Experiment with Your Tone

Sometimes I have bad tone days! Don’t you?

Even when I am in good shape from a steady diet of practice, rehearsals, and performances, I can still have a bad tone day.

So what can we do to pull out of the doldrums and make it a good tone day? I remember during my college years when I had bad tone days, all I did was technique. Just the thought of doing long tones turned my stomach! Working on technique was my fallback practice.

Well, I’ve learned a few things since then, and I think that we can sound good every day, all the time. Even when you are tired, or distracted, or just mentally tuned out. Back then when I caught a cold, it felt like my tone caught the cold as well.

If you ever tried to exercise when you’re just so tired, you find that you can do it. And it’s good to plow through exercise even when you’re tired. But your muscles don’t respond in the way that you want them to. And you really have to say, you know what? I’ve got to do it anyway.

So, here’s how you experiment to fix your tone while you are working on your technique.

Pull out your chromatics from Taffanel and Gaubert Number 5.

#1 Lip Pressure

For me one of the first things that happens when I am having a bad tone day is that I apply too much pressure with my flute against my lip.

This of course will also give you some intonation issues. Usually, you’re flat when you do that. So the first thing I’m going do is play my groups of six, and lighten up that pressure. Because I can do it while I’m playing. Don’t worry if you are a little bit uneven in there. Just concentrate on decreasing that lip pressure.

#2 Angle of Airstream

The next thing to think about is the angle that you are blowing across the embouchure hole in the lip plate. So, you want to experiment with that.

And you can take your exercises, whatever you’re doing, and just take them out of a rhythmic context and just make your fingers move. But think about what you can do here to find the right angle to blow the air across.

#3 Relax Embouchure

Sometimes, probably all the time, when I feel like I have a bad tone day, it is because I am way too tight in my embouchure. That may be the case for you too. So, I am going to concentrate on loosening that up.

Now of course you still must maintain your support – your pressure. But if you work on these three issues, I think that it will make a big difference in your tone. And they’ll change your tone right now as you’re playing. And you can even do it while you’re doing your technique.

Once you have worked on these three, next add articulation. Because if you can make a good tone on that tiny little punch of articulation, then you know you are on your way to a better tone day.

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this:

Experimenting with Tone – FluteTips 176