Jennifer Cluff

Jennifer Cluff 12/2/18, 4(28 AM
Jennifer Cluff ~ Tone Improvement

Canadian Flutist and Teacher
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Tone improvements for Intermediate Flutists. How to
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~ Helpful hints including special help with the high register flute tone from Jennifer Cluff ~
Flute articles Go to Jen's webpage to see all free articles on all flute topics
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Flute links Beginners and novice flutists looking for help with tone go to earlier tone articles
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Upcoming If you have suddenly lost your tone, go here.
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book Index of intermediate tone articles found on this page:
1. Flute Tone: What it is, how to get it.
Favourite
repertoire 2. Using Trevor Wye's Tone Book?
All flute articles
3. How to play flute well in the high register
4. High register and intonation corrections
5. A question about orchestral flutist's finesse
6. Tone Quality and Phrasing

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1. Tone: What great flute tone is, and how to get it:
[From 1995 Manual for flute students~ Jenni Cluff.]
Tone:
Having a good flute tone is one of the most important things besides playing the right notes in the right places, with
rhythm and feeling. The player with the most beautiful tone always ends up getting the best exam marks, the top
awards in competitions, and the top jobs in orchestras, and in making recordings ( as long as they also play the right
notes and rhythms with musicality). So make it your goal to constantly be improving your tone every day, so that you
will be a delight to listen to, even when you're practicing scales! (Even scales played with beautiful tone are like music
to the ears, ask anyone!). A great flute tone will not only have a "core" or centeredness to the sound, but will also have
very little airiness, or breathiness. It will ring like a bell, and have the purity and flexibility of a beautiful, pure soprano
voice. The more you work on centering and ringing your tone, the more tone colours you can later add, so that you can
express music with as many variations in "colour" as an artist can use on a canvas. Read on for information on how to
make this great flute tone YOUR flute tone.
STEPS TO BEAUTIFUL FLUTE TONE:
1. Imagine the sound you want to make.

Hear it in your mind as you play.
http://www.jennifercluff.com/tone.htm Page 1 of 22
If you have an idea about what a good tone is like, from listening to recordings of your favorite players, it is possible
for the body to figure out how to make the same sound all by
itself. The human body's ability to imitate perfectly, without knowing how it is doing it is almost miraculous at times,
so give yourself something exquisite to imitate, and watch yourself be
able to do it almost without thinking about it!
All you have to do is spend time absorbing that sound, and imagining that it is possible for you to play the same way.
So listen, listen, listen. Especially to recordings of excellent
flute players with gorgeous tone. ( Can you imagine trying to become an excellent basketball player without ever
having been to a basketball game or having watched a person play basketball? Then how can a person become an
excellent flutist without listening to excellent flute playing?)
2. Practice Longtones everyday for as long as you can
(at least 15~30 minutes a day.)
( James Galway does at least one hour a day on tone only).
Good tone can only happen if you are holding still on a long note. Too many other things are going on when you're
changing notes and playing pieces of music that move around. In order to
quickly see improvements in your tone you must do as little moving around as possible, and just stay still on one note
and listen, listen, listen.
(More on this under LONGTONES.)
3. Become very aware of the feelings in your lips.
As you hold your longtones, wake your lips up to the sensations that they can feel. The more sensitive your lips are to
tiny changes, the more you can control those tiny changes.
Especially important is the feeling right around the opening in the lips. As the air streams by the lip tissue around the
opening, the tissue vibrates very slightly, and this vibration is fundamental to good tone. In fact, the more relaxed the
center of your lips are, the more likely you are to have a singing and silky tone. So allow yourself to relax the lips
slightly and feel with them. Experiment with the following exercises if your lips are not very awake yet.
THE "WAKE UP YOUR LIPS" EXERCISES: (Pictures not included in this text-only version
1. THE TWO ROLLING PINS EXERCISE:
Pretend your two lips are two rolling pins (alright, blubbery, rubbery rolling pins, made out of jello...but you know
what I mean:) and roll them under and over one another, back and forth. Stick your bottom lip over your top lip, and
then your top lip over your bottom lip. Do this several times while becoming aware of the sensation of the inside, wet
part of your lips (the inner lip membrane).
Next, pretend your flute is in place, by putting a finger up to your chin and making the lip position that you usually use
for playing the flute. Roll your lips over each other so that at first you're blowing air upwards as your bottom lip comes
forward, then you're blowing air downwards, as your top lip comes forward.
You'll feel like the air is blowing up your nose, then down on your chin.
Let the air stream be continuous. Roll your lips over and under while the air is still coming out.
Feel the inner membrane at the center of your lips as you do this. Feel the air blowing past the inner membrane.
Feel your chin moving backward and forward loosely.
Now take your flute and put it up to your chin in your normal playing position and repeat the lip rolling, with your
chin gently moving forward and back. You do not have to be able to
get a sound that sounds like anything, you'll just want to wake up your lips so they are free to move in a rolling way
over one another.
2. THE RELAXING OF THE LIP-CENTER EXERCISE:
If you totally relax your lips they WILL be like jello, so that is obviously not terribly useful to flute playing. In order to
get a hole in your lips the same width as the hole in the flute you will have to compress the corners of the lips and tuck
them in a little. However the center of your lips needs to be just ever so slightly relaxed so that the lip centers can be
mobile, and free to change the size of the lip opening. So experiment with just how much to relax the lip center by
doing the following experiment:
Play an easy note (a medium G for example) with full HAAAA making the tightest, tiniest, most excrutiateingly tense
lip hole you can make. This will be a 10 on a tension scale that goes from 1 to 10. (You may get a sound, but if you do
it will sound pretty tense and pretty high, to say the least!)
Now relax the center of the lips just a tiny bit and play the note again, always at full HAAAAA. (It might now come
out as a lower note than before)
Again relax the lip center just a tiny bit more, and play the note again.
Keep relaxing a bit more each time until you're playing at a 1 on the tension scale, a jello lip feeling which makes a
blubbery sound if any sound comes out at all.
Repeat the exercise while being really aware of the feeling in the center of your lips. What feeling goes with the nicest
tone on that note? Was it an 3 on the tension scale, or a 6, or 5?
How does the inner membrane of your lip feel when you are hearing the clearest, nicest tone?
Is the center part of your lips relaxed enough to feel the air going by?
Is there a feeling of vibration on the inner membrane of the lips around the lip opening?
See how it feels to start with blubbery lips and going from 1 to 10, getting more and more tense. At what point does
the tension feel like too much work and make your jaw feel tense? At
the relaxed end of the tension scale, how relaxed can your lips be before they feel out of control?
Where is the most comfortable position that also makes the nicest tone?
1. THE FORCE OF WIND ON THE INNER LIPS EXERCISE:
As you add full HAAAA to a note you can begin to sense the force of the air pressure pushing against your lips
from the inside. When the air pressure gets to a certain point it can actually turn your lips slightly inside out, by
pushing out the inner membrane (the wet part on the inside of your lips) a milimeter or so to the outside. The air
pressure practically
splays your lips apart.
Note: all exercises that use the words: " ah HA!!" are pronounced "aa AA". The "H" sound is not meant to constrict
the throat to hurl the air forward, but is to activate the lower lungs do hurl the air similar to the way they do when you
laugh or shout.
To feel for this, start a note with no HAAAA on it, and gradually increase the HAAAAA. (You may have to breath
inbetween each increase in order to have enough air for this experiment.)
aaaaaa (pp)
haaaaaaa (mp)
HAAAAA (mf)
HAAAAAAAAAA! (f)
HAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! (ff)
As each louder HAAAA is added, relax the center of your lips just a tiny bit more and more, until you can feel the air
pushing the inside edge of your lips out. When you can feel the inside membrane on the inside edge of your lip
opening vibrating slightly, you have relaxed the lips enough. Keep playing at that exact level of HAAA, and with that
same feeling, and listen to the tone. How does it sound?
With the same feeling still there, of full HAAAA and a splayed out inner lip membrane, play around with a scale or a
run, without making any lip changes. How does it sound?
If you have difficulty feeling the air splay out your inner lip membrane, experiment by saying: Peu, Peu, Peu as you
increase the air pressure ("Peu" as in french.)
( In english it's like saying "Pe.." as in "Permanent")
4. Aiming with the Inner Lips:
Now that your lips feel more sensitive and alive, it is possible to imagine that you're aiming the air stream with the
inner membrane of the lips, just inside the lip opening.
Picture the airstream as being movable up or down by directing it from just inside your lips. Roll your lips a tiny bit
over and under eachother while feeling the inner membrane. Picture the air being aimed from a point inside your lips,
just in front of your teeth.
If this image doesn't work right away there is one way to feel it:
Take a straw and chew it flat or grab a spare coffee-stick from a cafe au lait. Place the flattened end horizontally, just
barely inside your lips, not even in as far as your teeth. Just lay it in between the center of your lips and gently close
your lips on it. Now move it slowly back and forth until you have make the inner lip membrane a bit more sensitive.
The straw represents the air stream as it passes by the inner lips. Now, without the straw there, pretend you can still
feel it, and aim your notes on the flute with the inner part of your lips. Listen to the sound, and experiment with feeling
the air being aimed by the part of your lips that the straw was just touching. Imagine the air passing the inner lip
membrane at that spot while listening for the best tone.
All these lip awareness exercises are actually techniques in advanced flute playing, so come back to them often to see
if they are of any use on days when your tone is slow to come.
Meanwhile, we'll move on to the question of rolling in and out.
ROLLING IN OR OUT? HOW DO I KNOW WHERE I AM?
From time to time you may hear your teacher tell you that you're too rolled in (this is quite a common thing), or
perhaps too rolled out. It may seem difficult to figure out exactly how rolled in or out to be, since, from time to time
"rolling in" MORE solves a bad tone problem, and other times it seems that "rolling out" MORE makes an
improvement. How can you figure this out for yourself?
Take an easy note like low G and play it with your normal embouchure (the normal shape of lips you use). Keep this
shape and don't change it for this exercise. Check that your chin is up, that your neck is straight and that the underside
of your chin is parallel to the floor. Take a good big breath and play the note, while very very very slowly rolling the
flute inwards with your hands. Listen to the sound change. It will get darker and darker, and quieter and then, finally it
will disappear altogether.
Start the note again from your normal position, and with a good deep breath play it long, and roll the flute very very
very slowly away from you. Listen as it gets breathier, and windier, less and less easy to play, and finally the sound
disappears when the air can no longer reach the hole in the flute.
Finally, play the note and slowly roll out and back to the middle, then roll in, and back to the center. Do this very very
slowly.
At what point does it sound beautifully clear? Right in the middle, right? Choose a different note, and check where it
sounds the best. Again in the middle?
Well, you should never have to roll your flute in or out when you are playing the flute, it should always be in the
middle. So experiment around to find the middle and then stick to it. Let your hands hold the flute still at the exact
middle point and leave it there for the whole time you play. If you ever lose the middle point, simply repeat the above
experiment until your ears tell you where the middle point is again.
BIG HINT: The flute tone will always be best, brightest, warmest, and most pure, if you roll out just one tiny notch
more than you think you should. Have a friend listen from twenty feet away and tell you what sounds best: where you
(who are hearing from six inches away) think it sounds best? Or where a listener (at 20 ft. away) thinks it sounds best.
MOVING THE CORNERS OF YOUR LIPS FORWARD AND BACKWARD:
When you make the shape of your lips that you use to play flute, it helps to tuck in the corners of the lips slightly so
that you can create an oval-shaped hole in the center of the lips. For beginners, this is the shape that gives you your
first sound.
As you begin to learn more and more notes that are higher up on the flute however, it may seem difficult to hold them
up simply by giving them more air pressure (more HAAAAAA). In fact, there will come a point where you might feel
that you're "HAAAA-ing" your face off, and the notes are just too hard to hold onto. The air pressure you're giving the
notes is right, but the tone isn't as controlled as you'd like it to be.
High notes are actually made by two things: more air pressure PLUS having the airstream travel less distance to get to
the hole in the flute. To shorten the distance the air has to travel from your lips to the mouthpiece is simple:
Bring the corners of your lips forward.

As you bring the corners forward, the center of your lips puckers into the kind of shape that you might call "Kiss-
shaped". A real kiss shape is far too much movement, of course, but you'll want just the tiniest of beginnings of a kiss
shape for this experiment.
It is very important that you look in a mirror for this exercise, so that you can see the lip corners move.
LOOK IN THE MIRROR:

Make the flute mouth shape you usually use, and deliberately bring the lip corners forward (so that the center of the
lips pucker very very slightly, and get pushed forward.)
Put your flute in place and repeat the forward motion of the corners of the lips several times until you can do it in an
easy and relaxed manner. It's a gentle motion that actually brings the center of your lips a few millimeters closer to the
far side of the embouchure hole in the flute. In order to hear the benefits of this motion, play a note and jump it up the
octave:
LIP CORNERS FORWARD FOR OCTAVE JUMPS:
At the same time that you say " ah HAAAAAA" for an octave jump, bring the lip corners forward as you did in the
mirror. Listen for the best tone, and feel how much or how little you had to move the corners forward to get the high
note to sound well.
Check in the mirror again. How much DO the corners move? Do you find the high notes easier to play when you've
shortened the distance the air has to travel to the hole in the flute?
Are you remembering that you'll need to pull the corners back again to get the low notes?
LIZARD LIPS FOR LOW NOTES:
Some people normally have their lip corners quite forward, and that can cause them to find that their tone on very low
notes is not very strong or reliable.
Or perhaps you have had to leap to a low D in a particular piece, and you've found it difficult to make the low D
"speak". In either case, you may want to learn to tuck the corners of your lips in, like tucking them in at the corners, to
make a lizard-lip face. (This face is also very popular with parents at the dinner table, and in bank line-ups.)
The "Lizard Lip" for low notes is created by both the tucking in of the lip corners and the pulling of your chin back a
bit, so that you create a longer distance between your lips and the embouchure hole in the flute: Tucking the corners in
and back causes the lower lip to be stretched tighter across your bottom row of teeth, and gives you a firm edge over
which to direct the stream of air.
Experiment with very low notes to see if their tone improves when you make the lizard lips, and blow the air
downward more by jutting out your upper lip to direct the air downwards (like blowing down toward your chin in the
lip Rolling Pin exercise). Your lower lip may even feel as if it is covering less of the embouchure hole. This is often
helpful for flat low notes.
The "lizard lips" feeling is especially useful if you're playing a piece where you have to leap to a low note from a
much higher one:
Check in the mirror. How much do you have to tuck your lip corners in and back to get a low note to speak right away
after a high one? Can you use this lizard-lip position for all the low notes below low F or E? Does it help with low C?
LONGTONES:
LONGTONES ARE YOUR FRIENDS, NOT THE BANE OF FLUTE EXISTENCE!
I remember when I first started studying with the flute teacher who helped me to improve from a pretty mediocre
student to an excellent flute player (she helped me win four major competitions and get a Royal Conservatory full
scholarship!) My very first lesson was an emotional disaster. She said:
"YOU"LL HAVE TO GO RIGHT BACK TO THE BEGINNING AND UNLEARN EVERYTHING. I WANT YOU
TO JUST DO LONGTONES!"
I went home to my parents and wailed: "Longtones! I have to do....... LONGTONES!" like it was a prison sentence.
But I could already play really hard pieces (I was 15), I played in a first rate orchestra at school, I was supposed to be
excellent already!!!! Longtones were for beginners, weren't they?

You may be surprised to learn, as I was, that almost all instruments have to do longtones: violins, cellos, basses,
trumpets, bassoons, trombones...you name the instrument (except maybe snare drum) and you'll hear the best players
in the world practicing their longtones.
The reason my flute teacher told me I had to unlearn everything I already knew how to do, was because I had never
learned to do longtones, and those are the basis of every single thing that you will ever play. Think about it: What are
you doing when you play the following passage?
(picture insert: a Bb scale-type passage that swoops up and down in a scale-like way) What is your airstream doing
when you take away all the lip changes, take away the tonguing, take away the fingering and the rest of the
complications? ANSWER?
ONE LONG TONE (and in this case, one long Bb).
> (MUSIC NOTATION insert showing how a whole lot of scale like notes actually pass through the note of Bb at least
half the time.)
And if your longtone is shakey, or has bad tone on it, or keeps warbling in and out you end up with something that
sounds like this: >insdert (MUSIC NOTATION showing a flowing scale pattern with words underneath that describe
the warbling and mis-firing tone quality:)
<<Scale pattern which should be all slurred and smooth.....>>
What you actually hear:

(fuzzball......splatt......whoops.....eeek!! egads!! splattorrama!)
Instead of this:
>(insert-MUSIC NOTATION- insert same as above)
(what you hear....)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaa...........oooooooooooooooo........aaaaaaaaaaaa
This is why it's extremely important that you spend up to half your practice time doing longtones. Without them you
are actually wasting the other time you spend practicing.
Longtones help your tone improve almost instantly. And if your tone is already pretty nice, longtones will make it
even more beautiful.
And within days you will start to feel that all your pieces, scales and studies are much much much easier to play
(because the airstream you give them will become powerful, steady and reliable), and the amount of enjoyment that
you'll have playing will go way up because everything will seem so much easier.
After all, almost all music is just one long sound, isn't it?
SO YOU THINK LONGTONES ARE BORING?
Have you ever really spent any time listening to them? I mean really listening?
There is a kind of listening that is extremely refined and artful. And there is a kind of longtone practice that is a
combination of concentration, and awareness of sound.
Once you have discovered the sounds and sensations of longtone practice, you will not find it the least bit boring,
because you will improve and improve and improve, everyday.
Do it first for a week or more before you decide whether longtones are useful or not. I could practically offer you a
money back guarentee: you will sound tons better if you do them.
Here are some things to focus on during your longtones, so that you'll see what I mean right away:
1. Be aware of the feeling in your lips as you play the longtone. Can you feel the inner membrane vibrating? Can you
feel the air stream being aimed by the inner lips? Do your lips feel supple and moveable? Does the tone improve if you
bring the corners a little more forward or a little more back?
2. Be aware of the amount of air pressure you're using. Are you using a full HAAAA so that you can have the brightest
possible tone? Is there enough HA in the air to splay the inner lips out slightly so that you're sensation of aiming with
the inner lips is heightened?
3. Become aware of the feeling of breathing in. Are you filling your lungs up completely on each breath so that you
feel your stomach push out, your back fill up with air, your chest feel full and strong? Is your intake of breath silent
because your throat is yawning open slightly when you breath in? Are you able to play for longer and longer on your
held notes as because you're taking in more air? So that you're gradually getting used to being able to play long pieces
of music, without needing extra breaths all the time? Can you hold a given note longer and longer every day? (Use the
metronome set at mm=60 if you want to count how many seconds you can hold any given note).
4, Is your throat open as you blow out? Can you relax it open so that you feel relaxed and unstrained, and your
HAAAA muscles can do all the work for you? Can your face relax so that you feel calm and happy? Are your
shoulders down and relaxed? Do you feel like you're singing with your chest raised high so it can resonate?
5. Is your posture upright? Do you feel suspended by a helium balloon tied to the top of your head? Can you gently
nod "yes" to see if your spine is being lifted up and out of your hips? Do you feel light and bouncy? Is your chest lifted
up, and your shoulders down? Is your back doing the work of holding you up so that your arms can just float?
6. Does your tone sound strong and pure? Can you experiment with your lips to focus the tone to an even purer one
without rolling in?
Do you want to check whether you're too rolled in or too rolled out so that you can find the best angle for a big warm
sound?
And finally, are you staying as still as you can and not changing a thing as you move from one long note to another (as
in Trevor Wye Tone exercises). Are the two notes in a row exactly the same tone?
If you wish all the notes on the flute to have good tone you must listen carefully to see if every pair of them sounds
exactly alike. If the first note could be called the colour red, for example, is the second note exactly the same colour
red, or is it green?
Listen very carefully. If the first note is yellow, does the second one sound brownish-black?
(examples of books to use: Moyse's "De La Sonorite" or Trevor Wye's "Practice book for the flute Vol. I ~ Tone" or
Paula Robison's "Bell's Warmup" from her book of warmups. All these feature whole notes slurred in pairs with a
crescendo going to the second note. Each pair of
notes is a semi-tone apart, starting on B2 and going down to low C, and then for high longtones, starting on B2 and
ascending to B3.)
Both notes should have exactly the same sound with no sound of changing notes, even! Gradually you will work your
way up to making all the notes on the flute sound so much alike that no one listening would ever know that the flute's
three octaves actually sound different. You want there to be no screeching on the high notes, and no weak sounding
breathiness on the low notes. The whole stretch of the flute should sound beautifully pure and of the same colour and
quality. That is the goal of Longtones.
The very last thing to say on the subject of tone is about finger slapping. When you're changing notes in your longtone
exercises, be sure and listen for key noises. Each key should be closed without any bump or thud, so that it sounds as
if you are silkily gliding from note to note. Listen to each key as it goes down.
Did you hear the change of fingers? If so,........it was too loud.
The reason the flute is made out of silver is to make it ring when the air vibrates inside it. We, as flute players have to
be aware that the metal of the keys is not a sound that's very musical. As we go onto the next chapter and consider
finger movements, start to become aware of the gentle hold you'll need to develop in your hands and fingers, in order
to play accurately, and without tension.
Back to top
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2. Using Trevor Wye's Tone Book?

___________________________
Here's the order of exercises I recommend:
Start your very first longtones on page 7, and stay there, making a beautiful low register sound and strengthening the
low register for at least a week before moving onto other pages of this book.
You'll do these page 7 exercises for the rest of your flutey life as a warm-up so learn them well, and really make an
effort to strengthen your low-register before you attempt higher registers.
The lip-muscle development will be profound, and will stand you in good stead for work on the middle and high
registers.
When you've really mastered page 7, you may proceed gradually to pages 8 and 9 to continue to develop your
embouchure and lip muscles.
The following few weeks, start on page 7 and 8 and then flip to page 13 to begin longtone practice on the middle
register.
Don't try and rush the process and zip through pages 13-15, just perfect page 13 thoroughly (get a fabulous tone
especially on notes like E natural in the middle register, before progressing.)
When you're comfortable moving ahead in the middle register exercises, make reaching the bottom of page 16 your
goal.
At this point you're seeking to make every note on the flute from middle register B natural all the way down to low C
equal in beauty and strength.
Try not to skip steps. It won't help you at all to play these exercises hastily or carelessly.
Now, if you're a true keener and want to scientifically figure out how to play the high register relaxedly and
beautifully, back up and have a look at page 6 where you learn to do bugle calls on harmonics while fingering low
notes. This topic is also covered below in the next section of this document.
I advise some experimentation on page 6 of the Trevor Wye Tone book before tackling the high register longtones
which I like to begin on page 20.
Note: Once you're doing longtones everyday, and starting on pg. 7, then moving to 13, and then moving to pg. 20 for
high register longtones you'll probably find you stay on pg. 20 for a good long time before tackling page 21.
Don't be surprised about this. Zillions of tiny muscles in your face and lips are developing steadily and well..and you
need to learn to play relaxed and beautifully before you make the leap to zipping your fingers around while still
keeping your tone as perfectly as possible.
Be patient, and within about 2 months of doing the Trevor Wye longtones everyday (for 10 to 40 minutes) you'll start
to hear comments from people all around you:
"Gee your tone is so beautiful!! It's bewitching!!! How do you get such a beautiful tone?"
Just show them the book, and tell them: "Page 7, 13, and 20, and don't rush perfection!!!"
Have fun and make the room ring like bells!!! :>)
Back to top
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3. How to improve the flute high register
(for current book: "Practicing Hints for Flutists"):
*************************************************
High Register Solutions for folks tackling the high register for the first time, and for those "coming back to the
flute":
________________________________________________
Starter Level
LEVEL ONE:
________________________________________________
The high register takes MUCH MORE AIR SPEED than the low and middle registers, and the first thing you can learn
is to send the air from the bottom of your lungs upwards to your lips at really high speeds. There are several images
that might help your body to understand how to do this in the most natural way.
Firstly: stand up to practice this, and stretch the sides of your torso so that there is as much distance between your hips
and your shoulders as possible. Keep your shoulders down, and create a long distance between your ears and your
shoulders as well.
This means that your body will be very tall and stretchy, and that it will be in the strongest position to "move the air at
high speeds".
Next: Take a single piece of paper and hold it dangling from the top edge, about six inches in front of the music stand,
and blow on the bottom half of it, to see if you can glue it to the music
stand with a powerful jet stream of air. Sense how your entire abdomen feels when you are performing this task. That's
the same feeling you'll get when you're playing with fast air in the high register.
Next: Play a low G1 with slow moving air, then a middle G2 with slightly faster air. Finally, finger G3 (take the thumb
key off) and blow with the same force as you did in order to stick the paper to the music stand a moment ago. Check
that the sensations are very similar in your abdominal muscles. Hear how the high G3 "pops out" when there is
sufficient air pressure.
Another image is: Pretend you have a ping-pong ball and a 70 ft. long, shiny, polished dining room table, and you start
blowing the ping-pong ball down the table's length.
As it gets farther away from you, you'll need to blow harder and faster to keep it moving, since your goal is to get it all
the way to the far end.
Be sure your abdominal muscles feel the same way when you're playing high notes on the flute.
Practicing Octaves as Harmonics:
For practice in using these muscles in order to strengthen them, and get them to react consistently try this:
Finger any low note, for example low D, and overblow it, without changing fingerings, to the middle hold it, and then
take a breath and overblow it again to the highest octave (D3, two ledger lines above the staff).
If you compare it to the REAL fingering for D3 ( T _ 23|___4) your overblown high D will sound stuffy and feel like it
takes a great deal of air, but this is a good exercise to strengthen the abdominal muscles and to learn to accurately
overblow to a harmonic (for future use) by using a low fingering and lots of support.
Try overblowing the three octaves (low, middle, high) with a low E fingering, then F, then F#, then G. If you learn to
play high notes this way (by overblowing a low fingering, or, as it's called in other systems: "playing an harmonic")
then you'll quickly learn which muscles to use and how to find a good angle for the air, in order to play in the highest
register.
Next, use the same abdominal breath support to play a low D, raise the top index finger for middle D, and then high
use the real fingering for D3. See how easily it speaks when you use fast airspeed. Continue to do this on a different
note each time you practice so you can get used to switching from the low fingering to the high (real) fingering.
Each time you switch to the real fingering the note's tone will improve and you'll feel less stiffness or resistance from
the flute, than you did by just overblowing a "harmonic". The real
fingering will also sound more in tune.
Experiment each day, and in this way you'll learn the fingerings of the highest octave and how they differ from the
middle and low octaves.
Once you've go the hang of this, go on to playing with real fingerings all the time, and learning to switch smoothly by
increasing the air speed every time you need to jump an octave.
Trouble? If you can't make a high note "pop out" from using fast air alone, try one of the following adjustments:
~ Because the high register takes the fine-tuning of many embouchure muscles, it is best to have practiced getting a
steady embouchure and good clear tone in the low and middle registers for at least several months before attempting
too many miscellaneous high notes. Once your lip and face muscles have developed a bit of strength, they will be
more in control for when you need them all to co-ordinate the shape they'll assume for the high register.
~ Make sure your headjoint is slightly rolled out for all three octaves (and please learn to play all notes in this
position.. Don't roll it in again!), so that your bottom lip is covering only 1/4 to 1/3 of the embouchure hole. If you're
too rolled in, high notes just won't come out easily enough.
~ Make sure that the hole in your lips is in line with the embouchure hole in the flute, and not off to one side, or
missing the hole in the flute at all. Center your 'lip hole' with your flute's embouchure hole by looking in the mirror and
adjusting it.
~ Make sure the hole in your lips is not too large and loose. For high notes especially you need the muscles around
your lips to be aware, and "muscular". Try firming the lip hole up by a tiny
amount (NOT TOO TIGHT!) just a bit at a time until you are accurately aiming the airstream at the hole in the flute,
and not spreading the air stream too broadly.
~ Make sure that, conversely, you're not tightening your lips so much that you're PINCHING them almost shut, or
squeezing them into a tiny pin-hole to get the high register. Instead, you need to gently and flexibly bring the corners
of the lips forward (from a "lizard" shape to a "kiss" shape) whenever you are ascending into the high register. If you
don't know anything about these embouchure changes, go to above articles, reading about moving the lip corners
foward for high register and back for low register. The lip corners control the lip shape as the muscles of the mouth
SURROUND the mouth. There are no muscles in the actual lips themselves. Experiment in a mirror with the lip
corners, moving tthem forward as if making a half "kiss" shape, and you will find that the center of the lips become
loose, flexible and cushiony. Moving the lip corners forward also shortens the distance between the lip centers and the
striking edge where the air splits over the embouchure plate, making high notes sound without tightening, pinching, or
needing to roll the flute inward. The flute can stay still, and your lips can make the distance shorter with a quick and
supple movement.
~ Consult your teacher about your high register embouchure. Basically the premise is that the longer the aiming
device, the more accurate the aim. (Compare a pea-shooter that's one-inch long, to one that's 12 inches long. Which
gives more accurate aim?). The longer the tunnel between the lips that the air travels prior to entering the flute, the
more accurate the aim for hitting the "sweet spot" when playing high register (lips in a half 'kiss' shape can send air
more accurately than lips that are tightly drawn across the teeth.). The shorter the the tunnel between the lips (lips
pulled back at the corners and lips tightly against teeth) the harder it is to create beautiful high note tone on the flute.
Get help with this at your lessons. A visual demonstration is worth a thousand type-written words. :>)
Reminders:
~ Remember that for high register you'll need very fast air: think of the paper, think of the receding ping-pong ball.
~ Check that you really have the right fingerings, by using a fingering chart.
~Make sure that the back molars have a space between them so that the inside of your mouth is saying "Awe" not
"Eee".
~ Keep your throat uninvolved in the process of sending the fast air into the flute. It should be an open conduit for the
air to race through at high speeds from the lungs. It doesn't have to make any effort to help. Yawn it open to feel how
large and easy a cylinder it can make when it is allowing the free passage of air. Drop your adams apple down, and lift
up the soft palate at the rear of your mouth's roof. When you're blowing on a piece of paper against a music stand,
remind yourself how the throat expanded to "get out of the way".
~ Get extra help from your teacher, who may suggest other hints for success.
_________________________________________________
Level TWO:
_________________________________________________
Now that you're able to play quite a few high notes (up to approx. F3) the more time you put into practicing your high
notes, the better your tone will sound, and the more control you'll start to develop over your fast airstream and your
embouchure muscles.
Remember however, that since facial muscles can tire easily, and your goal is to eventually play high notes in a
relaxed and effortless way, that to start out you should have brief "high note practice sessions" and not become over-
tired or tight-muscled. It's best to warm up first on low and middle register notes, take a break, and then practice some
high notes, take another break, and then go back to low and middle register again.
Whatever you do, please don't over-do it on the high register, or you'll hurt your muscles, and learn to play in a tense
and tiring way.
A good motto for poising the human body is: Let the BIG muscles do the work. Let the small muscles save their
strength for the gentleness of finesse.
In other words.....use the torso muscles for pushing the fast air.
Don't involve small muscles like throat, upper chest, face and jaw, since they tire to easily and aren't acually helping to
move air or position the flute.
To prove this point to yourself--practice leaping octaves using chiefly your airspeed. ie: ahhhhAAAAAA!!!
ahhhhAAAAA!!!
Then with the tiniest movement of the lip muscles, make the changes necessary to the upper note to insure that it
sounds as good as it does when you're approaching it by step (as when you do your longtones.)
If you don't yet do daily longtones for tone in the high register (as well as the medium and low registers of course),
please continue reading.
Note: all exercises that use the words: " ah HA!!" are pronounced "aa AA". The "H" sound is not meant to constrict
the throat to hurl the air forward, but is to activate the lower lungs do hurl the air similar to the way they do when you
laugh or shout.
HIGH REGISTER LONGTONES:
For self-teaching beginners, the best way to gradually increase your knowledge of ledger lines and the fingerings of
the flute's highest register, is to add one new note to your longtone
practice every few days. That way you're asking your brain to recognize only one new note every few days, and you
can add them IN ORDER, and gradually.
Start with B2 (the middle register B that's on one leger line above the staff) and play it as a beautiful longtone for
several minutes, until it's a gorgeous as possible. Breath naturally, and as required, remaining in your best posture and
without strain.
Just listen to that B. Check in the mirror that your posture is tall (as in Level ONE) and that the hole in your lips is
centered etc. When you finally have it sounding really well, open the thumb key, and slur to a C without changing your
lips. Hold the C with the exact same gorgeous tone as the B. Match the two note's tone quality exactly so that your ears
can't tell them apart.
Once the C is just as nice in tone, start on IT, and open one more finger to slur to a C#.
Continue this chromatic series of longtones until you reach at least F3.and then rest. When you start again the next
day, go one note higher, to F#3.
Spend several practice sessions smoothing out the tone from B2 to F#3 before adding G3 as your next longtone. This
exercise is written out in Marcel Moyses' "De la Sonorite" and also in Trevor Wye's "Practice Book for the Flute"; Vol.
I: Tone; and in Paula Robison's warmup book where it's called "Bell's Warmup".
Once you've started any of these books, and done the longtones in it (preferably with your teacher's help) you can
continue on to the exercises that ask you to play not just two chromatic notes in a row, but three, four and five notes in
a row, all with the goal of finding the correct amount of airspeed and the right "embouchure shape" for all the notes to
sound equally gorgeous.
You may also enjoy doing this exercise as it's written in Paula Robison's "Warmup Book" where she uses a jaunty
metronome rhythm to add a triplet beat to the "Bell's Warmup" as she calls it.
It's the same exercise, but she asks you to think of ringing the tone like a bell. Very fun.
Remember, the higher you go, the faster the air has to be, so crescendo into each new note, so that your air is getting
faster and faster the higher you go.
Problems? Longtones too boring for you? Try one of the following:
~ Make the room ring like a glass crystal. See if you can fill the air with a gorgeous singing sound, like an opera
singer warming up, or like a top-notch flute player's tone from one of
your favorite flute CDs.
~ See if you can hear every subtle thing about each long held note all the way through, like looking through a
microscope at an incredibly intricate texture or pattern. The goal is to be
"interested in the details" of what you're hearing.
~ See if you can crescendo evenly in to each successive note, so that there are no lumps or bumps, but just the
smoothest possible finger changes, and an uninterrupted airstream ringing and singing out of your flute.
The tone gets worse and worse the higher you go?
In general the tone may sound worse at first but will start sounding better after a few practice sessions. However if it
keeps happening, ask yourself whether it happens on a particular
note every time. If the tone sounded really nice on one note, and really terrible
on the next note, see if one of the following things might have happened:
~ Your fingers slammed the keys too hard and the flute "bobbled" out of position on your lip.
~ You had to take your thumb off, and the flute rolled inward toward you, causing a different (and worse) angle of the
airstream.
~ You changed your lips drastically when you changed your fingering. Lip changes should be minute and even
unnoticeable when you become adept at just moving the inner lip membrane.
~ You pinched your lips shut, and created a spitty, constricted sound or....
~ You made your lip hole too big and loose, and the air wasn't able to be aimed accurately.
All of these problems will eventually go away if you use soft, gentle fingers, close to the keys, avoid sudden
movements of the lips (keep lips the same for notes that are neighbours to
eachother), and endeavour to be as smooth and as "slow motion" as possible. If your teacher isn't around to help you,
use a mirror to see where you're making a sudden movement, or slamming a key too hard, and you'll soon be your own
"Sherlock Holmes" and spot the problem in the mirror.
**********
High Register Solutions, continued. Several points will act as reminders and may appear again and again in these
hints sections as you progress. It's so easy to forget when you're doing so many things at once, that I find it helpful to
have "hinty" reminders. :>)
____________________________________________________
LEVEL THREE:
___________________________________________________
At this level of high register flute playing, there is no substitute for the excellent and inexpensive slim volume by
Thomas Filas called: Top Register Studies for Flute. The publisher is Fischer, and this book is readily available
at larger music stores (or they can quickly re-order a copy for
you.)
If you need to order by mail try: www.fluteworld.com or Topwind in the U.K.
Filas says in the introduction that there are three steps to performing the top register of the flute with ease and fluency:
1) Reading the notation easily, through daily playing of one or

more of the three-line studies each day and making a direct link from the printed note with its leger lines, and your
instant fingering of that note.
2) The Execution of top register intervals in all keys. The book starts with C major/A minor and then gradually adds
flats and sharps to introduce you to various combinations and to improve the polish and ease of your finger-changes in
the high register.
3) The Articulation of top register intervals; the coordination of tongue, lips and fingers with breath control,
enabling you to play the three-line studies with no slower and faster bits, but
just solidly and easily.
The great thing about these short studies is that they sound like adorable fragments of truly fun/goofy music. They're
easy to listen to as well, and very smooth and pretty.
No two are exactly alike, and yet they cover every high note, every key, and every weird possible fingering in the top
register of the flute.
So here are my studio suggestions of how to practice the Filas Top Register Studies:
1. The key to practicing these is to begin very very slowly in tempo, perhaps at quarter note= 60 on the
metronome...and to at first play the three line study through all slurred, breathing as
required.
If anything about it seems difficult, break your Filas study down into easily conquorable pieces. For example:
a) It can be very relaxing physically to just play three or four notes of each bar several times, and then holding the last
note out like a longtone. Then choose three or four other notes in the same bar (move your starting place around each
time you've managed well) and play them very thoroughly.
b) If a particular large leap to a high note is giving you trouble, stop and relax, and then start on the lower note that
you must leap from and very easily do chromatic longtones up to the note that you will leap to.
ex: F3 to A3 leap too tough?

Play a beautiful F3. (Walk up to it chromatically if necessary from B2 as if you're re-checking your high longtones
from your earlier warmup that day).
Now play F to F# and hold.(always crescendo to the second note when doing longtones.)
Match the tone of the two notes.
Then play long held F# to G. Then: G to G#.
Then: G# to A.
If you've matched the tone all the way up, and left your lips as near to the position they started in, and fingered
delicately, and not changed anything drastically in your embouchure, then you'll
have found the right "mouth" and wind speed for the high A.
Memorize the feeling of that "mouth", and then play with that exact same mouth when you move from F3 to A3.
c) If a series of notes seems to lose air, and have unstable support from your lungs for the tone try this:
PUSH through the notes as if your air must reach the end of three-notes-in-a-row. Make your airstream like a river
that's always running ahead to the next place.
It could be that your airspeed was becoming static, and only vertically supported (like saying a short "HA!!" instead of
a long "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"
So be aware that your lung support and torso muscles will feel constantly helpful, and are not going flabby during a
series of notes.
d) fingers must stay low to the keys and relaxed. If you come across a note you're not familiar with, or a finger
exchange from one note to another that gives you instant-dyslexia, take 10
minutes or so to sit down, check the fingering chart, look at your fingers, and make a metal connection between which
fingers are rising and which are falling.
The last thing you want to do is "flail" at an unfamiliar fingering. It would be like sending a novice out in a one-man-
sail-boat in a heavy wind....how long do you imagine it would take until all the sails and ropes are banging about in the
breeze and the whole boat is listing right and left, and getting waves over the side?
So don't bother with this flailing. Sit down, bring the flute's keys close to your eyes, and closely watch your fingers go
up and down from one note to the next. And when they're up, leave them close enough to be able to go down again
without any wasted effort.
Next stage:
2. Know all the notes, and have great tone throughout all bars of the study now? Okay...now we can go slightly faster.
a) increase the tempo very gradually, but no faster than you can do it without mistakes.
b) leave the study in little chunks, and pause often, holding a note, to make it like a longtone ending to a mini-group of
notes.
c) breath when you need to (make the mini-groups small at first) and take a good fully-rib-expanded breath when you
need to as well. Don't wait too long to take a breath and play with no air in your lungs. This will only tighten your
body, face and throat up unnecessarily.
d) design your own little melodies from these mini-groups of notes, and feel free to expand them into your own
invented compositions.....adding trills or held notes, or adding

decorative notes...or even improvising just out of pure creativity.
(This helps release your sense of freedom in music.)
3. Take a break. Stretch and relax.

If you're really clever, you'll put on a CD of a fabulous singer (classical or R&B, jazz or folk even) or truly great and
inspiring FLUTE player and just bask in the ease of their high notes. Their lung control will become a familiar sound
while secretly your body will absorb the familiarity with beautiful soaring sounds and begin biologically processing
how to emulate it.
4. Come back to your Filas three-line study later that session or later that day, and play through the whole thing a few
times, all slurred and slowly. Any fingery areas that cause stumbling or any areas of bad tone, circle in pencil.
5. Work very slowly on the pencilled areas, and repeat suggestions mentioned in number 1 above. (longtoning up to
high leaps, moving the air forward toward a goal note.)
6. The next day, go through the same process, and speed the three line study up slightly. Each time you speed it up,
focus on the beauty of soaring phrases, and what emotional interpretation you'd try with this if this were a piece you
were emoting.
You can certainly attempt dynamics, just for fun and fooling around with colours and expression. But by and large
you'll want to play at a soaring mezzo forte, with occasional swells to fortes.
Note:
(Playing piano or pianissimo in the high register will be covered in my up coming book. But if you're anxious to get to
it right away, first learn the method of controlling dynamics recommended by Fiona Wilkinson in "The Physical
Flute". Use it in low and medium registers as a preparation for high notes. See article on "Wilkinson's Vowel-shape
dynamics" on Jen Cluff's Flutenet files or on this site under DYNAMICS in the novice and intermediate level
articles..)
7. As the week progresses, experiment with adding the articulations (staccatos should be produced like a short "HA"
with the air being stopped in the lungs, not in the mouth), and the lungs should continue to feel supported and not go
flabby immediately after a staccato.
8. Continue to speed up the study until it's just ROLLING from phrase to phrase like a river. Make a new emotive
statement with it each time you feel it's familiar and easy.
Another great thing about these studies is that they're in 12/8 and pieces in divisions of three roll forward very
naturally like a wheel going round and round. Lean on the downbeat slightly in
each bar if you like, to feel the overall rolling motion. (like a funky circus walse.)
9. Just a reminder. Never sacrifice tone. Everything about these studies starts and ends with great tone. So remember
that you must practice each day. If you've not practiced for a few days or
weeks, go back to step one willingly and happily.
At no point do you want to feel tight, fatigued or frustrated.
10. ABOVE all: ALWAYS use very low finger heights, and very little finger pressure.
You should be touching the keys as though they were butterfly wings or rice paper. Any thumping will only slow you
down. So if a fingering is unfamiliar, stop and look at your fingers,
and really discover which fingers are going up and which down, so that they don't panic and FLY up and down in a
hysterical way.
Make mental connections to them as they change from note to note, and allow them to feel secure, so they don't jump
up high off each key, but instead hover securely over the key that they're about to depress again.
The more speed and flow you add to each of these studies, the lower your fingers can be, and the less pressure on the
keys.
When you see a professional flying around on the high register on their flute, you'll notice that it seems effortless. The
only effort their body is making is the air-speed and lung muscle
support. So if you LEARN the high register with this sense of ease and effortlessness, you'll never have to "Un-do" the
harsh, shrieking and pounding stage that is SO unattractive, and VERY tiring in band-only or self-taught players.
Take my word for it: folks will think your high register is "Angelic" after only a few months of Filas Studies. And
eventually, the cat and dog *will* love you again (try pet treats
at end of high register practice sessions.)
Have fun. Be creative.
Back to top
______________________________
4. Intonation and high register playing:

________________________
LETTER FROM FLUTENET MEMBER:
Jane wrote:
>I noticed as I go up the scale, I move my bottom jaw out, then at some point around E3 or F3 (I think) I pull it back
and blow more down into the hole. Then I start over (so to speak) pushing
the lower jaw out more to get the higher notes. I can feel myself getting very tense in the third octave. Any thoughts on
loosening up in the third octave? and improving my 3rd octave
notes? They all sound like crap.
*************
Dear Jane and other "crappy high note" sufferers. :>D I too was taught to play by moving the jaw, and by 28 had to
have my jaw realigned due to TMJ (dentist filed my teeth to
correct occlusion) and a whole lot of massage therapy on my jaw muscles because they had created great "thunks" and
"clicks" during normal use, and there were even a few scary nights where I woke up with my jaw lodged painfully
open (no jokes you guys---it HURT!!). Please take this as a warning.
I now teach not to manipulate the jaw to change the angle of the airstream but to use the soft tissue of the lips to blow
at various higher and lower angles.
1. Picture the lips as moving DIAGONALLY and in opposite directions to create angle changes. Instead of jaw-
forward, think: "Upper lip moves diagonally in and down for loud playing. For soft playing the lower teeth rise,
and this causes the lower lip to move diagonally out and up." See if the jaw can be slung open and free of
tension at the hinges while doing so. If it is thrust forward or back, it is simply too much work, and makes too
huge a change to the flute's position on the lip. The jaw goes slightly back and slightly forward just from being
open and closed a very small amount. You don't actually need to MOVE it. It moves when the lips move.
2. We must work more with a "long barrel" on the lip opening to direct the air. And to do this we must manipulate
the "inner membrane of the lips (the wet part on the inside) as a longer fleshy "aiming device". In my file on
"Intonation in ensemble playing" that's on the Flutenet "Files" page (click on the word files on the left hand side
of the Flutenet homepage and look for my name) I made a whole host of suggestions for high register tone and
tuning.
I also have a half-completed article ON the high register, from beginner level to expert, coming along at a
tortoise-rate, for future publication. But in the meanwhile, here's an excerpt of experiments to try:
******From "Flutenet Files" Intonation in Ensembles.*****
EXTRACTS from othe articles on this site that relate:
For great flute tone without playing sharp::
2) The flute embouchure hole in general needs to be 'not too high' on the lower lip, or the intonation never really gets
"centered" and a lot of jaw and lip overcorrections begin to
happen. In your regular daily practice, spend time on each of the following to be sure that you've found a position of
the flute relative to the mouth that allows MOST notes to come out close to
"in tune". You'll want to do and re-do these experiments for a lifetime of flute playing. But in an emergency, see if one
or more gives you the "centered" sound you need for now.
a) Try opening your jaw more; imagine there are blackballs between your back molars, so that you drop your jaw open
and say "Awe". This really works to bring down the pitch of sharp high
notes, especially altissimo notes (notes above high B natural or B3 as it's called).
b) Try rolling the flute out 1 to 2 milimeters more than usual and poking your upper lip over in a "beak" shape to aim
the air downwards. See picture. It also helps to imagine there's an airpocket between
your teeth and your upper lip that aims the air downward for high notes.See picture.
c) Try getting more contact between the embouchure plate and the chin area. If the lower lip is pursing forward too
much, you may be aiming too high for the high register, and thus sharpening by too acute an angle. Instead of aiming
high, narrow the hole in the lips by gently pressing the bottom lip against the upper to reduce the size of the aperture
for high register playing.
d) Try working on keeping the pressure of the lip plate as low as possible to allow the bottom lip a great deal of
freedom. This goes along with more chin contact on the lip plate.
In Roger Mather's book The Art of Flute Playing, he suggests that the final, lowest contact point (after much
experimenting) will be against the roots of the lower teeth on silver flute
headjoints (piccolo placement will be a touch higher).
The embouchure hole will *always* be at the red line of the lower lip, but the "pressure" point will be much lower, to
allow the lip flexibility. See picture.
When I went thru' his book and gradually lowered the pressure point, I lost my tendency to play sharp. [One of the
problems of "jawing" is that the approach angle to the flute is rarely the same twice. If the flute's pressure is NOT on
the lip, but below the lip proper, then the lips changes
will not displace the flute itself.]
e) If the high notes sound tight, thin or spitty, think of raising the very center of your upper lip aperture by one or two
milimeters. Pull up from a line vertical to the center of your nose.
Note: This particular "hint" made a HUGE difference to me personally, and is a quick fix for many high register tone
problems.
It could be that you've made your lip hole too long and narrow, and there was no room for the airstream to have any
"height" as it left your lips. Sometimes just "thinking" this arc in the upper lip is sufficient to open up your high note
sound and make it sound freer and more ringing and "glistening."
f) Try aiming up for the lowest register, and aiming more downward for the highest register (using the inner lip
membrane moving diagonally). When we're beginners we often are told the opposite, to angle the airstream higher for
high note, and angle down into the flute for lownotes. At a certain level of advanced playing, it's best to picture a bit
more of the opposite in order to place the notes "in tune". Don't over-do this angling: sometimes all you need do is
"think" the angle change and that'll cause a tiny shift that is sufficient to tune the notes.
(see also number 5, from the Physical flute, below.)
3) Experiment with "Blowing from the belt." Alot of shifting intonation problems really stabilize when you do the
"belt trick". Pretend there's a belt done up two notches too loose around your waist. When you breath in, and also as
you blow out, keep the belt taut around your waist. (try with a real belt to see if you're doing it right.) This really
works!!!
4) Sing the pitches you're playing one or two (or even more) octaves below, and then play the flute parts while
"silently singing" the pitches you're playing. The lungs will resonate deeper, because their size for a pitch is matching
the flute's size for the pitch. You wouldn't believe the deep harmonics you'll hear when you silently sing your flute
parts, and it really brings sharpness down in the high.
5) From Wilkinson's "The Physical Flute": Picture the harmonic series of possible notes above and below the
sounding pitch as a vertical ladder of sounds. (for ex. on a low C, overblow as high as you can to recognize the ladder
of sounds available with all fingers down.) Now visualize this ladder when you play any of the notes on it. If you're
playing a high G, aim your air so that you can still get an aural inkling of that low C; if you're playing a low D, aim the
air so
that you still hear an inkling of a D3. This lets high notes sound less sharp, and lowest notes sound less flat.
Since 99% of pitch problems are cured by listening and singing, I'll suggest that pitch trouble can be overcome with
the use of (human) "body resonances"...and not the instrument but the player
can fix it. Even superbly in-tune headjoints and flutes sound out of tune without body resonance.
If you play as if you were "singing" you know you'd hit the right pitches with your voice, so have the same notion:
Sing your parts.
Good luck, and let us know what helped.

*******************************
Back to top
5. A question about orchestral flutist's finesse

____________________
A question about orchestral flutist's finesse
From a student on Flutenet:
__________________________
> Jennifer,
> Your articles are AWESOME! I'm only half way through with them and I can't wait until tomorrow when I can sit in
front of my mirror and play long tones and > scales and practice my articulation ALL DAY... Ok, I'm > a little
extreme, but on a more serious note, I find your writing incredible and very interesting, to say the least, especially
these vowel dynamics. I may not have read/experimented enough to ask this question, > but I'm curious to know how
you manage those beautiful note endings and nuances and resonances characteristic with many great orchestral flutists
(something I'm > messing around with at the moment). If you really do > like reading about me and more of my many
> ugly-sounding experiences and adventures in attempting > to play the flute, I have a book full of thoughts and >
questions in my head just waiting to be expressed. <snip>
> My playing lacks the many aspects of a truly > refined, focused, and stylisticly, tonally, > intonationally (making up
words here) and technically > adept performance. Luckily, a passion for music and > musical thinking is second nature
to me now, so just > using the flute to express that is my problem. > Thanks for any help you can offer,
> W.
_________________
Dear W,
Your own teacher will help with this as well, but I can get you started with some ideas about note-ending and
diminuendos with which to end phrases beautifully. I'll start with the basics: _______________________
1. The very first thing to practice is holding a long-tone on an easy note, and cresendoing slowly and steadily,
listening to your tone to insure it still sounds perfect all the way up to a forte, and then dimuendoing again back to
your starting volume. The cresc. and dim. should be very slow and gradual (no lumps or bumps).
You may want to picture several whole notes tied together of a low G for example, that has a long cresc. for two bars,
and then a long diminuendo for 2 bars.
You want it to sound very smooth and gradual. The steady, even and flowing quality of the air that this exercise
engenders is good for a mental 'posture-check-in', good for breathing deeply, good for your co-ordination (as you've
lots of air for only one long note, and can measure your own timing so that you can get *used* to swelling one long
note for however long is comfortable to you at each stage of your development) and is creative-sounding; like creating
pure sound waves.
You also learn to control your support-muscles, naturally, through asking them to do a simple task well. You can
start with easy low and middle register notes, and then move your range outward from the easy starting notes into
more difficult notes.
Over a month or so, gaining proficiency in long slow crescendos and diminuendos, the under-pinning of all expressive
music, you'll really develop some expressive colours and abilities, just by listening and experimenting. These *are*
the underpinings of all music, but even easier than printed-dynamics on sheet music, because you don't have to move
your fingers at the same time.
All you have to do is experience the zen of the whole thing, even without looking at the music stand.
This is the beginning for everything about expressive playing. Simultaneously you'll hear and begin to understand
the natural proclivities of the flute as you put first more air into it, and then when getting softer, less air.
You'll notice that:
When you crescendo on the flute it tends to go sharp

sharp.
When you diminuendo the flute's pitch tends to go flat.
These are some of the flaws of the instrument that the string players, like violin and cello, don't have to deal with.
(when they draw their bow slower, or lighten off their bow and arm pressure, the note doesn't go amazingly flat like
the flute's notes do. Lucky them!!) So there are a couple of interior adjustments we have to learn in order to add
dynamics to a phrase or note in music, and especially in learning to end notes and phrases as beautifully as a violin
does when it leaves a ringing note in the air.
Famous flute teacher's method books cover some of these basics,and you'll find exercises specifically designed to
teach these flute techniques in the following titles:
Trevor Wye's: Practice book for the flute- Book One -TONE
and his Book Four - INTONATION
Marcel Moyse's - De La Sonorite (Tone)
Robert Dick's - Tone Development Through Extended Technique
Walfrid Kujala's Articles in three parts: Jawboning and the Flute Embouchure. This article is found in three places:
1987 Flutetalk magazine May/June, and also Sept. and Oct. '87
1971 "The Instrumentalist" Magazine
The Anthology of articles published for the fiftieth anniversary of "The Instrumentalist". Look for all these three
journal sources at a University library or order using "interlibrary loan" from your public library.
And there is a very interesting description of this in the fabulous book by Thomas Nyfenger called: "Music and the
Flute" (which I found through Interlibrary loan at the public library, so maybe you will too. :>) But until you get
ahold of one or more of these books (or ask your teacher for a loaner of the pages from Wye or Moyse) I'll
try and get you started:
First of all consider:
_________________________
2. Getting Louder without going sharp:
The airspeed and support coming from your lungs may be greater when crescendoing to a rich and full sound, but
you don't want to push the pitch sharp by "over blowing"---therefore you need a way of tempering the air BEFORE it
gets to the flute.
As you blow faster and faster air, you need to pull down the upper lip so that the jaw hinges open a little, and you can
gently drop your jaw down, a tiny amount ie: 3 milimetres. ( The jaw hinges should be open and freely hanging like an
easily strung hammock). With the upper lip pulled down a tiny amount feel as if you can open and relax your lip
opening, or aperture, making it larger, in order to let the air stream very slightly slow down and mellow before rushing
into the flute at great volume.
Having a larger mouth syllable like "Awe" insures that your tongue is well out of the way and there is a maximum
resonating chamber (like a Cathedral) inside your mouth cavity for the air to slow down in before reaching the flute.
Relax your jaw, relax your neck, relax your shoulders.
Make your mouth feel very open.
This more open mouth syllable will also allow the sound of the flute to re-echo back into the mouth and create a really
lovely full-body tone colour. (like a singer's "body resonance".) If you're clever, you'll also open your chest, throat
and nasal cavities as much as you can so that your largest double forte rings your whole resonating chamber system,
inside your body.
Singing the note an octave or two lower, can also help your body pitch itself to resonate this note back and forth
between your cavities and the flute. This can be an amazing sound, and if you stay very relaxed from the chest all the
way up to your face and lips, can become almost effortless to produce (except for the large torso muscles below the
chest pushing the air really fast and full.)
In Moyse's book "De La Sonorite" he calls the gradual acquiring of this relaxed LOUD state, the "Fullness of Tone"
exercise.
You begin on any easy middle register note such as the C natural in the middle of the staff. It looks like a really long
whole note with a pause over it, and it's marked pp, then breathe and start p, then breathe and start mp, then breathe
and start mf etc. all the way up to ff.......but each one is a long and gradual crescendo up to the next one.
You always breathe between each degree of crescendo.
Because it's difficult to start the note 'ppp' as you shortly will be asked to do, Moyse explains that you first just play a
basic C mezzo forte with good clear tone, in order to find the 'sweetspot' for a C on the headjoint, and assure yourself
that you're know where C is before you have to manipulate it.
Once your mf C is tested, and centered, you take a deep and relaxed breath and start to play a ppp C, gradually and
evenly crescendoing until you reach 'p'. (this is for a long whole note with a pause over it.)
When you reach 'p'......... pause, and keep holding that perfect C at the dynamic 'p'. Take a deep breath and start a C
at p and crescendo to mp. Hold and pause at mp.
Take a deep breath and start a C at mp and crescendo to mf. Etc. Keep doing this until you are fully open and
relaxed on an 'ff' C. Over a series of days you can add different pitches to this exercise, but you only do it for less
than 15 minutes a day.
The goal is to learn to get a fuller and fuller tone, and to control its growth very slowly so that you become aware of a
zillion infintesimal degrees of dynamics between all the dynamic markings:
ppp pp p mp mf f ff ffff.
And that you teach yourself to control pitch and tone as you get fuller and fuller and fuller.
_______________________
3. Avoiding flatness when performing diminuendos:
After a few weeks of doing cresendos and diminuendos on long tones, and then some "fullness of tone" above, you
may wish to further perfect your diminuendos for use as phrase ends and note ends. Note: Even Moyse mentions in
his book that diminuendos can be very tiring to the lips, and not to over-do them.
10 minutes a day for a few weeks should be enough, once you've begun to master the two other exercises above.
Your airspeed may well become less when you diminuendo, but the air-pressure shouldn't sag so much that the note
starts to go flat. So keep the airspeed very slightly faster than you think it should be when playing softly. This is
important to visualize for most of us.
The air may not be under much pressure in soft playing (the gut muscles aren't pushing that hard, they're more sort of
"floating" the air out) but the amount of the air, the volume of air, should still be flowing out quite fast.
So....in order to aid the steady but slow volume of air coming from your lungs to go at a slightly faster speed as the air
gets closer to reaching the flute, you can change the inside of your mouth to a smaller chamber, so that, using the
Venturi principle
principle, the air will move faster through a smaller space (like putting your finger over the end of a hose
makes water that's just trickling out, start the stream of water shooting out fast again.)
Kujala, the Chicago Symphony flutist writes extensively on using the lower teeth as a way to play softly. His acronym
is PLOT. Plot stands for: "Piano----LOwer teeth UP". By bringing the lower teeth upward in the mouth, the mouth's
size is smaller, the height inside the mouth is reduced, and the air speeds up as it goes through the mouth cavity.
Lips should remain poised, not too tight, and not too tense, still soft and cushy, but definitely more "alert" than when
playing loudly and relaxedly.
To practice this, use the vowel syllables from "The Physical Flute" by Fiona Wilkinson, on an easy low note like A,
and listen carefully to ensure that you stay at the same pitch no matter how softly you blow.
Take a deep breath, and starting loudly hold a long low A, and gradually diminuendo from ff to pp. Use the interior
mouth syllables below, and don't change your lips until just at the softest possible "ooooh" syllable, where you will
"feather off' the end of the note with the lower lip aiming up and outward very gently.
From loud to soft you can try the syllables:
Syllables: Awe Aye ehh eeee oooooh (also see my article on "Vowel dynamics" for fuller description.)
Keep the flute in the same place on your chin-skin the whole time, and avoid puckering it away from you. It should
make flat contact with your chin skin, and the airspeed should always be slightly faster than you think it needs to be to
keep the sound rich and ringing.
Keep the air coming even past the point when the note has stopped sounding, so that the air-support, no matter how
slight, is going BEYOND the end of the note, like a little comet-tail of air that follows the note out into the imaginary
hall that you will one day fill with this beautiful tapered off note.
Let this practice become part of your "poise" check, everyday when you're warmed up and looking to develop your
finesse.
If you've got a good ear, you should notice immediately whether you're dropping in pitch as you get softer, and will
make a zillion of microscopic lip, air-speed and mouth adjustments to teach yourself how to keep the A perfectly in
tune all the way to ppp.
[If you're unsure whether you're staying on the same pitch you can use The Tuning CD (highly recommended) or an
electronic tuner, an A that drones out of your metronome, or can hold a piano chord (fun to use different chords that
contain an A) while holding down the sustain pedal of a piano.
An electric keyboard could even sustain a chord for you to play against, if you have one of those. :>)
Work at this only for a few minutes at a time, and do a little each day..... Soon you will have a whole pallet of
dynamic colours to play with, as well as better and better control at perfectly in-tune crescendos, diminuendos, and
note endings.
Ask more questions for more specifics.
Best, Jen
Back to top
6. Tone quality and phrasing
1. Great tone is about making the flute ring; finding the sweetspot on the embouchure hole's far side, splitting the
air over it neatly; relaxing the lip opening just enough to control the air with a long barrel of inner-lip giving really
accurate aim.
A constant stream of air is needed, and the lung, throat and mouth cavities have to be open to let the sound resonate.
You hone all these tone-development skills while doing chromatic longtones (ex: B to Bb, Bb to A, A to Ab), as
Moyse (De La Sonorite) and Wye show in their Tone Exercises books.
Longtone exercises start initially by joining just two notes together, then three, then four.....so that you learn how to
ensure the tone stays pure no matter *what* your fingers are doing or how many of them are going up and down.
It's all about finding the "ringing spot" on the headjoint for all the notes of the flute, and you might as well do this on
every single note you play all the time you're playing.
That's why I too always start with tone above all other issues when practicing.
2. On the other parallel road of development is Phrasing:
Great phrasing (or joining the notes together in a musical sentence that has a river-like continuity, direction and a goal)
is a twin skill to tone development.
It relies firstly on the continuity of the airspeed and support of the exhale and then, eventually, on the ability to
"colour" the exhale, so that the flute sounds as if it's a singer with
something to SAY, when they sing.
Instead of just joining two notes, or three, or five, or nine......whole sentences of notes are put together.
To work on phrasing:
First the exhale has to become steady and long: As if you're blowing a continuous stream of bubbles with a child's
bubble-blowing soap-toy. (try this for real too.) The air has to flow STEADILY, and not whoosh all out at the first
blow.
A long chain of constant soap bubbles through a bubble ring, is what you're imagining.
Then add to this that specifically, for the flute, your controlled and constant airstream has to have continuous air-
support even when the lungs are half-emptied.
To spontaneously learn this you can imagine blowing a ping-pong ball down a really long 70 ft. dining room table (at
eye level), and keeping the ball rolling all the way to the end. (try this live too! :>)
As the imaginary "ball" gets farther and farther away, you'll discover that you use more and more natural abdominal
support to keep the air coming at the same speed.
This is about creating a constant flow-rate of air through very open throat, mouth and chest cavities, with no excess
tension.
As you get better and better at this, practice inhaling each time without tension, and jumping right back in and
continuing that constant river of air.
As you get better at doing this on two or three notes at a time, then you can try it out on an easy piece of music that
you'd love to hear smoothed out. (you're looking for purity of sound throughout longer and longer groups of notes at
this stage.)
Finally: To this skill of air-continuity, you eventually add human emotional "expression", just like a singer does when
they sing lyrics.
Over time you teach yourself that your exhale must be able to crescendo and diminendo on strong and weaker parts of
the phrase, just as when singing meaningful words to a song.
For example: as the phrase becomes more impassioned, the airspeed becomes stronger and richer.......if the phrase has
quiet and more thoughtful bits, the airspeed slows down, and the lips stay poised to keep the air spinning out softly.
If you compare this to the ping-pong ball dining-room table image, its as though you learn to blow faster and then
slightly slower again, in order to speed up and slow down the ping-pong ball's progress even as it's getting farther
away from you. :>)
But I would think it most useful if both of these things, Phrasing and Tone Quality, are developed side by side.
Tone excersises join a handful of notes together, and phrasing joins longer and longer groups of notes, just as
smoothly.
While practicing, alert ears will allow the flutist to spot whichever one is the weaker of the two:
- did I lose the tone?
- did I lose the connectedness of the constant river of air between notes?
.... and take a few moments out from the piece to re-poise your tone or exhale-smoothness, and then transfer that poise
back to the actual notes of the piece of music.
So I agree that they can both be worked on simultaneously; and here are some examples of working both, side by side.
I often ask the flute student chopping their way through a piece (maybe because the notes look like blobs of black ink,
and not like a continuous river of air.) to take away the tonguing, and slur all the notes "like a forward moving
RIVER", in order to poise their air-flow and tone quality again.
Or, if a tough leap is involved, to just play the two leaping notes, chromatically long-toning between the two notes
until they poise the tone quality again.
I say stuff like:

At any point if your flute stops ringing with great tone, just quickly zip back to doing those notes as longtones to get
the tone back; then gradually add the notes that come before and after those ones in the piece again--to join them all
seamlessly together again.
[ I don't re-add the tonguing until the tone and phrasing are smooth again.]
If at any point the phrasing seems all choppy, and the notes not joined together, there are two more practice choices:
a) stop playing the piece for a second, take the flute away, and
practice the imaginary exercise of blowing continuous bubbles or
the ping-pong ball down a table (at eye level) until your natural
continuous motion of the exhale comes back.
b) SING the choppy part all legato and smoothed out with Ah or Oh
syllables. (sing in an easy octave for your voice.)
You can even:
c) Sing first, and then sing *and* play the flute simultaneously
(in octaves as required) to smooth out the phrasing and tone at
the same time.
Hope this helps, :>) Jen Cluff
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Jennifer Cluff 12/2/18, 4(28 AM

Jennifer Cluff ~ Tone Improvement

4. High register and intonation corrections

5. A question about orchestral flutist's finesse

6. Tone Quality and Phrasing

[From 1995 Manual for flute students~ Jenni Cluff.]

STEPS TO BEAUTIFUL FLUTE TONE:

1. Imagine the sound you want to make.

2. Practice Longtones everyday for as long as you can

(at least 15~30 minutes a day.)

( James Galway does at least one hour a day on tone only).

3. Become very aware of the feelings in your lips.

1. THE TWO ROLLING PINS EXERCISE:

2. THE RELAXING OF THE LIP-CENTER EXERCISE:

1. THE FORCE OF WIND ON THE INNER LIPS EXERCISE:

4. Aiming with the Inner Lips:

ROLLING IN OR OUT? HOW DO I KNOW WHERE I AM?

MOVING THE CORNERS OF YOUR LIPS FORWARD AND BACKWARD:

Bring the corners of your lips forward.

LOOK IN THE MIRROR:

LIP CORNERS FORWARD FOR OCTAVE JUMPS:

LIZARD LIPS FOR LOW NOTES:

LONGTONES ARE YOUR FRIENDS, NOT THE BANE OF FLUTE EXISTENCE!

excellent already!!!! Longtones were for beginners, weren't they?

<<Scale pattern which should be all slurred and smooth.....>>

What you actually hear:

(what you hear....)

SO YOU THINK LONGTONES ARE BORING?

2. Using Trevor Wye's Tone Book?

Practicing Octaves as Harmonics:

HIGH REGISTER LONGTONES:

If you need to order by mail try: www.fluteworld.com or Topwind in the U.K.

1) Reading the notation easily, through daily playing of one or

ex: F3 to A3 leap too tough?

invented compositions.....adding trills or held notes, or adding

3. Take a break. Stretch and relax.

At no point do you want to feel tight, fatigued or frustrated.

Have fun. Be creative.

4. Intonation and high register playing:

******From "Flutenet Files" Intonation in Ensembles.*****

EXTRACTS from othe articles on this site that relate:

For great flute tone without playing sharp::

Sing your parts.

Good luck, and let us know what helped.

5. A question about orchestral flutist's finesse

You'll notice that:

When you crescendo on the flute it tends to go sharp

When you diminuendo the flute's pitch tends to go flat.

Marcel Moyse's - De La Sonorite (Tone)

Robert Dick's - Tone Development Through Extended Technique

1971 "The Instrumentalist" Magazine

You always breathe between each degree of crescendo.

From loud to soft you can try the syllables:

Ask more questions for more specifics.

6. Tone quality and phrasing

2. On the other parallel road of development is Phrasing:

I say stuff like:

You can even:

Hope this helps, :>) Jen Cluff

Back to Jen's homepage

© 2018 Jennifer Cluff

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**From "Flutenet Files" Intonation in Ensembles.*