I think I've been playing for my whole life with the dreaded "smiley" embouchure - what did I know, when I was a kid we didn't have an internet. Anyway, from what I've read in "flute for dummies" and seen on the James Galway website, what I'm doing is all wrong and is contributing to poor tone quality and intonation trouble, so I'm trying to change.

I can apply Galway's method (more or less), and it does give me nicer tone. It's going to take a while before I can actually apply it while playing any real music. I seem to revert back to my bad habits in short order.

Any advice? Is it even possible for an old flutist to learn new embouchure tricks? I have read that Galway's method may be a little extreme in the "other" extreme.

Thanks,
Jim

Hi Jim, since you asked, hope you really don't mind, I actually heard your recording here, Telemann Fantasia No 4 about 2 days ago when I trying to search for Telemann sonatas. I thought to myself, "this guy's music is good, nice fingering, but that tone is thin and always cracking or at the verge of cracking, poor intonation during note change, and high notes are shrilling, argghhh" - hope you don't mind me being too frank.

Then from this post I know you are using smiley embouchure, no wonder.

Yes, althought I respect and admire Sir Galway very much, and he taught me a lot of things by replied email or posts in the past 3 years, and he even praised me on GFC, but I still also think his teaching is extreme like you said, his methods suited himself very well, and he had used his methods made himself very successful, but doesn't mean his methods are good for everyone. For example his "roll-in a lot", "cover the Hole a lot", "blow in a lot, force air a lot into the tube", and "vibrato comes mostly from throat as he said" are too extreme to many teachers.

He learned flute when he was little in country, he had no famous teachers before 18, so you can imagine, but he worked so hard, he practiced like 10 hours or more a day, and he practice scales at least 3 hours a day, He PERFECTED those extreme methods, and turned them into perfection. Bravo!!! I wish I had that kind of persistence earlier.

My current teacher is also famous locally (a local ex-principal and senior professor), my teacher had smiley embouchure, you know, those days almost everybody teaching this way, but my teacher spent 30 years perfected the embouchure to have a round hole in the centre, can you imagine that? Wow, so the tone and tonal quality become good!

My very first teacher taught me tight embouchure when I was 8, similar to smiley, then at 11 Pahud came and told us that our smiley or tight embouchure are all wrong! If we continue it will haunt us for the rest of our lives, I then changed a teacher, this new teacher used 3 whole years, yes man 3 whole years, to correct my tight embouchure, how? By relax completely my embouchure - that is not to use any strength to play the flute and the scales, that I couldn't even focus my air, then slowly and slowly as time past, he asked me to focus only a little, little by little I started to learn how to focus with relaxed embouchure, even on high notes, it took me 3 years to completely changed from smiley to frown, from tight to relaxed. I don't know how to describe the details.

My point is:

- if you can change embouchure, then change completely but starting from square one, re-learn the embouchure with a good teacher! According to my previous teacher it May take 3 years for kids and 10 years for adult, and many don't even succeed.

- if you can't change embouchure, then don't change it, modify it, perfect it, you can try to use your lip muscles to learn to create a round hole in the middle of your lips. this is to re-shape your embouchure.

Youch!

I suppose I asked for that. No offense taken - I can tell from the recordings that it's all true. Thank you, and I will take the criticism constructively.

I'm also rather on the old side to completely relearn, and I doubt I can find a good teacher who is willing to work with an amateur or the time to spend with one.

I guess I'll keep reading and try to relax my embouchure over time. I am a rather persistent person, maybe I will improve.

Jim

Embouchure changes can be more difficult for older/adult students, but they ARE possible.
Take a look at the 'speech impediment' thread to hear about my own embouchure problem that I fixed. It was a bear.
But it CAN be done.
Read through Jen Cluff's tone/embouchure stuff here:
http://www.jennifercluff.com/intermed.htm#specific
and keep listening to good flutists.

You've already done the first and most major step towards improving, and that is listening for and identifying your problem. It's never nice to recognize, "That's me and I don't like how it sounds". But you simply cannot improve without hearing and identifying what needs to be 'repaired'; getting that 'ear' is imperative to improving your embouchure and your tone.

On another subject- do you have a well-engineered flute whose headjoint will help your development? It doesn't have to be expensive, but it does need to help rather than hinder. For example, I found that the Gemeinhardt HJ encouraged me to blow wrong- its 'sweet spot' was in a place from which stability of pitch was not going to happen. My old Armstrong 104 was really, really stiff. There are student flutes that are conducive to learning excellent tone (Yamaha being one), you might also find a nice step-up flute from the major makers (Sonare/Powell, Azumi/Altus, etc).

That's a little more encouraging. I will check out that link.

As for equipment, I started way back on a Bundy and then an Armstrong 104 student flute. If you noticed my other thread, I am repadding it now. It has a very dull sound, which I blame on the condition of the tone hole and cork stopper plate and probably the shape of the tonehole. Then I played for 5 or 6 years on a silver open-hole DeFord. I don't think it's headjoint is particularly responsive. A few months ago I got the bug to pick up playing again and I just bought an Amadeus. To me, the headjoint is amazingly bright and responsive. That doesn't necessarily mean it's good, but I have no basis to know. I agree a consultation with a professional player/teacher would be invaluable, and I'll try to find someone who can help me.

Today I spent quite a bit of time playing longtones on the DeFord and the Amadeus. I have basically the same major problem on both: notes below about F1 are very flat and nothing I do brings them anywhere close to in tune per my Korg tuner, and notes above about D3 are very sharp and I can only bring them down by rolling in severely, which makes the tone very thin.

The most effective thing I can do seems to be to play louder to increase the pitch or softer to decrease. Of course, the composers don't consider this too much when writing their music.

I have read about the head joint cork position controlling the intonation spread across the range, so on the DeFord (where the cork moves easily), I fiddled it in and out quite a lot to see what the effect was. I concluded it didn't really make much difference, even 10mm or more out of position. On the Amadeus the cork is quite stuck and I haven't been able to move it. I checked the tuning rods I have, and all seem to be marked the same and at 17mm. The Amadeus is pretty much right on the mark. So, I have a bigger problem than cork placement can apparently fix.

Thank you for your suggestions.

Jim

Tibbiecow, I just read your posts on "speech impediment", Wow, it took you 6 year to re-develop/re-modify your embouchure, that's really fast one of my teachers told me it took him 10 years to completely change embouchure!

You are very right, some student headjoints really help to develop embouchure, like Yamaha CY student headjoint. Becoz it has a simple cut, round simple/standard drop-off plate, low riser, french taper, basically it's an old dull boring headjoint, but it is a simple headjoint.

But Pahud still played very beautifully on this headjoint, (he always played on our student 221 and 211 when he came teach us), he said "actually I like simple cut, because our orchestra(BPO) needs me to change a lot of different colour and made variations", this reminds me what Trevor Wye told us about Marcel Moyse's word - "I prefer a simple tube without a built-in tone...then I can put into it what I want" (Marcel Moyse).

exactly! Yamaha makes it purely dependent on the player! not on the cutting or drop-off plate, you said it right! Many people think Yamaha has bad dull sound because they lack good playing power, student Yamaha is like a very simple flute, it needs the player to give it power, Yamaha is like a mirror that reflects what kind of player they are! you are always right saying CY headjoint helps develop embouchure! i admired your word for 1 year now.

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Jim, 17mm to 17.5mm is good enough, don't change it, it doesn't help intonation, outside this range will only cause strange problems that we don't understand at all. inside this range you get normal correct scales. :)

I think your low note flat, high note sharp problem came from your embouchure and abdominal support, because you relaxed your lips and your air-support during low notes, but you pinched/squeezed your lips and gave too much air during high notes. From your shrill high notes, we can understand you have difficulty to go up high register. :( you need good abdominal support to go up 3rd octave, not your lips! I think the best way now is to develop your abdominal support, and then relax your lips to go up 3rd octave. As for low notes - give it more air (rounder tone) or more abdominal force (more overtone partials), both ways you don't get flatness.

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Don't roll in to adjust your intonation, it'll only make your tone thinner or stuffy. Maintain your lip position unchanged, then use your jaw to change the air-stream direction to adjust intonation.

Pyrioni,
Those are excellent suggestions. Thank you. I have found some exercises which involve playing harmonics off lower notes and then finally switching to the correct fingerings that I hope will also help.
Jim

no problem Jim, people here help me, and I help people. Yes, playing harmonics off lower notes and then finally switching to the correct fingerings helps two things:

1) it teaches you how to maintain your lips/embouchure position unchanged and relaxed, and then get up 2nd and 3rd octave with only your abdominal force

2) Trevor Wye taught us during masterclasses to use this same way to check our intonations - to compare upper octave intonation with lower notes, and try to memorize the correct frenquency by listen to the lower note harmonies!

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I love (2), it's like a convenient manual Tuner!

and (1) is like an embouchure checker, lol.

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I would suggest you to buy Trevor Wye's Flute Exercise Book 1-5 (it's actually a method book + short eccential exercises), and once you completed it, then you will need Book 6 advanced student's exercise book. ALL of my teachers forced me to finish all these books in the last 1 and a half years!! It covered everything in flute, technique and tone and vibrato and everything even including 4th octave and circular breathing(I almost made it) etc... with very short but important exercises.

Bilbo complained that Trevor Wye's exercises are too short and simple and were copied/taken from many many famous exercises, but I find his books very useful and easy to practice, and Short, love them. good for adults without too much time.

Pyrioni,
It was a very long and frustrating 6 weeks!
I think a lot of people get into trouble when they have to make such a major change, such as to their embouchure or perhaps if they break bones in their hand and have to write, brush teeth, etc with their other hand.
I learned a major skill with my right hand- I won't go into it in detail, because it involves cows...the back end of them...and a shoulder-length plastic glove...but anyway, one season, I had my 'using' hand in a cast, and had to use my other hand. It was really hard, but I just told myself repeatedly that it is the SAME BRAIN that I am using, and it CAN learn to switch hands, and I just need to learn to feel the differences in my other hand, since my brain already knows what I 'should' feel. It's the same, really, changing your embouchure: your ear 'knows' what it actually wants. The hard part is being satisfied with a bit of progress at a time, when it seems nowhere near 'what I can already do the other way'.

And I'm not sure where Micron went, he helped me out a bunch with this, and I'm sure he could help Jim as well as the poster with the 'speech impediment'/tonguing problem.

Micron is still around. He and I have been discussing tech stuff, and he has provided a couple links to look through on my intonation issues.

I practiced harmonics today for quite a while, playing G2..G1, F2..F1, down to about C2..C1 using the lower octave fingerings. I was trying to make the octave jump using ONLY embouchure change, mostly angle, while attempting to maintain exactly the same breath support. I noticed that when I did it the way I intended, the low notes were no longer flat. I had more trouble with the lower notes. Pyrioni said something that troubles me - that the exercises he mentioned taught switching octaves ONLY with breath support, which is what I thought I was doing wrong. Maybe I'm not on the right track yet.

Working on the first movement of the next Telemann Fantasia (5 I think) I noticed that I start in tune, but towards the end of the movement I am rather flat. I think I'm changing to accomodate the lower notes. Maybe my ears aren't as good as I think, or maybe they are. I'll keep working on it. Thanks for all your help.

Jim