Hi! I'm eighteen years old and I've been playing the flute for eight years. I've just begun giving flute lessons to a young lady that is going into the sixth grade. She has had one year of flute lessons and is an excellent student. (She practices quite often.)
She has a relatively good grasp on simple music, but she overblows a little bit and also has trouble with making large octave jumps. Do you have any suggestions on helping her solve these problems? Also...do you have any other suggestions of things that help young flutists?
Amateur Flute Instructor
Moderators: Classitar, pied_piper, Phineas
Over blowing.
I had this same problem when I started playing flute. The way my teacher stopped me from doing that is giving me excercises that involved long notes with variable dynamics. We would take half of our lesson period working on tone, mouth position and focus. Start off with a long note from ppp to mf then back down to mf. eventually, we worked up to FF. You cannot overblow an achieve a good result. Once you student can achieve this level of control, octave jumps will be easier. Another thing that helps is recordings. Record her playing and play it back for her so she can see for herself how she sounds., and how she is improving by using a good technique. Of course, if she plans on playing in a 70s style rock/funk band, then overblowing will work!
Phineas
I had this same problem when I started playing flute. The way my teacher stopped me from doing that is giving me excercises that involved long notes with variable dynamics. We would take half of our lesson period working on tone, mouth position and focus. Start off with a long note from ppp to mf then back down to mf. eventually, we worked up to FF. You cannot overblow an achieve a good result. Once you student can achieve this level of control, octave jumps will be easier. Another thing that helps is recordings. Record her playing and play it back for her so she can see for herself how she sounds., and how she is improving by using a good technique. Of course, if she plans on playing in a 70s style rock/funk band, then overblowing will work!
Phineas
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apicultrice
- Posts: 39
- Joined: Thu Jan 04, 2007 2:55 pm
- Location: Nashville, TN
Just from reading what you've written here, it sounds like she doesn't have enough space inside of her mouth. Get her to open up - think about lots of space between the top and bottom teeth at the back of the mouth. The jaw should be dropped and her throat should be open. Get her to say "wha?" in a low, deep voice.
As for octave jumps, having more space in the mouth will help here, as will really being sure that she's engaging her abdominal muscles to support the air through the octave.
Hope this helps!
As for octave jumps, having more space in the mouth will help here, as will really being sure that she's engaging her abdominal muscles to support the air through the octave.
Hope this helps!
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apicultrice
- Posts: 39
- Joined: Thu Jan 04, 2007 2:55 pm
- Location: Nashville, TN
PS: I am in band-camp-teaching mode, so here's one exercise that we do for octaves. We use abdominal pulses of air (think "HA - HA - HA") and do octaves up and down the chromatic scale. No tongued articulation, just breath pulses.
One other thing that might help is discussing with her the direction of airflow for each octave. For the low octave, air should be aimed towards the elbow or the big toe. For higher octaves, air should be aimed more level across the hole, or even upwards if you're going for diminuendos or soft dynamics. This is the same type of principle used with Kathy Blocki's pneumo pro:
http://www.blockiflute.com/pneumopro.php
It's a handy little teaching tool, and my students love playing around with it.
One other thing that might help is discussing with her the direction of airflow for each octave. For the low octave, air should be aimed towards the elbow or the big toe. For higher octaves, air should be aimed more level across the hole, or even upwards if you're going for diminuendos or soft dynamics. This is the same type of principle used with Kathy Blocki's pneumo pro:
http://www.blockiflute.com/pneumopro.php
It's a handy little teaching tool, and my students love playing around with it.