I am wondering about a feature of my flute playing, which is, if I give it a rest for a time, I have a nice, strong embouchure and sound pretty good, if I do say so myself. However, an hour or two later, I pick it up and I sound as if I was just starting out. I admit that I am not diligent about practice, which is probably a big part of the problem. But would my embouchure improve over time? I would like to get another flute, but I can't see laying out the cash if I don't stand much of a chance of improvement with regular practice.

What is the consensus on the fugitive embouchure?

Thank you to all who reply.

With best regards.

Stephen

It would help to know how long you have been playing. Supposing you are newish, I found in my own case that it
took months of patient practice to get a workable embouchure, and that the thing really came online about nine
months in. This is one of the hardest things about flute, and also IMO one of the most rewarding, because once
it's up and running it improves indefinitely. Yes, definitely, this responds to practice.

There are, you may know, standard ways of practicing, along with just playing, like long tones and overtone
practice. You can search on these. Also, one of my own strategies is to play higher pitched flutes,
e.g. in A or G (sweethearts, for instance), because these make special demands that help improvement.

If you want to be serious about playing the flute then you have to play every day, even if it's for 15-20 minutes. You have to give all those scores of muscles that are around your lips the memory of a good embouchure and you have to build stamina. It sounds to me like you're losing you're stamina after playing for a while.

Edit - At first I thought you were saying that after an hour of playing you sounded worse. After reading the post again I see that you're resting and then picking it back up again on the same day and sounding worse. That's a muscle memory problem probably combined with loss of stamina. Same solution though.

-Kirk

is whole thing

That was a lot more concise and to the point.

terse he is

it is not about a unit of time
it is about the quality and consistency of the effort

Well said indeed.