Improve Your Tone by Opening Your Throat

What is your throat doing when you are playing flute? Have you analyzed it? We all know it should be relaxed and open. But is it really?

I always thought that I played with an open throat because it wasn’t tight. But an open throat is more then just not being tight. It takes a very conscious decision. You must decide to open your throat. It does’t just open because it’s not tight.

With an Open Throat Your Tone is More Resonant

If you can believe it, I didn’t think my throat was ever tight. However, I decided to do some experimenting. I focused on my throat when I plays. Much to my surprise, I realized that my throat wasn’t exactly open all the way. In fact, it could be much more open. When I finally figured out how to play with my throat open, I yielded the wonderful results of a more resonant tone.

How do you achieve this? It begins with the breath. More specifically a yawing breath. Take a second and yawn. Feel the throat and how cavernous it is when you breathe. When you breathe naturally filling your stomach with air, relax and expand the throat at the same time. You can feel how open it is. If it doesn’t feel like it does when you yawn it’s not open. Yawn again and focus on opening your throat.

Feel That Yawn

When I play with an open throat my tone is much more resonant. It has more overtones in the sound. By opening the throat up it opens up the whole sound.

Try it yourself. Take the breath. Make sure you are using a yawning breath because that’s the best way to feel the open throat. Make sure that you’re opening all the way up to your sinuses, not just opening up your throat and stopping there. If I were singing it would feel much the same way. Opening up to the sinuses is the feeling that your throat is a straight pipe all the to the sinuses behind the cheekbones. You should feel more vibration when you are that open.