Embouchure for beginner - suggestions to reduce air needed?

[chansherly212]

One of the things you do by moving the top lip forward or the chin back (when going up the octave - vice-versa when dropping) is to shorten the distance from lip to strike-edge, which also has an effect and gives control in addition to the other aspects already mentioned.

just my two cents.. i always found that moving the chin back to protrude the top lip, does lift the octave quite effortlessly (no need what so ever to blow harder) but i find that this also flattens the pitch considerably, i find that it can't be done without narrowing the air stream to make it faster, compensating for the flattened effect. i can’t do this with much consistency yet though, so I tend to aim the air stream higher, instead of lower to go up the octave

[Old Dog]

I just want to thank Jem for his explanation on how to get to the second octave on the flute. Like the Abrasive Scot, I'm also new to the flute - and like him, I can play the whistle. Just blowing harder to get there never really accomplished much of anything. With his explanation, though, I've been able to get it sorted out. It works just like he said.

It will still take a lot of practice to get things to work automatically, but that light I see is now the end of the tunnel, and not the headlamp of an oncoming train.

Thanks again, Jem!

Regards,
Paul N.
Tonawanda, NY

[jemtheflute]

I'm glad it has helped!

[tombom11]

Notes from my first flute lesson (just last week):

Take comfortable, deep low breaths (expand the abdomen not high in the chest)
Play long tones on just the head joint. Hold it with both hands with the end covered in the palm of one hand.
Keep your teeth separated (no clinching) and close your lips comfortably.
Keep your lips in a straight line, parallel and level with the instrument (no smiling or pinching)
Let your lower lip extend over about 1/4 the hole opening
Create an oval shaped opening in your lips as small as possible that can create a tone.
The lower the note the larger the opening in your lips, the higher the note the smaller (but never larger than the tone hole)
Change the opening size with just the center lip muscles - with just a little relaxed puckering (not by smiling or tensing the lips)
With only the head joint - create a nice tone, then pucker a little making the opening a little smaller and blow the second octave

Maybe some of these will make sense to you. (Maybe not?) They were a great help to me.

Tom - proud owner of a brand new Casey Burns Boxwood FolkFlute

[Denny]

Change the opening size with just the center lip muscles - with just a little relaxed puckering (not by smiling or tensing the lips)

ah, that's the one what leads to the rabbit jokes innit?

[scoleman]

In the last six months or so I've moved from whistle to flute. It's been fun to pick up a whistle now and then and feel the difference in play! I don't want to give up whistle, but I can see that the better I get on the flute, the more the whistles get ignored.

I found that for me the helpful thing in the second octave was practice in sustaining the notes and getting a feel of what my body (breath, lips, throat) was doing to sustain a good, or at least decent) sound.

and yay! .... I'm hoping for my Casey Burns boxwood to arrive sometime this month!

Sheryl

[eedbjp]

I don't think anyone has mentioned this, although the rice grain exercise may be close. One of my teachers taught me that the lips were sealed gently until a small amount of air "unsealed" them. This was to counteract my habit of keeping them way too open.It forced me to economize and to rely on less air. I personally do not think that you need to "strengthen" an embouchure, but rather to minimize it and focus it. I hope that helps.

[whistle1000]

Just my two cents worth. I too am just starting the flute. Bought myself a Tipple for christmas and it is coming along quite well. I'm teaching myself as there are not many flute players around me and I find the info here very very helpful.

Jem you a wealth of knowledge. I am however going to slightly disagree with your advice that you have to blow harder to get the 2nd octave on the whistle. I think that it is well known that most of the great whistle players play with their lips gently resting on the mouthpiece. I do as well. The second octave is more easily achieved by tightening your lips instead of blowing harder when playing the whistle. I agree that there may be a little push but I find that is the case with the flute as well. That being said. I think that whistle players should practice the exercise you describe for the flute. i.e. tightening your lips instead of blowing harder and try the same on their whistle. It does work and it is a good general approach to jumping the octaves. This will also train your lips for an easier transition for the flute. INMVHO.

[jemtheflute]

Jem you a wealth of knowledge. I am however going to slightly disagree with your advice that you have to blow harder to get the 2nd octave on the whistle. I think that it is well known that most of the great whistle players play with their lips gently resting on the mouthpiece. I do as well. The second octave is more easily achieved by tightening your lips instead of blowing harder when playing the whistle. I agree that there may be a little push but I find that is the case with the flute as well. That being said. I think that whistle players should practice the exercise you describe for the flute. i.e. tightening your lips instead of blowing harder and try the same on their whistle. It does work and it is a good general approach to jumping the octaves. This will also train your lips for an easier transition for the flute. INMVHO.

Fair enough. I've never encountered that (re: whistles), either in the flesh nor spoken or written about that I remember! I'd like to consider myself a competent whistle player, but I was not giving advice about whistle playing in any sense whatever rather I was describing what happens/is done by, I suggest, the vast majority of whistle players of all levels of competence.

Yes, one rests the tip of the whistle beak lightly between the lips, but not normally in such a position as to be able to seek to control the size of the airway input aperture with the lips..... not that that isn't potentially feasible on some whistles - though not, I should think, on very narrow windway ones like Overtons/Goldies. In any case, I would rather doubt quite how much difference attempting such a technique could really have in terms of the physics - most windways are long enough that any increase in air pressure and air-stream speed effected by narrowing the lips would have reduced/evened out by the time the air exits from the windway into the window and strikes the labium blade. The only way to get the pressure in the whole windway to rise and therefore increase the speed of the exiting airstream is to force more air into it - i.e. blow harder. (The thumb has to be over the end of the hose to make the water squirt; pinching the hose 6" from the end won't have much effect on the water stream from the undistorted open end, short of squashing it so much you diminish or cut off the flow.)

When playing a transverse flute, the lip-aperture is the last influence, totally governing the intensity (together with the supply pressure), shape and direction of the airjet across the embouchure, a distance so short that controllable effects can be achieved before the wider, static, ambient air's influences cancel things out. (To continue my analogy, it is equivalent to the thumb over the end of the hose.)

[ChrisCracknell]

One more fun exercise - take a piece of paper (A4?) and place it against a wall at face height. Stand in front of it and try to keep it in place by blowing at it. move away and see how far away you can get and for how long you can keep the paper stuck.

Also, see how far away you can get and still blow out a candle...

Another tradition is to get the overtones out of beer bottles:-) I can get at least four (including the base tone) and sometimes five out of an empty half litre Paulaner bottle. Warning; this behaviour _will_ get you thrown out of pubs!

[Lars Larry Mór Mott]

An excercise i practice: with xxx xxx fingering (all holes closed) i play all three D's up and down. I have actually produced 5 notes from that fingering, two above third D.

[Denny]

Long tones are traditional and so is blowing overtones, e.g. blow the low D in the second and third octaves and hold the tones.

nit picker alert....

play low D, 2nd D, 2nd A, 3rd D, without moving any fingers
then start on low E....