, pop, Irish?
Yes, with some limitations. Since it's fully chromatic with forked fingerings, it's as suitable for jazz as the recorder, and jazz recorder is a thing. It's not that different from the classical flute (meaning true classical, as in the age of Mozart etc.) because the single key was just evolving to four then, but may have a slightly smaller voice because embouchures were also starting to change. You'll be able to play some 19th century and later repertoire within the limitations of cross-fingering fluency, narrower range and smaller voice, on which note the main limitation for Irish/trad will be the lack of volume and characteristic edgy tone or honk. And of course your Stanesby Jr is at A=415Hz, which is a semitone down (effectively a C# flute at A=440), but you can get always get another model at modern pitch.
I am 67 and will never be able to be an accomplished player of both kind of flutes.
I'm sure you can, but maybe concentrate on baroque flute for a while to get going if that's where you're leaning?
fatmac wrote:If I may make a suggestion, why not consider a Celtic keyless, which would be easier to get to grips with.
It just won't do the same job if you're looking for any kind of chromatic fluency. Or baroque sound.
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