Playing in the third octave

[Gabriel]

Hi list,

I'm very happy with my tone, breath control etc. in the first two octaves, but I find it very hard to get the third octave notes. I play up to e''' regularly and have no problems so far, but convincing f'''(#) and especially g''' and a''' to sound good is very hard. I need a hard push and a lot of air to make them sound, and they're very shrill then. I play a Pratten flute and use the fingerings from the Pratten fingering chart including all keys from Terry McGee's site which work quite well, intonation-wise.

Is there any trick how to make the high notes easier, both for the player and for the ears?

Thanks in advance

[Denny]

Is it a new Pratten?
(Modern maker, post 197?)
Made to optimize the bottom two octaves for Irish tradition playing?
(As opposed to optimized for the top two octaves for classical.)

The 3rd one's a bugger, either way, innit!

Small aperture, focused, point with the upper lip a bit and stay soft
(anyone want to try an' figure out what that means?)

[I.D.10-t]

What are the fingerings that you are using?

[peeplj]

To get the third octave, you need a very fast airstream and a very centered embouchure.

There's really no trick to it except to practice over and over again until you can hit them cleanly. That's the first challenge.

After you can hit them cleanly, you'll most likely find that they are quite loud compared to the second and first octave. So then the next challenge is to reduce the amount of air delivered to the flute without slowing the airstream, so that you still hit them cleanly but the volume is reduced.

If you're playing Irish dance music, of course, you'll really never have a reason to go up that high.

Other forms of music you might play, though, do need the full range of the flute.

Consistent practice and being very patient with yourself are the secret, at least in my experience.

--James

[Denny]

I.D. I think that he said this one

what's like this

Code: Select all

D  OXX OOO
E  XXO OXX
F# XOO XXX
G  XOX OOO
A  OXX XXO

plus a bunch of variations

[Denny]

yep to everything James said.

The lips are very fussy up there.
A little change makes a big difference.

[I.D.10-t]

I.D. I think that he said this one

what's like this

Code: Select all

D  OXX OOO
E  XXO OXX
F# XOO XXX
G  XOX OOO
A  OXX XXO

plus a bunch of variations

Slaps forehead. Yes, I missed that.

[Denny]

yeah well!

I think that I memorized 'em a few years back....

[Gabriel]

Is it a new Pratten?
(Modern maker, post 197?)
Made to optimize the bottom two octaves for Irish tradition playing?

Can't say exactly if it has been optimized for irish music, but it's a modern one made by Thomas Aebi around 2000/2001. In the interview on Brad Hurley's great site, he say's that he came "pretty close" to the original Hudson-Pratten he measured after designing his own Prattenish flute, the biggest difference being a narrower foot curing a warbling low D and making a "quite good third octave" possible.

When playing, I use mostly the following fingerings (following Terry's conventions which I find very good):

c'''# - OXX XOO ,
d''' - OXX OOO
e''' - XXO XXO or XXO XXO, (for low volume)
f'''# - XOX XOX for fast passages, XX,X XOX and XO,O XX,O , speak better
g''' is very hard to sound, XOX OOO almost never speaks, XOX OOX is a bit better, but still hard to get
a''' - XXX XX'O which is a variation of the first a''' fingering in Terry's table, "my version" speaks easier and quieter

I surely don't need those notes for *traditional* irish music, but I love to play jazz or classical music on the simple system flute and also often include variations in tunes. My setting of Tom Ward's Downfall includes variations containing quite some high d's, e's and some G#'s and Bb's. There's also a Paddy Fahey tune I'm currently learning to play transposed to D (from G). It is possible to play it more or less comfortably on the flute without harming the melody structure then, but includes some e'''s and a f'''#. Furthermore, when playing an instrument, I always try to learn everything the instrument is capable of, even if I won't need it for most of the music. I believe that it gives the player a more comprehensive understanding of the instrument.

Thanks so far - I tried to squeeze my lips together quite hard and the g''' came a bit easier, though there was also lots of hissing noise. I guess I'll have to do the triple P: practise, practise, and practise.

[Cork]

Beyond whatever fingering your flute could prefer, it's possible that you could face two challenges.

1) Developing the embouchure strength required to deliver a fast and focused air stream.

2) After that, relaxing the embouchure enough to get a strong bottom D, etc.

For instance, after playing at high altitudes, you may find a good bottom D hard to get. Oh, it can be done, if your embouchure is "flexible".

On the other hand, every now and then I'll put an Alto flute together, and have at it for a week or so. Now, Alto flutes call for an even more relaxed embouchure, and after some days with that, when I return to a Concert flute I can blow a really mean bottom D (or C). :-D

That said, and in addition to their musical value, occasional workouts on higher, and lower, flutes really can improve one's Concert flute performance.

However, Denny made a good point, in that some flutes are optimized, to work better in certain of their registers, at the expense of others.

[bradhurley]

You could try playing those notes by using harmonics:

For the third-octave a it's:

xxx xxx

For third-octave b it's:

xxx xxo

For third-octave c# it's:

xxx xoo

and for third-octave d it's:

xxx ooo

When I first tried this, those notes were shrill and breathy, but after a few months of practicing every day I got to where I could play them more quietly than any note in the first octave, and with virtually no hiss.

Listen to recordings of Jean-Michel Veillon; he uses these harmonics for third-octave notes a lot. There are some tunes where you hear him sliding up to the third-octave d from the c, and the only way to do that convincingly is by playing in harmonics.

[jemtheflute]

Aside from embouchure development and familiarisation and practice, or rather, in addition to those, you may find it worthwhile exploring the variant fingerings for the 3rd octave in order to find the optimum ones for your particular flute. Have a look at Rick Wilson's compilation chart here and, if you can lay hands on them, check out Rockstro's similar survey in his Treatise and also the 8-key chart in the front of the old Otto Langey Flute Tutor that used to be the staple for intermediate students back in the 1970s. (I really ought to scan those up to have available to send folk!)There's useful stuff here too, including charanga fingerings. It is worth spending time working through the alternatives and establishing which seem to work best for you on your flute: then settle down and practise them up to fluency, or at least occasional hit-ability (my angle on 'em!).

FWIW, I have long suspected, but haven't done anything systematic to check it out, that the usual claim that "optimising the flutes for 1st & 2nd 8ves is at the expense of the 3rd" may not be as big a deal as all that. Certainly when I've been fortunate enough to have goes on modern flutes by high end ITM makers and tried them out into the 3rd 8ve, they've gone there as brilliantly as they've done all else; but I don't have a good, hyper-critical classical ear.

[Cork]

@ Jem

More than any difference in ITM flutes, I had in mind a difference between traditional "military" fifes and modern "folk" fifes, where the military fifes could have a somewhat smaller bore and could favor the upper registers, and where the folk fifes could favor the lower registers.

[jiminos]

just a thought... and i know you all think i'm an unknowing noob, but....

James Galway said in an interview i watched that the higher notes are counter intuitive.... he said he used less air not more in the upper octaves.... i listened to him... i tried it.... it works....

but, maybe it works for me like flight works for a bumblebee... it doesn't know it can't fly... it just does.

be well,

jim

[Terry McGee]

Important to get your jet length down. The transit time for the air to leave your lips and hit the edge has to be approximately the same as the time it takes the sound wave to get to the first open hole and back. So, since you have gone up two octaves from the low register, your transit time has to be about a quarter. We do this by pouting more (moving the lips closer to the edge) and blowing at a higher pressure, to speed up the jet. But to avoid blasting, we tighten the embouchure so that less air flows, but it flows faster. If we are in the habit of blowing down into the flute, we stop doing that and aim for very close to the edge. And we make sure our stopper is set at 19mm or preferably less. We have evidence that players in the Pratten's period set their stoppers at around 15-16mm. The close stopper makes the third octave easier and better in tune. 15mm might make the low octave a bit wuzzy, but why not start there, get the third octave going and then search for a compromise that works for you.

Inspect the blowing edge of the flute. Some makers round this considerably which makes the third octave hard. Also, if you have no trouble with the third octave on a Boehm flute, but can't with the conical, you might want to consider a more rectangular embouchure.

You will find, as you conquer the third octave that your lower octave playing will probably improve. I guess by pushing our embouchures beyond our limits it gives us better control in the middle ground.

Terry