We all want beautiful phrase endings. It is really what separates the professional from the amateur. When I hear flutists play with a beautiful ending to a phrase, whether in the middle of a piece or at the end, I know I need to take a second listen.
How does this happen? What do you do to end notes like that? The operative word is tapers!
A taper is how you end a phrase, or end a note at the end of a phrase so that it softly dissipates, rather than abruptly ends.
Sure, we can just stop the air at the end of the phrase. But that’s just a little bit abrupt. It doesn’t add to the phrase. A beautiful phrase needs to end just as gorgeously as it began.
Gentle Lift at the End
How do you do that? It’s a twist and a lift. We have to twist off the ending and gently lift at the end.
This is accomplished by moving the jaw and the lips. I used to think that it was all just in manipulating your air stream. But I discovered that it is more mechanically accomplished with our jaw and lips.
There’s actually more work involved than arbitrarily doing the right thing with the air.
When I taper I think that I’m going to lift that note right off the page. What I’m actually doing is moving my jaw and lips up and out. This will gently close it off.
In other words, I’m going to gently twist off, and that gives my ending a nice stop.
Twist Off the End
If you do it fast, it just closes too fast and the note ends too abruptly. So, it takes work thinking about it.
Now another way to do this is when you are moving your jaw up and out to also move to the side a little bit. I saw someone do it and it really looked like they twisted their lips just a little bit to the side.
Try this and see if it helps you end the note. I feel like this really does help. However, try this both ways: moving straight out, and going to the side. In both cases use your jaw, but really think about your lips too. Your lips are going to do the ending.
If you work on that over the ends of your phrases on a long note, then you can eventually shorten that up. So, you don’t have to taper only on a whole note. You can learn to do it quickly! You can make all of your phrase ending notes taper, even ending on a quarter note, or an eighth note – but in a microcosm taper.
Vibrato Until the End
When working on tapers in phrase endings practice it with your long tones. Take a nice long tone and taper it before you run out of air. If you’re running out of air while you’re doing your taper, you’re not really learning how to taper. Hold that long tone only long enough until you get the sound that you desire. Then start your taper. Learn to do the taper while you still have air.
Another thing to work on when you taper is to continue the vibrato until the end. It’s a common habit for us to stop vibrato while we’re doing the taper. But you want to practice using your vibrato all the way through your taper. It goes against what feels natural. It feels natural to just stop the vibrato while tapering but fight it and keep your vibrato going all the way through the taper.
Have fun working on your tapers they make a huge difference in your performance.
DoctorFlute
Watch me demonstrate this: FluteTips 71 Tapers
FluteTips 31 Learning How to Crescendo and Diminuendo
