Be Flexible!
No, I’m not talking about being limber in the gym. I’m not flexible at all!
But, my lip is amazingly limber.
Your lip is the entrance to fantastic control over your tone. By working on embouchure flexibility, you learn so-much-more about tone.
Embouchure Flexibility is the way that you get your lip to move around the octaves:
to go from high,
to go low,
to do fast, soft,
to do high that’s supposed to be soft
without pinching
It’s really a way to get your lip to be flexible, and to move and to be able to do the things that are required of it, to get the sound, and the quality of the sound that you want.
“Embouchure Flexibility is training your lip
to be able to do what is required of it!”
One of the issues that we flutists deal with is how to play softly in the upper register. What do most burgeoning flutists do for the high register?
Tighten up and over blow
Yep that’s how we roll. The first hint of some high notes coming and the embouchure tightens up like the head of a snare drum. We then pinch out those high notes while over blowing thereby not being excessively loud in the upper register because the embouchure hole is very small.
However, that just aint the way to go! You can learn to play the high register without concurrently tightening and blasting.
Enter Embouchure Flexibility Exercises!
So, embouchure flexibility exercise is not about gymnastics, unless you’re talking about lip gymnastics. There are a couple good exercises that I use to help those lip muscles learn to be flexible.
In the book Tone by Trevor Wye, there are exercises called Flexibility I and Flexibility II. These exercises started me down the road to discovering what embouchure flexibility is all about.
A good place to begin, when looking at Flex I, is to read what Trevor Wye wrote and then actually try to do it. However, I like to turn this exercise into a breathing exercise. Or perhaps more to the point, a NOT breathing exercise.
What I like to do is to play these “sotto voce.” That is, under the breath, barely playing at all. When you do this whole exercise under the breath, barely playing at all, then you make the lip do all the work.
Make your lip do all the work!
When you intentionally use less air, and make your lip do all the work to get the notes out, you turn this exercise into a fabulous embouchure workout!
At the beginning of the exercise, it’s not so hard to get the notes sotto voce. But as you go on and you have to reach for higher notes it starts getting more difficult to rely only on your lip.
Don’t cheat by blowing harder!
If you play it very very softly, barely playing, then you know that you’re relying only on your lip. You will know that you’re doing it right if you’re holding in so much air that you have to actually let air out in order to breathe again.
Trevor Wye offers different rhythms. I think the different rhythms are great. But I like to do them under the breath all the way through. Then, it’s all geared so that the lip does all the work.
Be sure to work towards making each note resonate with sound. You’re barely playing. But you still want to get those notes out. So, if you don’t get a high note to come out, keep working and using that lip, not blowing any harder, not using any more air, holding all that air in.
Here is a short run down on how to work on this exercise.
- Choose 1 of the rhythms to work on
- Play with little to no air – lots of support but little air
- Make your lip do all the work
Lather – Rinse – Repeat
If you allow yourself to use more air, then you are not relying on your lip to do all the work. It’s all about the lip – make the lip get all the notes. You will feel like you are hardly playing and that’s the way you are supposed to feel.
There are other reasons to work on flexibility exercises besides those listed above. Learning about what your embouchure (lip) is capable of is going to help you with everything that you perform. These types of exercises will help you to be more sensitive in your playing and realize that there is more to the embouchure than originally thought.
If you work on this exercise for a month, I guarantee you, your sound is going to change for the better. Your confidence is going to improve.
It’s also just going to get that embouchure so it knows what to do. When you put the flute up to your lip, after a month of practicing these – EVERY SINGLE DAY, your lip is going to know what it is supposed to do. And you’re going to be happy with that sound.
So, practice embouchure flexibility. You’ll be amazed at how your embouchure improves and the positive effect it will have on your tone.
Have Fun!
DoctorFlute
Watch me demonstrate this:
FluteTips 36 Embouchure Flexibility
See Also:
FluteTips 31 Learning How to Crescendo and Diminuendo
FluteTips 36 Embouchure Flexibility
