Posted by Sir James on October 05, 2002 at 08:52:03:

In Reply to: Tone posted by Veronica on October 04, 2002 at 20:23:24:

Dear Veronica,

I don’t belive in this “relaxed embouchure” and find the term very misleading. I do everything with a certain amount of controlled tension. Sometimes I use more tension than at other times. It is my method to apply tension at all times. When you are playing your Long tones, you need to have a certain amount of tension to ensure that you flute is not moving around while you play. This is a sure fire way to get all the notes all the time.

You should hold the flute between the thumb of the right hand and the knuckle of the left hand and whie pushing forward with the thumb of the right hand and pushing toward you with the left hand you will creat enough pressure on the chin to enable you to have the flexibility in the embouchure needed to keep everything under control.

Using the bottom lip to decide how much of the embouchure you are going to cover you can then manipulate the tone with the upper lip. You say you have full lips. Well you need to stretch the bottom lip initially and then release the sided so you have a straight covering in the middle of the bottom lip. This needs the careful direction of a good teacher.

I think it would not be a bad idea for everyone on the list to say where they are located, as this would enable me to recommend a teacher for you.

I think long tones as we understand them in the Moyse books and Moyse based methods are not so productive as they do not tesach you anything about the mechanism of the embouchure.

What you need to do is to start with b2 ( this is for flute players whose flutes do not have a low B) and with a tempo of 80 on the metronome play a B minor arpeggio in 8th notes. The exercise should sound like this, decending b,f#. d then ascending f# back to a half note B2. So b2,f#2,d2,f#2 long b2. When you do this you will notice you have to move your top lip to correct the pitch, color and dynamic of the tones, thus creating some feedback for your embouchure which you certainly do not get when you are playing the famous “long tones”.

When you have done this a number of times then do it a semi tone lower until you have covered the lower two octaves of the flute.

Practice singing this exercise, so you get the intervals right in your head. This is the best way to improve your intonation. Singing is also important as this helps with your projection.

Sir James