I cannot play many notes between breaths and can’t work out why.
I’ve tried hard to develop my embouchure in order that hopefully I am not losing too much air when blowing.
I try to breath deeply as well.
I can’t pinpoint what it is I’m not doing.
I’m not sure if that’s enough to go on but is there anything anyone can suggest.
Thanks.
That Joffe Woodwinds article was really interesting. Thanks for posting that!
In order to play loudly is the extra force with which you blow necessarily going to decrease how long you can play between breaths?
A few thoughts on that. First, louder might not necessarily mean more actual volume, but the degree of “edge” or “hardness” in the tone with added harmonics that many Irish flute players aim for. Mostly in the first octave. This is primarily a function of embouchure development (and aim), which can take a while. Terry McGee has an article on getting the “hard dark” tone that may be helpful: https://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Getting_the_hard_dark_tone.htm
Second, unlike the pipes or whistles, a flute player can use dynamics – softer or louder notes within a tune – to establish a rhythmic pulse or emphasis on certain notes. If you always play at maximum volume then there are no dynamics. You’d be giving up one of the wonderful things about flute that sets it apart from the pipes and whistle; the way breath becomes rhythm.
Finally, breathing can take time to get comfortable with. My own progress was something like a year to get anywhere near a decent tone in both octaves with embouchure, but then another couple of years before I didn’t have to think too much about running out of air and where to breathe. Lots of variables here like age, physical condition (I’m an old guy), etc.
The sound you get from a flute doesn’t really come directly from pushing a lot of air through the flute. The sound comes from resonance, that is, vibrations within the air column in the bore that reinforce themselves. The stronger the resonance, the louder the sound produced. The air you feed into the flute is simply a source of energy that gets the vibrations going, and keeps them going. Its kind of like pushing a swing. If you push a swing it moves and then swings back to you. If you push it again, with exactly the right timing, it swings further. Keep your pushes in sync with the swinging action and the swing can reach great heights, even though the pushes themselves might not be very hard. In contrast, if you push at the wrong time you can reduce or stop the resonance of a swing, even if you push really hard. Push really hard at the wong times and not only the swing doesn’t swing, but you also quickly get tired.
Playing a flute is like that, at some level. You need to feed the air in carefully and in a controlled way. And you need to continually listen to the resulting sound, and establish a feedback control loop. You need to learn the effects that subtle changes in your embouchure have on the resulting sound. You have to become aware of how the resonance in the flute bore reacts to both your embouchure and breath control. Once you start to get this awareness, and get command of the feedback control between ears, lips and breathing, you will find that it actually doesn’t take much air to play loud or for quite a long time between breaths.
Efficiency of breath is not just about minimizing how much air misses the spot. It is mostly about homing in on the resonances of your flute to make it sing, and using only the minimum amount of air necessary.
I think this is basically what is meant when players talk about “filling the flute”.
Now, how precisely to get that flute resonating optimally, that is much more difficult to explain, and best learned by trial and error spending a lot of time with the instrument, just experimenting. It might take years! People who started flute playing at an early age undoubtedly have an advantage in that. For them, its often so intuitive that they don’t realize what a challenge it can be for late learners. I started playing flute as a young child … but I tried to learn to ski late in life, and so I’ve witnessed both sides of this phenomenon.
As your control of the flute gets better you’ll be able to play longer between breaths. In the mean time (and for ever after) its a good idea to explore ways of phrasing that don’t require longer sequences of notes than you can comfortably play. Some really great players use phrasing with quite short breath intervals, so you don’t need to think of it as a deficiency or a competition.
Thanks for that nice summary, Paddler.
The article is really worth reading. Here are a couple of interesting paragraphs:
It’s the Tone
“But wind is finally only a minor part. Tone production is the major. You use the wind as fuel. With a wind instrument, the horn resonates sound waves; it’s reacting to sound and amplifying it according to acoustical properties. Our air isn’t used to fill an instrument. It’s used by the embouchure as energy, so the lips vibrate.
“So, players certainly shouldn’t worry about the air, but about the quality of tone. When you get the tone, you will have all the requirements of tone at the subconscious levels. The blowing is an incidental part; the tone doesn’t exist without the blowing, but the blowing can exist without the tone. As an artist you go for the product – the product is sound and phrase and all the emotions in music–you use thought processes that stimulate motor function, but you don’t worry about the function. You worry about the sound. You will use the breath as needed. You will do it primarily without awareness of air. The air should be used freely – waste it, do anything you want. A player’s awareness is of the communication of sound to whoever he is talking to.
“This is true of any wind instrument. You teach expertise in phrase and the study of dynamics. As the sound production becomes more efficient, which it will, you’ll find that you use the breath with greater and greater ease. I’m an old man, but I can still function quite well in playing a brass instrument, because my lips respond quite readily to my thoughts. Moving air under pressure is required for my lips to vibrate, but those lips are not trying to resist the air. They’re trying to vibrate based on the thoughts coming from my brain in terms of sounds.”