Richly Resonant Flute Tone
“One of the happy aspects of music is the complete individuality, difference and variety in the qualities of performers’ tones.” -John Krell in Kincaidiana
Tone is probably the most discussed aspect of flute playing. We all have our favorite players because of the specific way they sound. My personal preferences are European players like Emmanuel Pahud (Berlin Philharmonic), Ulla Miilmann (National Danish Radio Symphony), and Clara Andrada (Frankfurt Radio Symphony). They are all at the top of my list because of their absolute stunning sound, range, and vibrato choices.
It can be hard to learn how to create a great sound because of the tiny, intricate movements required of our lips, face, throat, and the larger movements of our support system of lungs and abdominal/intercostal muscles. In order to help flutists find their best, most resonant sound, I created a tone packet with three different exercises. First things first though, let me define a few words that I’ll be using a lot.
1. Support: This refers to the quantity and speed of your air. This is controlled by the abdominal and intercostal muscles. These muscles relax to allow your lungs to fill completely with air, and then they tense to push that air out at high speeds.
2. Embouchure: Your lips. This is the shape of your lips and what they are doing.
3. Aperture: This is the opening between your upper and lower lip. This helps control quantity and speed of air that comes out of your mouth by expanding and contracting.
4. Color: The amount of harmonics present in your sound. (I’ll do a much deeper dive into this concept in a later post.)
5. Resonance: In the case of flute tone, I’m usually referring to the resonant spaces inside of your body. This includes your mouth, sinus cavities, throat, and any other space where the sound can bounce inside of you. Singers talk about these things ALL the time, and flute playing is VERY similar to singing in all aspects EXCEPT the vocal chords.
6. Sonority: This describes the unique sound or tone quality of each instrument. We are always striving to create the best flute sound that your instrument is capable of.
In this post, I’m going to walk you through each of these exercises and then provide a short video example of me playing the exercise. So, let’s get started with the first one, Basic Long Tones.
Basic Long Tones
I’ve been playing long tones for at least 25 years, and I continue to play them in a variety of ways in my daily practice. This Basic Long Tone exercise can also be found in the Marcel Moyse book, De la sonorite, which is a wonderful tone book that I do recommend to all of my advanced high school, college, and adult students. Admittedly, the book is kind of dry, but the exercises are fire! Back in 1934, when this book was first published, Moyse wrote about the “strength and speed of the column of air” and “the position of the lips over the mouthpiece,” which are the same concepts we’ll be going over here! If something works, it works!
When practicing Long Tones, we are trying to ensure that every register, low, middle, & high, sound as similar as possible. This is called homogeneity of tone. This is the HARDEST thing to do because we must fight against the nature of the instrument. That middle register tends to be a little airy and less resonant, the upper register tends towards shrill and very sharp, and that lower register wants to be airy and ethereal. There are times where you absolute want those types of sound, but because you are an artistic musician, you will CHOOSE when you employ that type of sound for the purposes of your musical vision.
When you first start playing this exercise, I would turn a metronome on with a quarter note at 50-60 in order to force yourself to play it very slowly. Always, ALWAYS play the repeats. On each repeat, you are trying to improve something that you didn’t like the first time. If you loved it the first time, just play it that beautifully again so that your brain is building that memory of beautiful sound. Your dynamic is mezzo forte. You just want a solid, core flute sound that is smack dab in the middle between your darkest and lightest tone colors. Eventually you can use this exercise to practice a wide range of dynamics and tone colors in every register.
Melodies for Maximum Sonority
This exercise uses a melody that I wrote to continue working on that gorgeous flute sound in all registers, but now we can make MUSIC out of it!
In this exercise, we will play the melody in every major key, striving to maintain that homogeneity of sound in every register. This is where creating the same sound in all registers becomes most challenging. Now you are playing a unique melody THROUGH each register and must make tiny changes in your embouchure, aperture, air speed, quantity of air, or support as you play.
Pay close attention to the dynamics and try to overexaggerate them as much as possible. If you’re finding that playing very softly is causing a lot of tension, try thinking about playing gently or sweetly instead. Sometimes seeing that p on the page causes a lot of tension that we can alleviate if we just think of that dynamic in a more positive way.
If you don’t have time to play through the entire exercise, play through whatever you have time for and start where you left off at your next practice session.
Articulation and Focus
Sometimes the strength of our lips is a direct connection to our ability to make beautiful sound. We need to be able to hold a tiny aperture in our lips and make tiny adjustments constantly while we’re playing. This exercise will help you to focus on just that tiny aperture in all ranges of the instrument.
Instead of using our normal “Ta” or “Too” articulation, try using “Pe” or “Poo” instead. This means that your lips will start in a closed position and will open when your air streams breaks through. Your tongue stays down in a position of rest while your lips and air are doing all the hard work. If your note doesn’t sound very good on the first try, repeat it a couple times. You’ll hear me do that in the video below.
This is a very intense exercise, so I don’t recommend doing the entire thing in one practice session. Feel free to break it up into pieces and work on just a few keys at a time.
If you like what you read and heard here, please head over to my store and purchase your own copy of Richly Resonant: Exercises for Improved Tone Quality and Focus. It is only $15 and can be used in so many different ways! I hope you enjoy it!
I’m taking a short blogging break in August because I’ll be in Austria playing in a music festival! Follow me on social media if you’d like to see a few pictures and videos from our trip. (@briannelittleflute) I’ll be back on August 23rd with a brand new blog!
Have a wonderful few weeks!
Dr. Little