teacher doesn't allow me to practice harmonics?

[thesignpainter]

Hi, I've been playing flute for around 9 months now and I knew about harmonics but never really practiced them.
Yesterday before my flute lesson I decided to try it out and I did, and I felt like it was making me change my embouchure and the speed of the air steam so I thought that was a good thing!
In my lesson I asked my teacher if it was a good way to practice and I told him how I felt when practicing it and he said that I shouldn't do it all until I'm a really good flutist because it can mess things up.
SO, what do you think? I mean, should I do something my teacher told me not to do but the internet tells me it can improve my playing? Also, there's no option of changing my teacher.
Thanks in advance I hope you answer ^^

[Zevang]

In my opinion, there must be a particular reason for your teacher suggesting you not to do so.
I think you must go deep in the matter and open a discussion with him about it.
Ask him why does he think so, since many people say the contrary.
Maybe, as he is the one looking at your development, there is an explanation.

[fluteguy18]

I agree with your teacher. I think 9 months in is too early as well. Harmonics (when done correctly) can work magic on someone's tone and embouchure, but when done incorrectly can result in years of frustration. Players need an extremely high amount of control to do them correctly. I don't think you've had time to develop that control yet. With less than a year of experience you're still building fundamental muscle mass (and control) in your face, arms, fingers, and abdominal muscles. Unless you are of prodigious skill you are still undergoing a lot of changes in your playing technique in regards to your basic embouchure setup.Harmonics should be produced by only changing the lips position. From your description alone I can see that you probably aren't doing them properly and are setting yourself up for bad habits that will take a long time to undo.

What I have seen with most young players who try them.... Most tend to blow harder and tense their embouchure to achieve the change in partials. While most young players would disagree and say they aren't doing that, a teacher and pro-level player can see and hear the difference. Harmonics should be done with everything very relaxed and only by changing the lip position in very tiny ways. I had to learn this the hard way myself. I was changing both and it was only in the past year or so that I finally understood how they truly function. Seeing as how you had to 'change [your] embouchure and [your] air stream' I don't think you're ready for them yet. Wait until your teacher advises you to do so (which will probably be a few years). I would however ask your teacher about this and get a discussion going so you can understand what you're doing right now and why so that you can further increase your understanding of your direction as a developing musician.

[thesignpainter]

Thanks for responding. I had no idea you weren't supposed to blow harder to do harmonics!
I will talk to my teacher about it, thanks again.

[angryapple]

How do harmonics help a student's tone and embouchure? I'd assume that it develops fine control of the facial muscles?

[fluteguy18]

It does help develop the fine motor movements of the lips but it also helps tone the muscles, help the ear/listening skills of the player and encourages the player to pay attention to the interior shape/position of the interior of their mouth. If you're doing everything correctly but something inside your mouth is wrong, they won't work properly. You'll end up having to over-blow to get the partials. Harmonics can also lead to experiments that can fix other problems in your playing as well.

I for example have the tendency to tense my tongue and sometimes clench the back of my oral cavity. Flutter tonguing on long tone arpeggios helps relax those two areas. However, flutter tonguing on harmonics helps me relax my tongue/jaw and focus on using my lips as a completely separate entity to the rest of my mouth/face/jaw/head. This is something that is new to me but the results have been quite effective. I can do some pretty crazy dynamics now. The other day I was practicing doing ppp high notes and everyone thought I was doing whistle tones. Only when I did a full crescendo to show the whole range did people realize what I was really doing. Trying harmonics and flutter tonguing together have also led me to work on doing vibrato on those incredibly soft notes. Doing it with the throat/diaphragm breaks the tone, but doing it with very subtle movements of the tongue can keep it oscillating even to the very end of the taper.

I know I got off topic, but I wanted to share what patient work with harmonics when working them correctly can lead to and what techniques you can learn.