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Tone

What is a good basic tone ? Some obvious thoughts :

  1. When it sounds relaxed and open. Any rigid sound should be avoided. Check Yossi's article for more.
  2. When it doesn't sound mellow and inaccurate.
  3. When you can play it for at least some seconds.
  4. When there's no noise to be heard. See below for more.
  5. When it doesn't colour different from the note before or after it.
  6. When there is a whole world of colour in it, ready to paint all sorts of 'moods'.
  7. When it is supported by your air.
  8. When the air is directed to the right place.
  9. When it starts immediately.

Tips for a fuller sound :

  1. Master air direction.
  2. Open your throat.
  3. Drop the jaw. Try yawning while you play : that will get the right amount of space between your molars.
  4. Keep the head tilted up, not down into the music. Correct posture is paramount to projecting the sound.
  5. While keeping the jaw down, place your lips on top of each other, firm but not rigid, directing the airstream onto the edge of the tone hole.
  6. When you play the low register, try to give it the brightness of the high register.
  7. When you play the high register, give it the warmth of the low register.
  8. Listen to the greatest flutists and slowly form a picture about the ideal tone you want. This ideal sound should be in your head before you play, so that your instrument doesn't drag you to its sound but you make it sound the manner you want !
  9. Pay attention to your tone while practising technique and monitor your technique while playing tone exercises.

Other items to master :

  1. Harmonics.
  2. Fluting Braces.
  3. Vibrato.

Something about noise.

It should be obvious no noise is to be heard on any tone, but this statement isn't really true. Since we always use air to form our tones, it will be impossible to hear absolutely no noise. But it shouldn't interfere with your tones. There are two sorts of noise :

  1. Low noise is formed when your breath support is dropped and when the lip hole isn't small enough. You'll be playing out of tune, lower than normal. You won't be able to play for, let's say, 10 seconds, because you give away your air to the wide nature. What a waste.
  2. High noise is a very disturbing high noise sound generated when you press your lips together. It indicates that you use this lip pressure to stand in place of a far better breath support. It means you have a big problem.

A good, open tone is also imperative to Yossi.

Here is his article :

I learned the following technique from my ex-teacher of saxophone, Ziv Ben. He is a really good Bassoonist and may be he imported it from there.

This method will help you with your sound, it will "open" it, make it deeper , less nervous and less throat-involved.

  1. First stage:

Stand in front of a large mirror without your instrument. While watching your Adam's apple try yawning. Watch your Adam's apple (AA) (= Larynx) going down and thus making more space available for air to come in.

  1. Second stage:

Try controlling the height of your AA without opening your mouth. IMAGINE yawning. Humm very low pitches. Use the mirror to get feedback of your progress.

Don't use force ! Do it gently.

After a 10-14 daily exercise of about 2 min. you may go to the next stage.

  1. Third stage:

Take your flute, and put it in position AS IF you are going to play it and repeat the second stage.

Convince (!) your AA to go down (yawning/low pitch humming), and play a long mp-mf tone. (second octave is good for this).

Keep the pitch.

  1. Fourth stage:

Use this method whenever you play, especially with high notes, where the tone is usually "smaller". You will have to compensate (sp?) with air pressure (using air support).

Shape your mouth as if you want to say the vowel "oo" or "aw".

 
Thanks to Dr. Mike MacMahon for his remarks.
Any comments will be accepted gladly !
Yossi Itzkovich (iyossi@ecitele.com)