Flute Playing

from tallgrasswinds

Start with your fingers off the holes. Rest your bottom lip on the edge of the mouth (embouchure) hole and blow across as you would do with a pop bottle. The term "embouchure" can have two meanings; first it is the hole at the top of the flute that you blow across, second it is the way in which you form your mouth to channel the "air-stream". It should be clear to the reader how the term is used.

Make sure that the embouchure hole is pointed directly upward and that your head is held up straight and looking forward. Your bottom lip must be rested loosely on the edge not pulled up, or curled under itself, or pressed down hard against the flute. Press your lips together at the corners; drawing your lips against your teeth in a slight smile leaving a narrow opening at the front, centered above the embouchure hole. Blow a solid stream of air directly at the opposite edge of the hole. Always remember to blow gently, not hard. The object is to produce a pure tone with a minimum amount of air. Do not lift your bottom lip as you blow. Refer to "illustration 1". What we are trying to do is here is split the air stream across both sides (inside and outside) of the far edge of the embouchure hole. This process creates the turbulence that sets the air molecules in motion. Refer to "illustration 2".

Illustration #1

Illustration #2

If you do not produce a sound, check your bottom lip to make sure your're not unconsciously pulling it up. Then rotate the flute towards you and away from you to change the angle at which your breath hits the edge. Also try varying the shape and pressure of your blowing. Looking in a mirror helps a great deal. If your muscles around your mouth get tired, it's best to take a break. Don't worry about any dizzy feelings, you just aren't used to breathing so deeply. Keep practicing the sound with all the fingers off the holes until you can get it regularly.

If you are having difficulty with this, don't despair. Focusing the "air-stream" is not something that you would be used to doing and this will take some practice but in a short period of time it will be as natural as talking. Try this exercise without the flute: Hold your hand six inches in front of your face with your palm facing you. A slightly wet palm may help you feel your air stream better. Form your embouchure (your mouth position) as described above and blow a light but steady stream of air into your hand. Try to focus a small stream of air by tightening (not pouting) lips against teeth. Here again, a mirror can be of great assistance. See how small your "opening" is as you form your embouchure. Vary the angle of the air stream on your palm by a slight lower jaw movement. Pulling your jaw towards you lowers the stream while pushing the jaw forward raises the air stream. The optimum angle for the time being is just below the horizontal. This exercise will come in handy when we need to get to the upper register (the higher octave) of the flute. Now try the above exercises again with the flute in hand.

Learning: Terry McGee Flute Maker

Your First Notes

Like any flute, the easiest note to play is the one produced by the head joint alone. Hold the head joint up to your mouth, pressing the embouchure to your lips as if kissing. Now let the head joint roll down your chin, so that the embouchure hole turns outwards. Smile slightly to draw the corners of your mouth inwards and upwards. Open a very small gap between your lips and direct a stream of air at the far edge of the embouchure hole. While you blow, adjust the position of the head joint sideways and by rotating it. Experiment with the shape of your lips to find the clearest sound. Keep this up until you can produce a clean sound every time.

Holding the Flute

Hold the flute with the first three fingers of your left hand covering the three holes in the middle joint. Cover the bottom three holes with the first three fingers of the right hand. Use the pads of your fingers, not the tips, to cover the holes - your fingers should be flat on the instrument. Don't squeeze hard - a light grip should be adequate.

Bring the embouchure hole up to your lips with your left elbow close to your chest. The lowest joint of your left-hand first finger should press against the front of the flute to support it. Your thumbs should be holding the flute from below somewhere between the first and second fingers. You should be able to let go the right hand and still hold the flute against your lip.

Left-handed people might be tempted to reverse the above instructions. This is not a good idea. Both hands work equally hard on the flute, so there is no advantage to be gained. Further, if you decide later to get a flute with keys, you will be at a serious disadvantage as the keys only work one way.

You should sit or stand upright, with the flute horizontal or drooping just a little. Do not support the top end of the flute on your left shoulder and do not stick your left elbow out. Keep your neck straight. All of this keeps the breathing passages clear and prevents tiredness and soreness developing in the neck and arms.

When raising fingers from holes, do not raise them too far and try to raise them all a similar amount. This enables you to play faster and more evenly. Practicing in front of a mirror helps to get all these things right.

Fingering the Notes

Hold the flute as above, but with all holes uncovered. Blow this note (c#) and adjust the position of the instrument for best tone. Put down the first finger of your left hand. If you cover the hole properly, a new and lower note (B) should sound. When you can play that note clearly, put down the next finger and so on until you can play all the notes of the bottom octave.

Second octave notes generally use the same fingering. "Overblow" the notes by tightening your embouchure - the gap between your lips - and blowing a little harder. The note "G" is a good one to start on. Once you master overblowing, try out all the notes on the fingering chart.

Note that there are three alternative fingerings given for low C natural. Use any or all of them. Covering half the top hole can be particularly effective in slow tunes.

The third octave notes are given in the chart for the sake of completeness. They are difficult to form and are rarely (if ever) used by most players.

Keep in mind that you don't have to stick to the formal fingerings for your flute, particularly when negotiating tricky passages. For example, a quick passage d,B,d requires swapping every finger, leaving no fingers to support the instrument. If you leave your right hand fingers down, only the fingers of the left hand have to change. The instrument is held securely and no one will notice the unorthodox fingering.

Tonguing

Tonguing (silently mouthing the letter "T" at the start of each note) is used by woodwind players to articulate notes. Classical musicians and school recorder groups are taught to tongue every note that isn't written with a slur to the previous one. Try that with Irish music and you end up with a very tired tongue and music that sounds more like a series of notes than a tune.

Think rather of the notes as words in a song. The words are grouped into phrases and sentences, separated by punctuation marks including full stops and commas. Tonguing is a form of punctuation that marks the start of a phrase. Depending on the tune, the phrase might have a few notes or many. Tongue the notes you want to stand out and slur the rest.

A far better way to articulate Irish music on the flute is by the use of ornaments...

Ornaments

The cut is the first ornament in Irish music. It consists of the note itself, a brief cut up to a higher note and a return to the original note, all done without re-tonguing. The first part of the note and the cut up to the higher note are both very short. A cut on the note E might thus sound EAE......E. It doesn't matter which higher note you use, because it's too short to tell the pitch. For this reason, it is unnecessary to use the formal fingering for the upper note, just momentarily lifting any finger produces a satisfactory cut. A cut that starts with the grace note can be effective too, especially to emphasise a high note beginning a phrase.

Cuts are useful to break up notes of the same pitch and to give emphasis and life to the tune.

Rolls are the next ornament and consist of the note itself, a cut to a higher note, return to the note, a tip to the note below and a final return to the note. A roll on E therefore might sound EAEDE..E ("did-dle-dee").

Real flamboyance comes from combining a roll with an additional cut - again all on one breath. This is often a useful way to deal with the long note at the end of a tune and would sound EAEDEAEE ("did-dle-dee-dum").

Crans are piping ornaments, sometimes used on the flute, particularly for low D. (Because there is no note lower than D, a roll on D is impossible.) A cran consists of alternating the note in question with several higher ones. A D cran might sound DADF#DADD (also "did-dle-dee-dum").

Breathing

There is a great temptation, especially among music notation readers, to breathe only at the end of parts of the tune. This usually means that a lot of the tune is played weakly for want of air, that breaths are long and loud and that parts of the tune get lost. Experienced players find smart places to breathe often, and turn the pauses for breath into punctuation. Smart places include long notes, which might otherwise be rolled. So, for example, a long G might be played as G......G, or rolled as GBGF#GGG, or used as a place to breath as GslurpG. In this way the need to breathe is turned into a virtue and the breath, instead of becoming a hole in the tune, becomes a statement, a rhythmical variation. Varying where the breath is taken can also add variety.

A good tune to try out some of these tricks is The Leitrim Fancy. Keep in mind that jigs should have a happy skipping rhythm (each bar will sound "tick-e-ty, tick-e-ty"). Rendered into "FluteSpeak", the Leitrim Fancy might sound like this:

G roll, F# roll | E slurp B, B cut A B |

G roll, F# roll | D slurp A, A cut F# D |

G roll, F# roll | E slurp B, B cut A B |

G cut B, d B G | A cut B G, F# cut E D |

(repeat first part)

G cut B , d B d | e roll , d B A |

G cut B , d B G | A cut B G , F# cut E D |

G cut B , d B d | E roll , d e f# |

g cut f# e, d B G | A B G , F# cut E D |

(repeat second part)

Practice

Experienced players know that there are some better ways to practise:

Play new tunes very slowly at first, concentrating on getting the notes right at a good, steady rhythm. Once you can play right through without a mistake at the slow speed, gradually increase speed. If you start to stumble, slow down again. This might seem a laborious approach, but it's faster and surer in the long run.
- Some players find the use of a metronome helpful in keeping them to a steady pace. One danger with the use of a metronome is the tendency to iron out the rhythm. Setting the metronome only to mark the bars and half bars might help get around that danger.
When you come across a difficult passage in an otherwise straightforward tune, practice just that passage until it's up to standard.
Whenever possible, learn by ear. It goes in faster and stays in better.
If you are playing from the written notation, learn the tune by heart right from the outset. Play a phrase, then close your eyes and play it again. Then practice the next phrase in the same way, close your eyes and play both phrases. Then work on the third and fourth phrases. Once learned, join them to the first and second. Continue all this slowly, until you can play the tune entirely with your eyes shut. Only now start speeding up the tune.
Another trick is to play the tune from the written notation slowly on to a tape. Now work from the tape.
If you are going to a teacher, bring along a portable cassette recorder and tape the tune you are learning, played slowly at first and then at speed.
If you can find a tape or cassette recorder with two speeds, try recording tunes at the higher speed and replaying at the lower. This reduces speed to a half and pitch by an octave, so you can still play along. This technique is great for working out what just what those great musicians on records are up to. A number of computer programs can achieve the same thing.

Listen!

The most important learning aid for playing Irish music is to listen to good players. This music is from an aural tradition - the notes in the tune can be written down but not the style of delivery. CDs and cassettes of great players are now readily available so there is no excuse not to immerse yourself in the music. Don't confine yourself to flute players - whistle players and pipers also have much to offer the flute player. And, if you are interested in the airs as well as the dance music, listen also to the great singers.

Some suggestions:

Matt Malloy
Seamus Tansy
Eddie Cahill

Sources of Tunes

As previously mentioned, the best source of tunes are those you pick up by ear from other players, either live or off record. Books of written tunes are useful however for filling in the gaps and for finding tunes you can't find elsewhere. The classic tunebook is O'Neill's 1001 gems : The Dance Music of Ireland, Waltons, Dublin. A more recent collection is Ceol Rince na hEireann (The Dance Music of Ireland), 3 Vols, Breandan Breathnach, Education Department, Dublin. (Contact me for a copy of Breathnach's own translation to the introduction to Vol 1.) Sean Keenan has compiled a small but very useful tunebook Irish Music which can be obtained from us. For those with Internet access, an increasing number of tunes are available from Web sites such as Ceolas or The Digital Tradition.

The Importance of a Good Teacher

While these notes will help you get going by yourself, you will make much faster and surer progress if you can find a good teacher. Make sure that the teacher can play in the style you are interested in. Talk to us about finding a teacher in you area. If a teacher is unavailable, the next best thing is a learning tape.

Quiet Practice

If you live in an apartment or have a young family you might need to practice quietly. Try this trick. Make a small blob of Blu-tac (the putty-like substance used to hold posters to walls) and stick it on your flute just beyond the playing edge of the embouchure hole. It really messes up the aerodynamics, with the result that your nice powerful flute is reduced to a whisper. Experiment with the size, shape and placement of the blob to get just the result you need. The good thing about this approach is that you can blast away as if in the pub without bothering anyone.

Wooden Flute

good short description of ornaments in Irish flute playing

Online Music

Alan Ng's Tunography

Irish Traditional Music Tune Index. Alan Ng's Tunography

Henrik Norbeck's ABC Tunes

Irish and Swedish Traditional Tunes and Songs

Mudcat Digital Tradition mirror

Browse the 4000 songs by title

O'Neill's Music Of Ireland

2 books online: O'Neill's_Music_Of_Ireland and Allan's_Irish_Fiddler

The Kitchen Musician