I was wondering how you determine the best place to place the lip. I’ve read a few things, but can’t find anything definitive. How does it affect your tone and being in tune? I found just recently that if I move it forward, I can get a much reedier tone and it makes it easier to vary the pitch. I’d appreciate other’s thoughts about his too. Thanks, John.
Brittany’s ( and the world’s ?) most illustrious flute player has just changed his blowing after a lifetime on the job.
Suggests that you have to keep experimenting !
Good point Andrew. To my utter astonishment James Galway stated that for much of his Pro. career he used to play with the headjoint turned far in, really far in, but then he decided to change and now plays it rolled out. I have been playing a long time and think it’s all in the number of hours of practice you put in. No shortcuts, just plain investment of hours. A lot of hours. Interesting that J-MV is experimenting, hard to figure how he could possibly sound better.
I have the same experience with reediness/proximity to the outer edge of the embouchure hole.
Nevertheless, I may have to rethink this as I recently received some generously offered pointers from John Williams (thanks, John, if you’re reading this!!) to help me improve my playing, embouchure and lip positioning among them. He positioned the flute much higher than I would have, and was quite definite about it, and recommended the upper lip be like a canopy over the hole, with the corners of the mouth turned down, opposite to my current habit. He called me a “smiler”. 
<–Kinda like that. This will no doubt affect how I turn in/out the headjoint. Arguably I could stick with what has worked quite well so far and what I worked so hard at to attain self-taught, but I’m going for the change. It’s frustrating right now, as tone and volume have fairly gone out the window when I’m trying to apply this change, but when it works, the result is simply much better (it’s hard to describe), and I need even less air to get a tone, and I can really feel it coming from deep down in my trunk. I was doing pretty well at the air requirement thing already, if I may say so. I would like to develop this to explore its possibilities. I wonder how it will affect how I approach timbre changes.
I am certain that, as I live and breathe, changes will happen again and again so long as I look for growth in my life. Good to hear that even the luminaries can go through big changes yet, and make no secrets about them. It’s an example to us all.
John gave me what I originally thought were five points to work on. I now see six. That’s quite a few, and will give me a lot to work at in refining my technique. My gratitude is deep, and the formality of a pint is the least I can do in repayment. And it’s back to the drawing board!
as in the box player?
The same. He’s quite the fluteplayer, too, and has been teaching flute for about seven years, a whistle player for twenty who made the transition --and phenomenally well-- to flute. Didn’t really mean to name-drop, but I was taken with his generosity and wanted to share in case anyone else might gain something from his pointers re: the embouchure thing, and thought that citing the source would lend credibility to what might otherwise be suspected as just another eejit’s ramblings.
It was this last Sunday at the Chief O’Neill Day festival south of Hastings, MN, after the 2pm session petered out and everyone else had wandered away to catch the remaining stage acts or browse the vendors’ tents.
No doubt in future I will see more changes!
I noticed a large change by covering the hole more, sounds like the “canopy” thing that Nanohedron mentions. I also relaxed and that seemed to open the throat. Suddenly the flute sounded reedy and resonant, and was much easier to play! I think I’ve been fighting while playing before. Almost sounded, sorta, like a flute from “Obsession!”. J.
i had seen him play flute before, but i didn’t know he was teaching it.
staggers, work-dazed, onto the board to add:
Hear, hear for John Williams! I had the pleasure of about a year of flute lessons with him and he is not only a great, articulate teacher and an extremely funny man but also as nice as they come. Not only that, but I heard him again a month or so ago playing with Dennis Cahill, and I had a familiar experience: I have a very, VERY high opinion of his musical gifts, yet every time I hear him I say to myself, “Geez, he’s even BETTER than I remember.” A truly brilliant musician.
staggers back to work, remembering many wonderful flute lessons
Carol
Articulate indeed, but also with a laser-like economy of approach that gets right to the main issue with clarity and in a very practical way. This is something I appreciate, having been a teacher myself where functional simplicity was the challenge to me in serving each student best according to his or her unique situation, laying a solid ground by way of getting the student to clearly grasp a fundamental principle that allows one to take the ball and run with it as one develops.
We were simply chatting, when he appeared to come to a decision (I recognise such moments well, myself), and proceeded unasked to offer his help to me, and I was very willing to accept his tuition, as I immediately recognised the mark of a skilled teacher. I proved able to keep my gob fairly shut and pay attention, as I could tell that I was getting a freebie of great value.
Sorry to hijack the thread. I’d just like to add that I’m beginning to get a hang of the changes; how much more fortunate for those who haven’t developed any contrary habits to get in the way!
I came here to this thread from a related threat at The Session. Lots of great stuff here, and John Williams is easily a favorite of mine! Had no idea he played flute. I need to do some research now!
Also, I too, have went from turning my head joint in toward me to more “in line” with the finger holes and sometimes even out just a wee bit. It never hurts to experiment. I’ve found that I can actually play my original flute much better now because of some of these tips, including paying attention to how the flute is aligned with your body, etc. I recently realized I had developed a significant drop of the flute and when I pulled it in a bit closer to my chest, all of a sudden it reacted ina very nice way. Never stop learning!
I almost gave up on the Irish flute trying so many variations on lip placement. If I had to summarize the place where I found success it would be lip corners turned down slightly, causing a
bit of an upper lip “canopy” as mentioned in this thread, covering a good amount of the hole. Also keeping track that I don’t move the flute around while I play. This video helped me very much:
https://youtu.be/goCd1mEWsWs?feature=shared
Yes, there’s some great stuff in that video from Steph.
The simplest answer to this is “You use your ears!” 
This may sound unhelpful, but I’m serious. There is an almost infinite range for choices available to you, and every player is slightly different, as is every flute, so you have to just keep experimenting and chasing the sound you are after. At the heart of this is to listen to your own playing, in real time, and keep micro adjusting based on this feedback you are getting. If you keep doing this you will eventually find what works for you. But as you age, you yourself change, so you have to keep adapting to keep up with that.
So, nothing is static here. The best thing you can do is get familiar with engaging with the feedback control process that helps you find the sound you want on any given day and on any given instrument.
Hi Nano, just wondering what he meant by positioning the flute ‘higher’? Did he mean turning the headjoint out more? I’m having trouble picturing this, as I would think that covering the hole with the upper lip would entail turning the headjoint in more to facilitate this.
Yes, use your ears.
When I started (no teacher) I just kept trying various lip-opening shapes, covering the blow-hole with various amounts of lower lip, and blowing into the blow-hole at various angles.
Whatever gave the purer, more focused sound I took note of and tried to replicate it as I went forward.
Everything comes from focus, from big loud fat low notes to sweet pure high notes to using less air to play. (When I started most of the air was being wasted.)
Once you get a reliable and flexible embouchure you can, without actually rotating the head-joint, blow at various angles to get different tonal effects and different pitches.
I did end up keeping the head-joint rotated in a bit, so the far edge of the blow-hole was sort of in line with the finger-holes.
I’ve seen plenty of Irish fluters with the blow-hole rotated in a quarter-turn, which makes the tone reedier and the pitch much flatter.
I wonder if this practice began with fluters playing A=452 flutes along with A=440 instruments.
Richard, I’m sure you already know this, and that it has just slipped your mind, but the tradition of turning the flute inwards goes at least back to Quantz, and is found in all of the early 19th century flute methods, being either explicitly mentioned or shown in an illustration. In most cases it is said that the headjoint is turned in (or the body turned out) such that the outer edge of the mouthhole is in line with the centre of the holes on the flute. Rocktro devotes considerable space to this (Paragraph 715), and cites the methods of Quantz, Devienne, Berbiguier, Drouet, Tulou, Nicholson, and others. Interestingly he says that Boehm was an exception to this practice, but that he used the ‘‘crutch’’ (a device screwed into the bottom of the flute tube) to help him hold the flute. I don’t know what the late 19th century methods for the Boehm flute say (Altes, Taffanel-Gaubert, and would be interested to find out. Most 20th century methods that I have seen say to line up the mouthhole with the C key or with the other keys (there is a slight difference). However, more recently it seems to be the custom among Boehm fluters to turn the embouchure at least slightly in. This is discussed by Roger Mather in his 3-volume treatise on playing the Boehm flute and I believe he says that most players turn it in at least slightly. The reason is to offset the weight of the axles and make it easier to hold the flute. Here is a link to a modern blog on the subject (which also shows a drawing from the Altes method with the headjoint turned in):
https://www.jennifercluff.com/lineup.htm#align
I reommend that everyone reading this note, read the above link.
It may be of some interest that June McCormack turns her headjoint in such that the outer edge of the mouthhole is in line with the inner edge of the tone holes (she showed me this in a workshop some years ago). This is what Quantz recommends if I read him right. Chet
When puzzling over this I found the Jennifer Cluff article the most useful. Particularly for emphasizing that turning the head is in about the ergonomics of getting the lips how you want them. “This depends on the formation of the lips, chin, hands, arms”. Along with Terry Mcgee’s page ( https://mcgee-flutes.com/Getting_the_hard_dark_tone.htm) explaining why many players of Irish music want their lips the way they do I think the reasons for turning the head in (or not) are pretty well covered.
I find the other sources cac refers to interesting though, each with it’s own way of explaining things.