Intonation in the second octave and (and above if desired)

[mahanpots]

Edit: I probably should have posted this in my earlier post.

I've been posting quite a bit and getting some feedback. It's mostly been from a few folks until I posted a separate topic on the subject of 2nd-octave playing above G (Olwell Pratten, unkeyed).
As I've been posting, I've also been recording, and I think I've been making my mic too hot, creating a lot of clipping in my recording, probably those very notes I've been talking about -- A and B in the second octave. I find it difficult if not impossible to make a second octave B that is not louder than notes below.
Anyways, it didn't really bother me until someone commented about my intonation in a post of Lord Inchiquin. That made me wonder.
I think I've got the recording levels right in the following clips:

Brian Boru's: http://www.box.net/shared/puw81o2884
Terry "Cuz" Tehan's and Bobby's Casey's hornpipe: http://www.box.net/shared/bxr6ssruo0

I'm asking for some comment about my intonation and my recording efforts, if you feel inclined to share your impressions.

Thanks a lot,

Michael

[BrendanB]

Hey Michael,

I only got a chance to listen to your second clip, but here's my response to your questions. On the second octave, you are blowing harder in order to hit the G, A, and B, as opposed to focusing your embouchure to hit those notes. As a result of blowing harder, the notes are sharp and not focused. This is really common and part of learning to play the flute. By the same token, your bottom E and D notes are not as focused as you want them to be. All of this comes down to building up your embouchure and learning how to focus it. Once you build that up, you'll be able to have solid low notes, consistent tuning across the octaves and hit the high notes without going out of tune or making them louder.

You can search the forum for tips on how to improve your tone, but here's a couple suggestions that have worked for me.
1) Focus on your low D. This is stolen for Seamus Tansey who evidently said that if you can play a strong low D, you can play anything else on your flute. Play long tones on the bottom D and really get it solid. If it helps, play it against a tuner so you can focus on getting an even tone. Do this every day for a few months and you'll be impressed by how much your tone improves across the board.
2) Take a tune and play it as loud as you can and then play it as softly as you can while still being in tune. This will build up your muscles and teach you how to control your volume. On the loud end, push your flute until you are almost about to break into the next octave. This isn't a suggestion for how to play, but just an exercise.
3) You can blow overtones on the bottom D. There is probably a better description of this somewhere else, but basically start off with a low D and then tighten your embouchure to get a succession of overtones above that. Make sure you aren't blowing harder, but just focusing your embouchure. You should be able to get 4 or 5 overtones.

Give that a try, or whatever else works for you, for a couple months and I think you'l be surprised at the difference in tone you'll have at that point versus what you have now.


Best of luck,

Brendan

[johnkerr]

3) You can blow overtones on the bottom D. There is probably a better description of this somewhere else, but basically start off with a low D and then tighten your embouchure to get a succession of overtones above that. Make sure you aren't blowing harder, but just focusing your embouchure. You should be able to get 4 or 5 overtones.

Blowing of overtones is a great exercise for improving the embouchure. To clarify (I hope) what people mean when they say "focus your embouchure", think of the airstream coming out of your embouchure as a stream of water coming out of a hose. At full pressure, the diameter of the water stream is the same as the diameter of the hose. But if you cover over part of the hose opening with your thumb, you can tighten up that stream. As you tighten up the stream, the pressure of the water coming out increases as the back pressure remains constant. The more you close down the opening, the tighter the stream gets and the higher the pressure is coming out.

Playing a low D on the flute is like the hose without your thumb over the end. If you close the opening of your lips a bit, like putting your thumb over the end of the hose, you will sound the middle D without blowing any harder than you were on the low D. (Indeed, this is how you should be doing it. Many flute players just blow harder to get the second octave, which will get you there I admit, but not in the right way.) Once you get to the middle D, if you close your lip opening a bit more, again without blowing any harder, you will sound the A in the second octave. Playing an A with the D fingering is what is meant by playing a harmonic. If you continue to close the lip opening even more without blowing harder, after the A you will sound the high D, and then the A above that. (If you can go further than that, tell James Galway his replacement has been found.)

You can do this exercise on every note of the scale, i.e. E-E'-B'-E''-B'', F#-F#'-C#'-F#"-C#'', etc. The higher up the scale you go, the harder it gets to reach the really high harmonics. But if you get to where you can hit four or five harmonics on D, E and F#, then playing notes in tune in the second octave will be piece of cake for you.

[mahanpots]

John,

Did you listen to any of my clips and if so, what do you think of my intonation?

Thanks Brendan.

I will be focusing on my embrouchure as I'm playing, but I want to make sure I'm not just playing "out of tune" if that makes any sense. In other words, could it be that I haven't adjusted the tuning slide appropriately. I generally find it difficult to tune to other musicians. I tend to rely on others to tell me if I'm in tune or not, or I'll keep a tuner at hand. I think I used a tuner before playing the tune you listened to, but I may have just warmed up and pulled the tuning slide out the same distance I did the last time I played.

I don't know everyone here, and I'm assuming that those who are responding have the experience and knowledge. With a name like Brendan, that makes me think you've got the experience. At least you've got the Irish name.

John, I've read something about, and his clips tell me he's got experience.

I guess I don't want to go to any trouble re-learning things if I don't have to. At the same time, any of the excercises above would be helpful for anyone to do.

Thanks again,

Michael

[jemtheflute]

Michael, you are playing out of tune, but only on those notes most affected by you pushing more air out in order to overblow. They sound out of tune relative to the rest of your playing/the scale of your flutes, not in an absolute sense, though they will undoubtedly be so that way too. It wouldn't matter how you tuned your flute, whether you pushed your tuning slide all the way in or pulled it all the way out, or got your flute nicely warmed up and tuned to A=440 for 1st 8ve A; those upper 2nd 8ve notes would still be getting blown relatively sharp for the reasons previously explained.

The only physical adjustment to a flute that could affect intonation between octaves is the stopper position, but that chiefly affects the overall "width" of the octaves, not the relative divisions of them into semitones. I don't think any adjustment you could make to your cork would have any effect on this particular intonation problem. I don't think the diagnosis is in any doubt, and you've had some excellent remedy plans and exercises offered, here and in the clips thread. If you work at those, I think you will find good results reasonably swiftly, including a strengthening of your bottom-end tone as a beneficial side effect.

[BrendanB]

Hey Michael,

The tuning that I was talking about is based upon relative tuning between the notes, as opposed to your tuning slide. Even if you put your tuning slide in a place where you are at A=440, you can still be out of tune depending on how you blow the other notes on your flute. That's where your ear and your embouchure come into play. You need to make small adjustments, i.e. backing off on the upper octave and compensating with a tigher embouchure.

In addition to being better in tune, the other real benefit of working on your embouchure is that your tone will improve. Right now, it sounds a little thin and doesn't project as much as you would want. Improving your embouchure will help increase the speed of the air going into your flute, which gives you a fuller, louder tone.

Sorry that I don't have a clip up that you can listen to, but if you want to get a sense of whether I'm worth listening to, you can check out this clip. I'm the flute player on the right.

It's the first thirty minutes of the Sept. 30th, 2007 clip.
http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/ ... imeout=500#

[Jumbuk]

I just want to thank Michael for having the guts to post a clip and ask for comments, and the responders for the great tips they have contributed. Very useful for me as well, and others I am sure. Exactly what a forum like this is for.

[mahanpots]

Okay, listen to this one. Pleeeeease.

Jamie Allen: http://www.box.net/shared/fdbk9dbi8s

The same issues? Any better?

Michael

[monkey587]

I just want to thank Michael for having the guts to post a clip and ask for comments, and the responders for the great tips they have contributed. Very useful for me as well, and others I am sure. Exactly what a forum like this is for.

Agreed. We need less flutes and more fluting.

[johnkerr]

Michael, I just now had a chance to listen to your clips. (My employer has recently decided that box.net flute clips are apparently NSFW and has started blocking my access to them. Go figure.) They're not all that bad, really. I think your issue is not so much one of being overly sharp on those high notes but rather that your tone on those notes is not as good as on the lower register, and it sticks out. As others have said, you apparently can't hit those notes without overblowing them, and it makes the tone harsh and causes the notes to stick out unattractively. I think if you work on your embouchure via the various exercise people have mentioned here you'll be able to fix your problem fairly quickly. And in the interim there's something you can do to ease your way into those notes without having them stick out, and indeed I think you are already doing it in the latter parts of your Bobby Casey's Hornpipe recording. That is to slide into those notes from the note below rather than hitting them square. The slide in takes a bit of the edge off and gives you an extra split second to get your embouchure squared away to sound them true.

Also, I think you should pay attention to what Brendan says. He's a better flute player than I'll ever be. For one thing, when he's at the session there always seems to be someone hopping up to dance a step, and that never happens when it's just Ro3b and me there on flute. He must be doing something right!

[sbfluter]

I guess I'll cease providing any commentary on anybody's playing from now on. I downloaded the one called Tehanscaseys (what's its real name?) As it was playing I thought how lovely. My partner heard it and asked what that was because he thought it was lovely too.

I have no idea what the problem is. It's lovely.

Glad I'm (apparently) tone deaf. Otherwise I think I wouldn't enjoy homemade music quite as much as I do.

[brotherwind]

Hey Michael,

The tuning that I was talking about is based upon relative tuning between the notes, as opposed to your tuning slide. Even if you put your tuning slide in a place where you are at A=440, you can still be out of tune depending on how you blow the other notes on your flute. That's where your ear and your embouchure come into play. You need to make small adjustments, i.e. backing off on the upper octave and compensating with a tigher embouchure.

In addition to being better in tune, the other real benefit of working on your embouchure is that your tone will improve. Right now, it sounds a little thin and doesn't project as much as you would want. Improving your embouchure will help increase the speed of the air going into your flute, which gives you a fuller, louder tone.

Sorry that I don't have a clip up that you can listen to, but if you want to get a sense of whether I'm worth listening to, you can check out this clip. I'm the flute player on the right.

It's the first thirty minutes of the Sept. 30th, 2007 clip.
http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/ ... imeout=500#

Nice playing on that clip, Brendan

[mahanpots]

Brendan,

Nice clip, although it was quite difficult to focus on the tunes with those lovely ladies dancing in front. Thanks for sharing that.

Michael

[BrendanB]

Brendan,

Nice clip, although it was quite difficult to focus on the tunes with those lovely ladies dancing in front. Thanks for sharing that.

Michael

Glad you enjoyed the clip. You're right though that the dancers are much more intriguing.

Best of luck with your playing Michael. Post another clip in a couple months to this thread. It would be great to hear how you are getting along.

After reading Diane's comments, I hope you understand that none of this is to say that you are playing badly or you shouldn't be playing. You're going through a stage that everybody goes through when learning to play the flute.

[chas]

Hey Michael,
Sorry that I don't have a clip up that you can listen to, but if you want to get a sense of whether I'm worth listening to, you can check out this clip. I'm the flute player on the right.

It's the first thirty minutes of the Sept. 30th, 2007 clip.
http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/ ... imeout=500#

Nice playing on that clip, Brendan

Yes, that's very cool! There's another chiffster up there, too, and would the McKomiskey playing box be Billy's son?