As a beginner, one of the things I have to work on most is getting a consistent embouchure. When I pick up my flute, it sometimes takes a while to find the right lip position so I can play all the notes in both octaves.
I’ve recently discovered that for me, if I set my lip position so I can play a clear 2nd octave E, I can play all notes in the first two octaves very easily. I can find this position much faster.
Does anyone else do something similar?
Thanks,
Bob
The old kiss and roll method:
ie kiss the embochure and roll back until you get a sound (after a while you just know how far to roll and don’t need to blow).
Thanks. That helped when I was an absolute beginner, but I’m past the stage of being able to make a sound on the flute. I’ve been playing for about 6 months now and I certainly consider that still a beginner given the scope of what there is to learn on the flute. I’ll probably still consider myself a beginner 5 years from now.
I was talking more about being able to play all the notes in the first two octaves with a consistent tone and volume. Once I find the right lip position, I can do that. For me, adjusting so the 2nd octave E has the quality I want, the rest of the notes are consistent with it, and I takes less time that other things I’ve tried.
I agree that most of the more experienced players can probably find a consistent position with little or no concious thought at least on a flute they play a lot. I assume even experienced players go through this some when playing a new flute.
Bob
patience…your body will figure it out,
three more months.
Hi ~ I’ve been going through a period lately where my emboucher just “sucks”! And I have been playing just one particular flute.
Occasionally that happens. I’ll have a long period of time (well, a few weeks anyway) where everything is SO RIGHT! Then I fall into some kind of groove where all I hear is air hiss no matter how I position the emboucher or my lips.
Usually, I don’t pay attention at all to how I do things, when they’re right. Therefore, when they’re not right, I have a tough time figuring it out. I just keep practicing and try to ride it out. It always comes back.
I have been playing timber flute for almost 2 1/2 years now. As some can testify, I have a looooonnggg way to go! The journey is the fun of it.
Mary
There comes a point where it’ll just be automatic for your flute: you’ll pick it up, and just play, there it’ll be.
Farther down the road, you’ll be able to pick up any flute and do the same thing.
–James
Sometimes the same old flute. Expert players have said as much. But it does get easier in general.
For me it’s a lifetime.
Sometimes the guy who is teaching me, who is an extremely experienced and fine player, looks down at at his flute and exclaims “God, my tone is crap today!”
I can only think to myself sadly, “That’s funny mine’s been crap all week!”
When I first started playing, all I could get was the second octave, it took some time to slow down and get the lower octave, now that I can easily play the first I’m having problems reaching the second! 
I don’t like the way the second octave sounds so “forced” for lack of a better word, I have read on other postings on this forum that this too shall pass as I get more practice in.
I’m still working on body position and such, as well as grip, thank goodness I have a three piece so I can twist it a little to wrap my arthritic old claws around it comfortably!
There was a great thread written a week or so on just this subject, had pictures and everything on mouth and body positions as well as some really great hints from the “gurus”.
You might want to look back for it. If you can’t find it, I could search it up for you and post it here.
I find that if I can’t get sound out, I pull the flute away from my mouth, swear profusely, swab it out then try again. This seems to work. Also walking while playing helps.(keeps your mind of obsessing over your sound and mouth position).
Your second octave E method sounds good,(and works!) I am working on playing each note of the scale and jumping an octave on each note before moving on to the next as a way to improve my sound as well as limiting my playing just to the second octave to get it into my system.(and to think, three weeks ago I couldn’t get so much as a squeak out of the durned thing.)
Good luck to you, I hope we both improve with time!
Terri
Here’s the title of the thread, you can search for it or just scroll to the second page, lots of neat stuff to learn from here, hope more solid advice is on the way!(hint, hint)
“What the blazes do I do with my thumb?”
I have also discovered by visiting tutoral sites that the interior cavity of your mouth is just as important as your “lip-set”, I find good sound comes more easily if I remember to roll my tongue back a bit out of the way, and create a cavern, not so much you look like you have a mouthful of rocks, just enough to create a sound chamber. Try it, it really makes a difference.
Terri
Mine has started to come around sorta. I can sorta play most of my whistle tunes now. Sorta. The first day I sorta couldn’t much at all. After a couple of days I had times when I sorta could and sorta couldn’t. Now I sorta can most of the time. Not pretty or anything. But I can sorta play the tunes. I still feel about ten times more comfortable site reading music on whistle. But the comment about it just happening over time seems true enough. I don’t feel like I’m trying to do anything different than I did the first day or so. The notes just sorta come out better now.
Yes and the other one that trips people up on every instrument is trying to run before they can stand up!
I strongly recommend playing slow airs and marches for warm up. I used not play at all but having a great love of Mozart began to desire to play that on a flute. My dearie who has never been outside the USA already played the Flute - Bassoon - Oboe as well as the Violin ( all very well may I add and makes me feel like an eeegit when I am tootlin ) taught me how to blow a flute.
Here’s all she did.
1
Blow the open top of a bottle. Kiss and blow the top of bottle, do the same to the end of the metal Flute.
2
Assemble the entire thing and play that. Took me about 2 months to get it down.
3
Play only slow tunes - IOW don’t be wasting yer talents on fast stuff because you havn’t the wind for that yet.
On my very own home made G Flute I play well the following
The Minstrel Boy ( March )
The Sally Garden ( Air )
The Glaway Shawl ( Air )
Mr Mc Guire ( Swing Shottiche OR Old Irish Barn Dance )
The Rambling Pitchfork ( Jig )
Burnt Ould Hag ( Reel - regional from Leitrim I think)
Learning
Lucky In Love ( Reel in C )
On the bigger ‘Tipple’ type 3/4 D Flute I can barely make a scale because I don’t have the wind to fill it
Maybe when I get a better method of making them I will be able to play on that.
On the keyed Metal Flute I can play Airs but am not bothered to be trying to play the big tunes yet.
Please do note that if you have heard it right you WILL NOT BE satisfied with second best! and you don’t have to settle for less either. So stick to the easy tunes and playing them well build your skill, the rest will come soon enough.
Hope that makes you feel better! I know I did when the missus yelled at me to SLOW DOWN.
:0)
I like to “hook” the edge of my bottom lip on the edge of the hole, when I think about it.
Anymore, I think that breath control is more important to a nice tone than lip position. I don’t mean where and when you take a breath, I mean keeping an even, strong pressure of wind. This is necessary when even when playing softly and I’ve found it’s necessary to play in tune.
I was taught to “belly-breathe” and also force the air back using the diaphragm. This can be a challenge in trad music where breaths are quick, but I really think it’s necessary to have a good tone. Try to engage your diaphragm the entire time you’re playing and really force that air out of there! If you don’t think you have enough air, take up running or some other cardiovascular exercise, it increases your lung capacity.
Of course, next week I might claim that a clear tone is completely a function of how you hold your lips, do your hair, finger a c-natural or put your little finger… 
even breath pressure is a key point, imo. i might say “even, gentle pressure” though. the farther i go w/ embouchure, the less breath i seem to need. as our focus improves, it becomes possible to force a tone to be louder by using a smaller (trickier) embouchure to create a higher velocity airstream w/ the same amount of air as a quieter tone. it’s really quite amazing how loud we can play w/ just a very small amount of (very even) breath.
fwiw, we had another discussion of this general question recently here:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=261264
enjoy! /dan
You hit the nail on the head, Dan.!
The size of the blowhole does make a very big difference as does the fininsh to its edges, the thickness of the lip and type of endstop above it.
For example a cork stop absorbs and softens the sound, a plastic will make it very very loud and clangy, and so on.
Larger holes need more air but are easier and louder for a novice, thicker
stick wall has the same effect, so in some cases a ‘rest’ fixed to the outside of a stick can add volume and weight to the sound.
Smaller blowholes are a nuisance for a novice because they demand too much too soon and may end the person’s desire for more punishment, OTOH lage permits rapid progress which is not a pain in the face.
My largest size blowholes are just under a 1/2 inch at about 61/64ths of an inch. The smallest are 1/4 inch since I can’t manage to get anything at all out of smaller sizes.
I’m so happy Bang found the other thread I was looking for, it is the most helpful I have ever read!
Bangs most helpful points I repeat here…
control comes from the jaw, almost exclusively. jaw open/close controls the flow of air, volume and speed. jaw in/out controls the angle of the airstream. the high octave has the jaw closed more compared to the low. the angle determines the fine tuning of the tone. different flutes do seem to have different blowing angles for each octave, though most of my flutes want the high octave blown a bit higher, i.e. sharper.
blowing down (toward the holes)lowers the pitch, which can be raised back up w/ a faster airspeed. the faster airspeed can be achieved by increasing breath pressure, or by making the embouchure smaller w/ the same pressure, which tends to make the tone even reedier. the combined effect of blowing down & a smaller (relaxed) embouchure can produce some really gnarly sounds.
This advice really helped me, I now have this two threads bookmarked and I plan to actually print it out, it is the most helpful imformation I can imagine having for a new flute player like myself.
When I hit an impass while learning to blow I actually took to whistling into the hole just to change my bad patterns and reset some already aquired bad habits. Both sounds of whistling and blowing at the same time makes a really spooky sound, and helped to lighten my mood, which also seems to help one when one is frustrated enough to throw the flute out the window, (which I almost did).
When one does hit an impass, it’s time to put the flute down, grab an instrument you can play and remind yourself how badly you once played that particular instrument. (My musical training was for the clarinet, now there’s a frustrationg & irritating instrument to learn, you want to drive your neighbors off, this will do the trick!). After you have played successfully, you can return to the flute with a new attitude.
I will keep watching and searching these forums, it’s the best advice one could have short of hiring a professional flute instructor, which is an impossibility as far north in the woods as I live.
Thank you all again and I eagerly await more good advice to come!
Terri
Hello, all. I have a chinese flute and a tibetian flute, and I’ve been able to get the lower scales, but I’m having trouble with the second, higher scale. Is it simply a matter of practice to blow harder to get the second scale, or do you have to purse your lips even tighter? I did that one time, and it sort of worked. Also, is it just practice to keep the embrochure going while ornamenting too, or is there a special technique to that, too?
I was wondering if there are any breathing exercies, too, as, in oriental music, there are alot of sustained notes. I imagine that just comes with time. I hope to solve this problem soon. I’m doing quite well on the tinwhistle, but I’m a little stalled on the flutes. I can figure out the oriental songs I have on CD pretty easily, as they go slow, and tend to go in a very sequential note pattern, such as ABCCD, that sort of thing. Alot of Chinese music seems minimalist that way, but they put alot of ornamentation in those notes. There’s tons of vibrato and trilling, and you can hear the vibration of the air alot through the flute, which adds tons of expression
Rob