Hi, I have been playing piccolo for four weeks. As a beginner, my director has to tolerate a lot of things, but he cannot tolerate bad tone quality-which i cannot seem to figure out how to fix. I have been told to blow my air up on high notes and down on low notes. I have done this, and my tone is still not good enough for competition. Please give me advice, willing to try any method to improve!

Only a small question, did you play or practice the flute before?

I would think that long tones would be helpful. Play long notes, listening and adjusting for the best sound, up and down scale.

Be careful of your hearing. For piccolo, earplugs might be a good idea. There are earplugs available with even noise reduction accros frequencies for musicians.

Competition? After only four weeks?

One mistake a lot of people make when first switching to piccolo is that they keep their aperture the same size as it is when they play flute. This makes the sound more "leaky" and "airy" because the air isn't being blown in a concentrated enough stream, so it goes all over the place. Imagine the filters that people put on spray-paint cans to make the paint come out of the can in a much thinner stream. That's what you need to do with your airstream. Also, be sure to stay relaxed and don't tense up your embochure and throat. That can make the tone sound forced and pained. Hope this helped!