Building Flute Embouchure

[ceolceili]

I have been practicing with two flutes each day for a few months and can maintain my embouchure well for 20 minutes or so for each one at the most . I guess I have been trying to keep them both played in. Of course, both play a bit differently. Would I be better off just playing one of them for a while in order to better build the old lips up faster? Thanks for any input.

[fatmac]

I think it will help initially to concentrate on just one to start with.
I had the same problem & seemed to improve better by playing just one for a bit, before going back to the other one(s).
Once you have a fairly consistent embouchure on one, it seems easy enough to adjust to the others.

N.B. I'm only a beginner myself, so could be wrong.

[Sedi]

I switch multiple times a day between different flutes and a quena/quenacho. Whatever I wanna play at the moment. But it might have an advantage in the beginning to stick with one instrument. But I think there is nothing wrong with mixing things up a bit. Playing different instruments is fun. Keeps the mind flexible and avoids one-sided strains. And adjusting your embouchure to different instruments is useful, too. You will be able to find the sweet-spot much quicker with experience. Seems a good thing and will certainly train the fine motor skills in your lips which will improve your embouchure. Even though you might lose some time in the beginning when switching. But I see nothing wrong with it. You're not trying to win a race. You won't get any points awarded for learning quicker than somebody else. I take my time with my learning process. When learning an instrument, the old saying seems to be very true -- the journey is the destination.

[pancelticpiper]

When I was playing my flute daily, I found that it would take my embouchure around a week to get the most out of a different flute.

That's not to say that I couldn't pick up any flute and get a sound, of course I could, but to get my full potential out of a flute took playing that flute exclusively regularly for several days.

This being the case (with myself anyhow) I would say to stick to the best of your two flutes and set the other aside for a few months.

I found that the most effective tone-building (embouchure-building) thing for me was this exercise lifted out of a "classical" flute book on tone building:

Play Bottom D as softly as you can, barely sounding, then steadily increase the volume until it's as loud as you can play without the note breaking into the 2nd octave, then steadily decrease the volume until it's where you started, as soft as possible.

The critical things are

1) do this on ONE unbroken breath and

2) maintain the pitch of the note exactly IN TUNE the entire time. Since I don't have Perfect Pitch I do this exercise looking at the needle of an electronic tuner set to A=440, keeping the needle pointing straight up the whole exercise.

You can then do the same exercise on other low-octave notes, one at a time, working gradually up the scale.

However I found over the years that Bottom D was the most effective note to practice for me. It may seem odd or counterintuitive, but the more I practiced this exercise on Bottom D the better my high notes got too.

[tstermitz]

However I found over the years that Bottom D was the most effective note to practice for me. It may seem odd or counterintuitive, but the more I practiced this exercise on Bottom D the better my high notes got too.

Not to disagree, as this is a very good exercise, which I have practiced assiduously from the first days. Then, a few years later, I paid attention to the same trick on the highest notes (second & third register). After only a few weeks of daily effort on the high notes, the improvement in the lowest notes was huge, as my fine muscles strengthened, focus improved, and maintaining focus became effortless.

Yes, I still lose it, and lips can get tired, but I'm much more consistent and relaxed.