As a Licensed Body Mapping Educator (LBME), my job is to help you understand how and why your body works the way it does. This information allows you to make choices about how you organize your whole body to create the sounds you want on your flute, with your voice, or on any other instrument.
I believe that flute teachers should absolutely be teaching the “how and why” of flute playing. Like with body mapping, this information gives you, the flutist, a choice in how you organize yourself to play the flute, as well as adding to your collection of tools to use while problem solving.
My college classes are made of up musicians of all kinds – wind instrumentalists, string players, pianists, jazz drummers, classically trained percussionists, and singers of all genres. I frequently find myself asking things like, “So what do you have to do to play softly on the piano?” or “What are the places of support for your instrument?” and “What has to happen to your air stream to be able to sustain that long phrase?”even “What has to happen with your bow arm to execute that specific bow stroke?” The first response is usually a blank stare, followed by a brief moment of shock when the students realize that they are not sure of the answer, which is followed by a thinking face as they figure out how to articulate what they are already doing. Or in many cases, what they are not doing or what they are overdoing!
The more I grow as a teacher, the more I strive to incorporate the “how/why” into everything I do with students. I apologize to the students I had when I was 18 and didn’t really know much about teaching. I didn’t approach it this way at the time, and looking back, I could have helped students arrive at solutions much quicker if I had been able to offer more explanations with clarity and simplicity.
Here’s an example of the “how/why” with flute teaching. Half of my current flute studio consists of adult amateur flutists; the rest are high school and middle school students. The vast majority were not started on the flute by a private teacher. They have come up through public school band programs, which I love as I am a middle school band director at heart. One of things my students want to work on is ease and consistency with notes in the high register. When they started with me, they were operating with the idea that high notes are hard on the flute. This is a fair assessment when you’re one of a million flutes sitting there in band and a new high note shows up. You plop the appropriate fingers down and blow. My position is that high notes are not hard if you know what you’re supposed to do with the air and can make the necessary movements.
I ask this question: what are the four things that need to happen to get from a low note to a middle note, like low F to middle F? Generally, they reply that they have no idea. Yes, this is part of the problem—the struggle is real. After experimenting, we agree that the four things (low to middle) are 1) air speed needs to be a little faster, 2) air stream needs to aimed a little higher up, 3) opening the in the lips (aperture) needs to be smaller, and 4) the opening in the lips moves slightly forward in space, towards the back wall of the embouchure hole. This last one is typically left off the list. In order to be able to do these 4 things, the flutist must have an embouchure that is able to move. The middle of the bottom lip is in charge of helping to aim up, and the middle of the top lip is in charge of aiming down. In both cases, both lips need to be moveable. If the inside of the lips is being pulled back into the teeth and/or the corners of the mouth are pulling back, then the whole embouchure cannot move in the way that it needs to. I cue students to think of the air tunnel for the air being more of the wet, inside part of the lips rather than the lipstick or chapstick lips on the outside. Once they understand this and develop the necessary coordination, the high notes pop right out. Going from middle to high is just more of the same movement accompanied by a fingering change.
When students don’t have this knowledge, they typically just blow faster and tighten up their whole face. If the note comes out, it’s very sharp and very shrill. This is an example of using the wrong strategy to get the right note. It’s the “just blow faster” approach. There should be no shame here, we all don’t know what we don’t know.
Practicing harmonics is helpful for developing control and coordination of the embouchure. I’ve had much success with teaching ghost harmonics, which I first learned from Angelita Floyd’s book about Geoffrey Gilbert’s teaching. Instead of starting with a low note and producing harmonics above that, you start with a high and produce “ghost” harmonics below. Finger a high Eb, then aim a little bit lower and you’ll get a middle harmonic, go a little lower and they’ll be a low harmonic. The pattern would be high note, middle harmonic, low harmonic, middle harmonic, high note. I have them start on high Eb and go up to high A. The place where most struggle is getting from the middle harmonic back up to the high note. The middle of the bottom lip must be engaged and aim the airstream up. It’s tricky because the spots are close together. The great things about this exercise is that it provides a built in solution for high note cracking problem. I find that when students are struggling with a skip up to a high E or F#, it’s cracking down and the note that’s actually coming out is the middle harmonic. The student should be able to say, “Oh, well, OK. I know what to do to fix that problem, I’ve practiced it as part of my daily harmonics work.” The answer usually isn’t “blow faster,” it’s an air shape and direction problem. Sure, you can blow your head off and make it through harmonic exercises, but, again, that’s the wrong strategy to get the right note to speak.
Reading the ledger lines is also tricky for many. The solution to this is more practice reading the ledger lines, the same tool that was used when learning to read notation in the staff. Work out of the Filas High Register Studies book for a while and this problem will be fixed.
Fingerings for the high notes can be hard to remember because we flutists are spoiled because we usually get two octaves out the same fingerings. It can be helpful to teach the high note fingerings as “start with something you know and make a change.” High D is like G with first finger up. High E is like middle E with left hand ring finger up. High G# is like middle G# with thumb and index finger off. High A is like middle A, but switch your index fingers (up on left, down on right).
When students remember the things that need to happen for high notes, they can reverse them to get low notes. Here are some other questions I asked flute students this past week: “What has to happen to play that long diminuendo on high whatever without going flat?” and “What actually happens with your tongue for double tonguing?” Then, “What is causing that gaspy sound when you inhale?” and “What specifically is going wrong in that notey passage with your hands?” and finally, “What do you have to do to be able to get a really quick, really fast breath here that’s not noisy?” The answers are all movement based and relatively simple to explain. The superpower is understanding physically what needs to happen and then organizing the face, arms, and whole body to make that happen. This type of information is just as important as teaching students how to phrase musically and count accurately.