The Dark Side, Luke ...

[GaryKelly]

Therefore the lesson I got from this is that, when someone is learning to play, messing around with the head joint could definately be detrimental to consistancy of playing. Which must be the reason that we were always told to stick to the one position and not change it even though no-one ever explained to me why in certain terms.
Very interesting!

When you start playing the flute for the first time, there's a lot of physiology to get right, and that takes a long time. My first flute-like object was a piece of plastic pipe with all holes in-line. It hurt my hands, so much so that anything more than 5 minutes on it was unbearable. That's dangerous. Getting a 'proper' flute with an adjustable headjoint cured that instantly, by the simple expedient of rolling the headjoint in so I could straighten my wrists and turn my hands out. (If I'd have been 'obliged' by a teacher to stick with the arrangement that caused me so much physical discomfort - and the risk of long-term physical harm -, I'd have binned the teacher without hesitation; but then I'm an adult and have that freedom of choice).

The amount of messing around with the headjoint and other factors (hands, arms, shoulders, neck etc) decreases over time, until finally, as you say Maire, it all becomes automatic and you can do it without thinking. Until it all becomes automatic though, I don't think adjustments here and there should be discouraged, particularly where the player's physical comfort is concerned.

[maire]

Until it all becomes automatic though, I don't think adjustments here and there should be discouraged, particularly where the player's physical comfort is concerned.

Yes, but surely after you find a comfortable position, too much messing around will be detrimental?
And as John says, constantly re-adjusting will have a knock on effect in relation to the tone you achieve. Most beginners in my opinion find it hard to be comfortable when playing, I know I did, lets face it, what is normal about holding a long piece of wood under your bottom lip for hours at a time? Not to mention getting a decent tone from that big lump of wood as well!!

[GaryKelly]

To be fair I did say:

The amount of messing around with the headjoint and other factors (hands, arms, shoulders, neck etc) decreases over time, until finally, as you say Maire, it all becomes automatic and you can do it without thinking.

You're quite right that consistency is the goal, but in the early days, weeks and even months, things do change, often on a daily basis, and often during the day itself... arms and shoulders tire, the flute droops, the head can droop, and so on. Stamina has to be built up for any repetitive physical activity.

Practicing at night after a hard day's work will be much different to practicing when you're fresh on a weekend morning, and all that can mean a slight adjustment to maintain the position of the embouchure hole under your bottom lip to keep *that* critical relationship as consistent as you can.

(Although obviously I'm using my imagination about the 'after a hard day's work' bit! )

[maire]

To be fair you did!
Some people have big problems learning this instrument for various reasons:
Physical- arms, shoulders, neck, facial muscles, back and hand pain are the common denominators, I am sure that we have all at one point or another experienced this.

Tone- now ya got it now ya dont! Like the Scarlet Pimpernell, here today gone tomorrow. Then we all sit and panic desperately trying to figure out what we are doing wrong, could it be the shoulder position, wrist position, is my bottom lip overhanging that little bit too much, or is it in the wrong place altogether?

Consistancy- well it sounded alright yesterday, but today I sound like a child trying to blow across a bottle, why? (see every thing above...)
Not only that but, here I am playing tunes and half way through the set, for some God unknown reason it is now out of tune and I cant seem to keep my breathing pattern up. Why?

And to cap it all off, by the time you sit and f*rt around hoping to address all those issues, the session is over and everyone is waving goodby at you!

But my point Gary is that some people should really be practising in front of the mirror as regards the more physical aspects of playing this instrument, and certainly in relation to lip position. Believe me it works!!

[Jumbuk]

But my point Gary is that some people should really be practising in front of the mirror as regards the more physical aspects of playing this instrument, and certainly in relation to lip position. Believe me it works!!

Certainly agree that practicing in front of a mirror helps - it works for me! Also, the nice reverb in the bathroom where the mirror lives helps even more - it is amazing how you can suddenly hear and correct tone defects in a good acoustic space.

Back to what Gary is saying - I am reminded of something I read on a shakuhachi teacher's website (can't remember who) - give a group of newbies a flute each, and watch while they try to get a sound. You will see two main patterns of behaviour. One group will keep trying in exactly the same way, even if they are not getting anything. The others will try different ways of blowing, different angles, anything, until they get a sound. You have to be prepared to experiment, find out what works and what doesn't.

[Terry McGee]

Thanks for posting this Terry - as a newbie still "fishing" for the tone, it helped reiterate some of the things I have been working on.

For me, the word "dark" is not appropriate. I associate "dark" with sounds lacking in higher harmonics. I guess words are pretty useless when it comes to describing tone, but "hard" comes closer. For me, it's that solid feel that comes with a low D that is pushed hard until it is about to pop up to the octave.

Thanks for that observation, Jumbuk. I agree.

Indeed, I suspect it helps explain what's going on technically. When you occlude the embouchure by whatever means - rolling the flute in, sticking the upper lip out, covering more of the hole with the bottom lip - you produce a darker tone. But something else is happening when you direct your breath more downwards than across. You get a "harder" tone (hard as in "Hard D"), due to more of the energy ending up in the harmonics than the fundamental.

This could be due to extreme assymmetry. When the jet meets the edge head on (as in the cooing-of-doves "nice" sound embouchure), the edge is going to look reasonably symmetrical to the jet, promoting little harmonic development as the jet wobbles back and forth over it. When we blow down, the edge is way to the (upper) side of the centre of the jet, and so we can expect significant harmonic development as the positive and negative pulses will be very different in amplitude. We certainly get that as a glance at the two different wafeforms produced:



The red trace shows me playing a "nice" G on a Prattens. Fairly sinusoidal. The black trace is me playing a "hard" version of the same note on the same flute (by blowing down rather than across). You can see the waveform is much more reminiscent of a reed instrument. Incidentally, the images were captured using the free Autotuner (see http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/resources.html for details)

So again, thanks for the observation, it not only clarifies the description of the sound but possibly helps us to identify the mechanism that produces it.

So, everyone, try the exercise again, but look for a harder sound, rather than a darker one. Let's hear those Hard D's rattling the windows from here.

Terry

[talasiga]

Its a funny thing Terry but for years I tried to "correct" my playing of the Irish flute according to some Western classical style and it left me for dead but since reading about this "dark approach" some time ago (at some other place) there is now as much magic for me in my Irish flute as in my bansuri-s. In fact, the "dark" is, for me a reversion.

Now that I analyse it, having played somewhat automatically for many years on bansuri-s, the dark approach is what I have been doing with bansuri-s anyway all this time. The simple fact of the matter is that, if you play bansuri-s any other way you just get too much chiff and the notes are too thin. The bansuri holes, of course, are strictly in line and you don't have a severable HJ and no option to rotate the HJ. However this isn't a problem because, with the flute rotated in, the pipers' grip seems even more appropriate in terms of comfort for neck and shoulder musculature.

Meaning, in right handed terms, that R shoulder and limb can relax (down) much more and the left elbow floats up more. This all seems to lower the axis of upper body movement from the transverse shoulder down to the mid thoracic plane. Result: less shoulder and neck strain.

[Chiffed]

Do people find that the direction in which one blows the jet (across the hole towards the edge or down towards the centre of the flute) influences the darkness of the tone they get? (Try out the exercise I suggested to see if you can achieve "nice" and "dark" tones at will.)

Secondly, does the exercise have anything to offer the neophyte struggling to produce an "Irish" flute tone in the Nevada desert, or Mawson Antarctic Base, or anywhere else devoid of flute life?
Terry

Another newbie answer:
1. Yes. This worked for me, going from 'pretty' to downright 'reedy'. I included in the exercise picking up the silver flute and playing a snippet of Mozart, then trying to match the tone on wooden flute. Then, I tried to darken things up. Haven't taken the spectra yet, but there's a satisfying difference.

2. Yes. I don't get to sessions with fine players, but this helped me emulate some of the tones I like from recordings. I think I have a better understanding of how Chris Norman gets such varied tones on his Wooded Flute cd and with Baltimore Consort. I'd love to be able to do both early-classical and dance tunes with the appropriate tones, but I'm nowhere near there yet. A bit closer, though.

One cheap trick I use with bands whenever we discuss tone quality: I ask them to play a section with a worse tone. This gives them a bit of a frame of reference; then we can talk about colour, resonance, projection, etc.

[flutefry]

I'd like to thank those who contributed to this thread, and to Terry for starting it. I have incorporated "finding the hard G" at the start of each practice, and anytime my tone seems to be slipping. The exercise is a good way to bring the tone back. Am also doing the exercise someone mentioned apropos of the Hammy flute meeting of D E D F D G D A D b D c# D d etc, aiming to keep the hard sound on each note.

Hugh

[Terry McGee]

I thought I should also provide the FFT spectra for the "nice" and the "hard" G notes for which I gave the waveforms above.



Again, the red curve is the "nice", blowing across the hole spectrum, the black trace is the "hard" blowing down the hole spectrum.

You'll notice that the "nice" curve shows the expected harmonic structure for a flute note - the fundamental (big peak at 0.3KHz) is the most prominent, the harmonics (stretching towards the right) are each reducing in loudness.

The "hard" curve has the 2nd and 3rd harmonics actually higher than the fundamental. To give some sense of the vertical scale, the third harmonic in "hard" mode is about 22dB louder than in "nice".

Note also that I'm playing sharper in "hard" mode (probably because of the increased push I can give without the flute breaking into the next octave). Important to remember I'm not altering the flute position here, just directing my airstream at the edge for "nice" and down across my chin towards the centre of the flute for "hard".

Terry