Embouchure Questions & Rampal Videos

Embouchure Questions:

Q: Do you move your chin forward and back to change from high octave to low octave?

A: No, but some isolated flute teachers do still teach that method. The strain to the jaw hinge is not necessary, nor is the movement.

As you can read here, or see in the Rampal videos (below), it is the center of the lips that make the octave changes, and not the chin or jaw movement.

When you first start playing the flute, jaw changes might have been used while you experimented. But if you are a practicing flute player, excessive jaw motion will really slow down your progress. Watch Rampal in the videos; in the close up side-views, his jaw never moves even while he's playing huge arpeggios. He changes only the center of the lips for all his adjustments. It's fascinating to see how he does it.
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Q: Off-set Embouchure: I understand that Rampal had his lip opening off-set to the left. Is that therefore a good way to play?

A: Some flutists, due to their dental formation or lip irregularities, do get their best sound from a non-centered lip-opening. This is covered in Roger Mather's book "The Art of Playing the Flute" in some detail, with diagrams.

When you're working on your flute tone in lessons, there are a great deal of slow, sensitive embouchure experiments that you will discover. You will learn how to observe minute embouchure changes that create tone improvement. These time-tested embouchure experiments develop your "ear-mouth" co-ordination. The goal is listening to what the embouchure's shape change has done to your tone, and guide it toward the tone you want to hear.
When you achieve fabulous flute tone,you then can remember what you did to create it. That's the goal! To get great flute tone on demand by "thinking" embouchure changes.

As your embouchure develops, you find that you are making very small motions; and mostly from the very center of the lips.

So, if after doing all the standard tone experiments, over several months, only then, if your tone still hasn't become glorious, you would start experimenting with moving the opening in the lips to the left (or possibly to the right depending on lips and teeth).

In general, it's best to start with lip aperture in the center, so at least, in the mirror, it's easy to remember symetrical movements. Be best tone experimenter you can be, every day on your tone warmups. And leave off-center lip openings to future exploration with your teacher, or, by using the Roger Mather experiments.

Back to the case of Rampal; you can see in the films that his lip-aperture moved to the left as he aged. You can see this in the films quite clearly.
He is quoted as saying he wished he had kept it centered, but he was too lazy. :>)
(Likely as he aged either his arms became tired or his dental work changed his embouchure).

Moyse's embouchure also moved to the left as he aged (perhaps because of tooth-loss or arm-strain) and yet some young players play to the left because they get their best tone quality there (see Denis Bouriakov). However if you don't have to move your embouchure, seek the best tone quality you can get at the center of the lips first, before extensive experimentation.

But as you can see from the close ups in the early films below, Rampal's embouchure started out as centered, and moved to his left as he aged.

Notice that his tone quality was much more pure in the earlier recordings with his centered embouchure.
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Q: Do I have to "lip up", in order to raise the airstream angle for the high register?

A: Not necessarily. If playing at a loud (forte) volume, and projecting your sound in a performance, you actually will correct the flute's sharper upper register, and find a more centered tone quality more easily, if you move your upper lip forward and down, to aim the air stream downward.

Check out Rampal doing this.

In my opinion, if you can achieve this upper-lip position high note tone method first, then later, when learning to diminuendo and play softly in the high register you can alter the height of the upper lip, raising the upper lip center to keep the tone in tune at soft volumes, and pressing upward vertically with the the lower lip. (more on that topic on an upcoing blog post; this is a great technique!)

But a picture saves ten thousand words: check out Rampal's embouchure in the following videos. Check out what he does to leap fast scales and octaves in the Enesco Cantabile and Presto, especially. He shows you how to do it!

Rampal's orginal "centered" embouchure:

CBC Rampal Films (1956-1966):videos



Repertoire on this video:

1 - F. Couperin, Concerto Royal N. 4.

2 - J. B. Bach, Sonata para Flauta em Sol menor, BWV 1020.

3 - J. Haydn, Concerto para Flauta e Clavecin.

4 - C. Debussy, Syrinx. Flautista Jean-Pierre Rampal

5 - L. Boccherini, Concerto em Ré Maior para Flatua e Orquestra.

6 - Mozart, Concerto para Flauta No.1 em G maior, K313

7 - Mozart, Concerto para Flauta No.2 em D major, K314

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Left off-set embouchure. Rampal's later embouchure:

Enesco - Cantabile & Presto: Video



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Rampal - Carnival of Venice - Genin: Video



Enjoy! And hope this helps answer some common questions about embouchure.

Best, Jen

Part 2. High-Med-Low Longtone Warmups (free pdfs)

Dear Flute Lovers,

Free printable Longtone Exercises in pdf!

NEW: Middle & High Register Longtone Warmups (pdf)

UPDATED: Low Longtone Warmups (pdf from previous post)

When you print these sets of pdfs out you get seventeen pages of warmups in three octaves that will last a lifetime. All professional flutists and great teachers and their students do these exact tone warmup exercises, and I've tried to include some hints, tips, tricks and widely spaced pages, so you may write in fingerings, and have room to pencil in your own teacher's tips, tricks and reminders for your tone work.

These first set of longtone exercises are also using a free flow of air. They are geared towards students who tend to try and play with too little air speed, and so are marked mezzo-forte to forte to allow the development of good air motion, open throat, free rhythm, and the development of good "ear to mouth" co-ordination.

The main lip motion, or embouchure technique that most flute students learn when they move into the middle and high registers of the flute is this one:
(click on this jpeg to enlarge it)


This embouchure skill, of moving the lips forward, in a "half-kiss" in order to leap easily up an octave leap with good quality tone is also shown by James Galway with close up camera.


Galway demonstrates octave leaping on headjoint.



Compare what you see Galway do with his lips with the lips illustrations.
Stunningly simple, right? Experiment in the the mirror and listen to the effect on your headjoint. Look in the mirror. See how it's done, then do it yourself.
The two most common errors are:
a) mistakenly rolling the headjoint inward to try and get a high or low note
b) mistakenly pulling the corners of the lips back, thinning the lips or tightening the lips to try and play higher octaves.

And having seen the embouchure move from the center of the lips forward, do you see how using the wet part of the lips allows greater freedom? Also, in the free pdfs of warmups, to you find that over-blowing harmonics with the added resistance of lower fingers, allows you release excess lip tension, to develop your upper register tone quality more quickly?

Also, interesting to note, for those who are encountering this technique for the first time, note that the drawings of lip shapes by Moyse and Lazzari are just approximations of a lip movements. Please don't think you have to make your lips look exactly like these drawings. Tension inhibits flexibility. And you eventually want to make the lip motions so small and so unnoticeable that you can flex just the center of your lips to effortlesly play with great tone in all octaves.

Moyse's drawings focus on the importance of using the wet-part of the inner lip membrane, while Lazzari is estimating the movement of the embouchure muscles that surround the lips. Both are needed at various stages in a student's embouchure development.
But everyone's lips look different and sound quality is the key feature of these techniques. A good teacher can tell by the sound quality whether you need to let go of excess tension, open your throat, release your lip corners, or whatever stage you find yourself at in these exercises.

(And go ahead and click on their names for more embouchure illustrations by Moyse and Lazzari.)

Give these Longtone Exercise pages of "Pure Tone" a try for 15-30 minutes a day, for a few months, and then send feedback. With your teacher's help, you'll undoubtedly fall in love with your own tone over and over again. And that's one of the RICHEST parts of playing the flute.

I've always wanted to make these tone practice pages available for free, so that everyone can get ahead in their tone work before tackling their other goals of "fast fingers of fluting."
Too often students play with fast fingers before they create purity of tone.
So here's your chance to put tone first.

All best,
Jen

Also help yourself to:
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More free pdfs for your flute practice:

Jen's Easy to Read Flute Fingering Chart (pdf - 2 pages)

All free fingering charts and trill charts
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Free Scale Booklets:

Part 4 - Creative scale practice - samples of variations for scales

Part 3 - Morning Scale Class (free pdf - III - Scales in Thirds)

Part 2 - Morning Scale Class (free pdf - II - Chords of all kinds)

Part 1 - Morning Scale Class (free pdf - I - Chromatics, Whole Tone, Major, Harmonic Minor Scales.)

Jazz Modes & Seventh Chords (free):
Extended Major Scales, their Modes, and all jazzy 7th chords pdf.

How do I get fast fingers? (24 pages pdf free flute exercises)
Exercises in trills for fun; chromatic scales for finger evenness.

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Free pdf exercises with mp3 backing tracks:

Major and Minor Scale Pattern with Harp Harmonies

Expanding Intervals Warmup

"The ScaleGame" with mp3 backing track (Taffanel & Gaubert E.J. 4)