Sifting through advice on embochure

[eedbjp]

I've read and tried a ton of variations on embochure, including some of the really old writings from the 18th century. Is there one clear piece of advice on embochure that's easy to remember and reproduce? There's a lot of conflicting information out there. Example: resting the lips so the bottom line of lip just rests just on top of hole vs. pressing some flesh of bottom lip against flute so line where lip meets chin is just a little below hole.

One teacher even described to me the idea that the only opening you should make in your lips at all is the opening caused involunatarily as the air leaves your mouth. He recommends almost a completely relaxed embochure. Other players I know keep a fairly rigid embochure, with a sort of frown look to their mouth.

I think I'm at the point where i've tried too many things. Any advice?

[groxburgh]

I think I'm at the point where i've tried too many things. Any advice?

It may be that you haven't tried too many things but just need to give them more time. After playing flute for over 30 years I decided towards the end of last year to do something about improving my embouchure (not that it was too bad to start with). So for the last 9 months I've been trying all of those exercises we've read about. I've made some real progress but there's still room for a lot more improvement. So about 500 hours of serious practice and I think about another 5000 hours to go! You might get there quicker than I do.
Cheers
Graeme

[jim stone]

'Is there one clear piece of advice on embochure that's easy to remember and reproduce?'

Practice, play, be patient. Long tones, overtones.
Playing higher pitched flutes too--these are very
demanding and make you stronger.

I think the best advice is to strengthen your embouchure
by playing and doing the stuff above. Sooner or
later it comes right. The body figures it out.

[Carey]

I'm pretty new at "making the flute face" as my fiddler calls it, but maybe that's good because I remember how I got here. In a nut shell,

"Trust the force Luke. Close your eyes and trust the force."

Can you whistle for a cab? Or whistle a happy tune? How did you learn that? Trial and error no doubt. I know I did it that way. And the flute too.

There are soo many shapes of lips and mouths that it just has to be unique for each person. The final shape of what works that is. What we are trying to do is the same however, blow a nice controlled stream of air at the embouchure hole to get the sound we want.

Maybe it's just me, but there's no substitue for just playing with the flute and my lips. Roll in, roll out, slide up or down and also side to side. Make different shapes with my lips and with my inner mouth. Blow across the hole, blow down into the hole. At first it was rare I made a sound I liked, but it got more and more frequent.

I don't use the same embouchure on each of my three flutes by the way. Similar, but there are differences. One thing that can mess me up is getting stiff or tense. If the flute's getting hard to blow I just take it down, relax and put it back up and cary on. Since you mentioned it I tried holding "the flute face" and stopping the air. My lips closed, of course, because they are fairly relaxed. In the middle anyway, there is some tension in the corners of my mouth.

Oh yeah, at first I had to carefully hold everything still so it would all stay in registration. That too has passed and I can move pretty freely and keep playing.

It's all muscle memory. I don't think you can think it into happening, you just have to do and do and do some more. But I bet you can think yourself out of it happening.

[sbfluter]

You know what? I think there is no recipe for embouchure. You can one day find yourself able to make a brilliant tone and then the next unable to make a decent sound come out at all. It's maddening! Guess which side I'm currently on.

[david_h]

I looked at my 14-month old embouchure in the mirror last night for the first time in a couple of months. It looks somewhere along the same lines of those of some people who play well. But there are a lot of people who play well who look very different. It is where starting with the line of lip on the edge of the blow-hole has got me. But would working on more or less coverage have suited my lips better ? Should I try something different before I get too set in my ways ?

Sorry if this is hitching a ride on another thread, but it seemed to be another side of the same question.

What Jim Stone is suggesting about higher pitched flutes has certainly helped, and playing just in the second octave - but every time my focus improves by doing that the bottom D goes AWOL and has to be recovered.

[peeplj]

Even among "classical" flutists, there is more than one school of thought on the best way to form an embouchure, so finding one single, all-encompassing statement is going to be tough.

That said, I do think this piece of advice fits pretty much everyone: every flutist is different. Don't be afraid to experiment a bit to find what works best for you.

--James

[Cubitt]

The answer really is very simple. Play a low G (easiest note to play, IMO). Vary how you blow and how you position your embouchure to get the best tone. As Diane noted, what works one day does not always work the next, but you'll always be in the neighborhood.

The challenge for the novice is to get any tone at all, and then to be able to control it. If you are beyond that stage, merely finding the best embouchure is a matter of trial and error. And, of course, you need to play enough to gain embouchure strength so that you can maintain the embouchure you have found to make the most pleasing tone.

[flutefry]

I agree that there's lots of ways to arrive at the same place, and that it takes time.

Good tone requires a focused airstream going to the right place. If you had to play with a hose to get a lot of water going to a defined place, I predict you would do the following:

1) You'd turn up the tap (that's like supporting the breath with the abdominal muscles)

2) You'd use a bigger hose (that's like keeping the throat open and tongue down)

3) You'd put your thumb over the end of the hose (that's like keeping the opening in your lips small)

4) You'd move the end of the hose close to the right place so that the jet of water didn't spread out on its way there (that's like getting the opening in your lips close to where you want to blow, which you can do by pouting, or partially covering the embouchure hole, or rolling in the flute).

A recent thread has a useful plot of overtones obtained from blowing across the embouchure vs down into the embouchure. More overtones=darker reedier sound. The stuff in point 4) above represent some different ways to blow down into the hole.

Sometimes it's easier to just play, telling yourself you'll aim for the best tone possible without trying to force good tone by doing various exercises. When you have one of those happy days when the tone is good, pay attention to what your lips feel like, your tongue feels like, where your flute is, what your lips look like in the mirror, how much you were rolled in. Then the next time you play, try to recreate these feelings.

Hugh

[Gabriel]

I actually found my all-day-working embouchure after I wearily gave up trying to find out how to do it "the right way". I was very frustrated from trying out all the tips I got from various sources without noticing much progress, so I stopped everything, took a break for a week, started over again and just played. And that's how it worked out. I play a Pratten, most people can't play my flute unless they are either very seasoned players or Pratten players themselves (or both), and I play it with a extremely relaxed embouchure about which some people already said "I wonder how you can play that flute with that style of embouchure at all!" - well, I can. What works for me must not necessarily work for others, and, of course, vice versa. So the best advice probably would be to take it easy, don't let the often frustrating process of finding your embouchure spoil your fun at the session, just play. It will come eventually.

[Herb]

There is no denying that some days are "good flute" days, and others not so good. But I would like to put in a word for having a regularized warm up routine that you use every time you start to play for the day. In the extremely high performance world of orchestral brass and wind instrument playing - where absolute consistency is prized over every other aspect of professionalism - every player I know has a specific warm up that they rely upon to get their chops started in exactly the same way each day. The muscle training involved is obvious, but there is a mental focus aspect as well.

There are lots of good flute warmups available if you search the internet, and any are adaptable to simple system flutes. Once I settled on the James Galway warmups for Boehm flute, my day-to-day consistency improved very considerably, and I use an adapted form on my simple system and baroque/classical flutes. This helps not only to warm up, but also makes the considerable adjustments from Boehm flute to other flutes happen exactly the same way each time.

I can't recommend this approach highly enough.

[peeplj]

every player I know has a specific warm up that they rely upon to get their chops started in exactly the same way each day. The muscle training involved is obvious, but there is a mental focus aspect as well.

When I was in college, my flute instructor recommended against having a warm-up routine--he was a big believer in the ability to "play cold."

If you become dependent on a specific warm-up routine, as he presented the case, what happens to you if you have to perform and there is no time or opportunity to warm up first?

I am glad I listened to him, now that I have such limited time to play, where I catch a tune or two "on the fly" through the day, if I had some routine I had to work through before I played, I would never get to actually play any tunes!

--James

[Cork]

I've read and tried a ton of variations on embochure, including some of the really old writings from the 18th century. Is there one clear piece of advice on embochure that's easy to remember and reproduce? There's a lot of conflicting information out there...

...I think I'm at the point where i've tried too many things. Any advice?

Over the years, I've read most of the world's prominent flute tutors. Unfortunately, moreover, not one of them give explicit embouchure instructions.

Yet, obviously a flute can be played. So, what to do?

I'd say, that the embouchure a student could begin with could not be the embouchure a student could eventually develop.

In other words, flute playing indeed is an art.

So, hang in there, and keep at it!

:-)

[AaronMalcomb]

When I was in college, my flute instructor recommended against having a warm-up routine--he was a big believer in the ability to "play cold."

But at a college he was presumably dealing with players that had established a rather stable embouchure, no? So being able to play cold is probably a good future goal but for somebody just trying to develop an embouchure it might be good to warm up in the early stages.

About a year or so ago some generous soul posted recordings from a class with Jean-Michel Veillon who is arguably one of the best tone producers around. Here's the link: http://users.skynet.be/berkenhage/nieuw ... media.html

JMV goes through some warm-up playing on the 'Exercises" clip, playing at a low pressure with a kind of a hollow sound. The little epiphany I had with it is that if I play softly like that and change only the focus of my embouchure (more focus) suddenly I get a big, full sound with out a lot of air.

[David Levine]

Thanks. This site, with JM V and Sylvain Barou playing slowly, is a wonderful resource.