as this is a common challenge for playing traditional style flutes, I thought responses might be useful for many people.
I’ve been working hard on my embouchure (and ears) to improve my skill and constistency with the idiosynchracies of Ruddall scale tuning (previously on an old English cocus flute and recently on the old-model Grinter). Well worth the effort of course and some definite dividends paid from work done so far, in terms of focus, tone…and the tuning… but scope for improvement. The following have been helpful so far in varying degree (variously suggested in other threads):
Developing a tighter, and more ‘covered’, embouchure (as suggested by Nicholson and others)
Keeping the flute ‘up’
Tuning to G as a reference point
Developing more consistency/power in the air flow
Playing with a chromatic tuner (and occasionally with tuning reference software)
Playing with (in tune) recordings, and in session
Playing with drones
Here’s an averaged Flutini printout taken from some normal playing on a few tunes in different keys (after warming up, not holding back, and with tuning slide about 12 mm so that G is pretty much stable in equal D tuning).
You can see that I’ve made some progress in levelling things out in the bottom hand. I’m still looking for practice tips on keeping the sharper A/B top hand (bottom octave) a little more in check.
PS. I just deleted my sound file link because I thought it was a little unrepresentative of recent developments and the new flute. I’ll try to load up a newer one to my signature file.
… and a second attempt playing tunes mostly in the lower half and listening harder - so far, so good as a compromise (a lip adjusted A is more the reference point here)
I think that playing in tune and flute tuning are two different things. In my very humble opinion it’s pretty pointless to check one’s playing against some sort of real-time tuning analysis software - you will be screwed as soon as you’re playing with others, epecially pipers or wet/A=444Hz accordions, no matter if the software says you’re in tune or not. Playing in tune is something that has to be learned without the aid of visual pitch graphs - you don’t have those graphs at the session, after all, and you will have to adjust your playing depending on the setting of the session anyway. Flutini/RTTA and such software is a great help for flute makers and researchers (and suspicius owners of course) to check “raw” tunings of a particular flute, but how that flute performs on a sessions is much more a matter of its player. Of course the better the “raw” tuning is, the easier the flute can be played in tune, but adjustments are necessary all the time, so don’t nail yourself onto a graph.
thanks, I agree with you and the RTTA would only be an indication of how I’m playing at the moment in general practice. I find it’s helpful to try it once every few weeks as a reference aid but I wouldn’t ‘practice’ watching it, if you know what I mean. Playing with a variety of recordings and other people is certainly a more useful routine.
I guess I was more interested in the physical techniques that people consciously use to adjust on the fly when they’re aware of needing to adjust, and whether they practice those in isolation or not. Also the type of embouchures that people try to cultivate on flutes with that characteristic sort of R&R scale tuning (flatter foot D and sharper upper hand in the low octave).
I’m happy that I can adjust, particularly in context when warmed up, but I’d like to get better at it. Any tips welcome.
Any thoughts about tuning sharp and lipping down, versus tuning down and lipping up for example?
once you’ve gotten yer embouchure sorted out
find a note on yer flute that is in between the most flat and the most sharp
tune to it if possible (with your face in a neutral place)
other’n that, if I’m trying too hard to sharpen I’ll push it together. If I’m too sharp I’ll pull out or go home. (I tend to go sharp when I can’t hear what the f@@@ I’m doin’)
IMO RTTA/Flutini can be very useful for players learning to play in tune but not if used wrongly. And by wrongly I mean watching it while you play. I named it “Polygraph” for a reason: because it can print lots of graphs of what you did, and because the original “Polygraph” is the “lie detector”.
Try this: Use RTTA/Flutini to analyse a recording that you want to play in tune with. Then put on headphones and listen to the recording while you play along to it with RTTA/Flutini recording your playing. Do NOT look at what’s happening while you’re playing. When you finish have a look at what RTTA/Flutini tells you about your playing, and compare that to what you’re trying to match. Compare it also to how you think you were doing.
As to how to play a flute like Mark’s in tune he summed it up pretty well in the first post.
Mark
If you push in the tuning slide a few mm, and pull out the left hand section from the barrel by the same amount, does the tuning of B when you’re playing it improve?
Cheers
Graeme
thanks for the various thoughts, it’s worth persevering with any new flute (and never blame the tools!).
So, after a month’s practice and a different approach to embouchure (rotating the head slightly inwards, covering a fair bit with the lip, tightening up) the practice is paying off in terms of average, overall tuning. The effect is to drop the average pitch considerably from where I was blowing originally (so that the tuning slide is now pushed in to about half what it was before) but ironing out the differences rather than adding to them. Same player, same flute, some progress compared to last month’s snapshots.
Again, it’s just from a recording of a few minutes of normal playing on a few different tunes against equal D tuning. No special tuning effort or ‘waching the clock’.
And now to throw a spanner in the works, I’ll just point out that, if you are ‘in tune’ with an electronic tuner on every note, you will be out of tune for playing this music. True, I’m afraid.
sure, but as a rough compromise (say somewhere between equal and just D scale tuning) I’d still be a lot happier with the average printout above than with the averages from last month’s efforts, in terms of getting used to the flute.
Are you playing a keyed flute? If so, several of the old fingering charts show (sometimes optional) venting the Fnat key when playing F#. Certainly on the old flutes I am playing now, this helps bring up the F# and gives it a more open tone WRT the adjacent notes. Still a bit tough to pull off on a fast reel though…
(I played soprano sax for years and that sure takes a lot more eyebrow than an R&R!)
