Emboucher-mouth hurts afte playing high notes

[Tradman]

not sure why this is happening but it seems that as I play my Ormiston keyless D more and more, the sound is awesome but the bottom of my throat/mouth hurts after playing for more than 5 minutes especially if the tune has lots of high notes. What Im noticing is that part of my emboucher includes my tounge pushing way high up close to the palate/roof of my mouth (I guess to make the airway smaller) but when looking at my lips I do have a very small opening and almost all of the airstream is directed into the emb. hole.

Any suggestions?

[lesl]

Try to relax your tongue, and anything else tense. Work on getting that
same tone without tensing up. Two times I completely changed my
embouchure cos of it hurting, and it took a few months each time but was
worth it. At first you might feel like you can't get a sound out the new
way but don't give up.

[Dana]

I would recommend against using your tongue in this way. The only thing that can come out of this is tension. Having an open, loose soft palate and throat can do great things for your sound, and will also eliminate your pain. Think of yawning, and keep your mouth & throat like that when you play.

[johnkerr]

If you are using your throat or tongue to do anything other than start/stop the airstream into your flute, then you are doing things wrong. If you need to increase the amount of air you are sending through your throat and thereby into the flute, you should be doing ths with your diaphragm. That is where the pressure of the airstream should be coming from. You then fine-tune it with your lip muscles (aka your embouchure) to get specific pitches out of the flute. Contrary to widespread belief, you don't get the upper octave on the flute by "blowing harder". Actually, you should be blowing less hard on the upper octave than you are on the lower octave and then focusing that softer upper-octave airstream with your lips to provide a higher-pressure stream of air into the flute to produce the upper-octave pitch.

If your throat and or tongue are hurting at all when you play, that's a sure sign that you are developing bad habits which you should correct immediately. Although there are Internet resources (e.g. Rob Greenway's website) available to help you with this, your best bet is still to find a teacher or experienced player to help you learn how to do things right.

[BillG]

I recall when I first started playing a fife I had a similar strain feeling in my throat. Our instructor told me it was caused by putting added tension on my upper and lower throut muscles when attempting to blow "hard enough" to reach some of the high notes. Blowing harder was not the answer but relaxing those throat muscles was. As has been said, more from the diaphragm and the lips. Also, when tightening up on those throat muscles it restricts the air flow through the throat/wind pipe and inhibits the tone and volume. At times when playing my flute and I'm having a problem with a particular tone I begin to hear a slight "hummm" like sound deep in my throat. That tells me I'm tightening up those muscles again and I relax them.

Hope this helps as well.

BillG

[MurphyStout]

Well you could always play a low whistle :roll:

Seriously though, flute playing should not be like work... if something feels bad, hard, labourous, uncomfortable it probably is and you should fix it. Flute playing should be as easy as talking or playing the whistle. Except of course with the flute you don't need to blow any harder to get the upper octave. I would also recomend getting your tongue out of anything that has to do with your embouchure. I've seen lots of people struggling with the flute and their tone use their tongue with it touching the bottum lip. It's better to not do that and let your tongue remain nuetral and relaxed in your mouth. An exercise you could do to help this is playing very softly and quietly yet still be in the third octave... it's a good exercise for bridging the gaps between the low and high notes... it will show you that it's all in the lips and not in the amount of air or what your throat/tongue is doing. I used to have that problem too and that's how I fixed it. A clip might help us better understand what is going on with your embouchure and it might give us some clues on how to fix it.... it wouldn't even have to be a tune, just scales would work.

Anyways, good luck with it.

[Tradman]

thank you all so much for your input, this has helped me a ton (helped a ton in theory-I will try tommorow, Tonight I was driving down the highway and a deer ran into the side of my car and ruined the front quarter panel and Im just way too tired to try. )

thanks!

[MurphyStout]

An exercise you could do to help this is playing very softly and quietly yet still be in the third octave... it's a good exercise for bridging the gaps between the low and high notes... it will show you that it's all in the lips and not in the amount of air or what your throat/tongue is doing.

Correction, play softly in the second... not third octave... I don't know what I was thinking earlier when I wrote that. You should be able to play at a whispers volume or maybe a bit above that.

[BillG]

Murph - I thought you might have been talking about the fife in the third octave. That's were much of the fife is played, second and third octave. Glad you made the correction, though, for newbies who would then try to play softly on the flute in the third octave.

BillG