Tone production is one of the most important aspect of flute playing, since it is made through adequate embouchure formation and blowing technique. The flutistb needs to know how to produce the sound that sounds pleasing- if it is not, no one will want to listen to it.
Of course, we aren't talking about material of the instruments or a quality of flute- the sound on the flute is a complex combination of flutist and the flute, and the flute must never be the main reason why good tone isn't produced.
The problems with explaining a good flute tone is that the most changes are inside the flutist's mouth. They aren't visually seen because facial muscles are very small compared to other muscles. You cannot see the flutist and say what does he do- simply because we cannot see micro-movements. Usually flutists aren't able to explain their movements from an objective viewpoint (they don't know enough about anatomy and physiology of the face) and their information are highly personalised. Sometimes two flutists do the same thing- but just explain in differently. Also, different things work for different people.
But the main problem is that we probably don't really know what the good flute tone is.
SO... WHAT IS THE GOOD TONE ON THE FLUTE?
The perception of a good flute tone quality mostly depends on the experiences a single person had in his/ hers educational years.
Trevor Wye said that "...the national characteristic of flute playing in any specific country were the results of the influence of one of more well-known performers in that country".
This literally means that the biggest flute influencer in one geographical field will be the main role-model of a good flute tone and everyone will refer to that person while practicing. It doesn't really need to be objectivelly the flutist with the best tone quality- it probably means this influencer was more approachable and probably worked better with marketing, had better chances to present himself or was better at networking.
In the early twentieth century, there were different national schools of flute playing, the most prominent being the French, German and English schools.
The French Flute School used metal flutes of the modified Boehm system hand- crafted by Louis Lot and others, and a playing style that featured a light tone and vibrato. It stood in contrast with wooden flutes used in German and English school, that gave steady and strong sound. German Flute School was specific with a kind of articulation, of maintaining the tone, which seemed to derive from the Baroque style.
Teachers used books and studies, drew on their experiences as performars to help students. As individual experiences are unique, the influence of great teachers on their students was different from teacher to teacher and from country to country, causing diversity in flute playing worldwide.
A more unified idea of ideal flute tone developed because of the need for a method of tone production which would be most capable of coping with the requirements of music aswell as acoustic of modern concert halls.
Musical requirements are wide range of dynamics and colours over the whole range of the instrument, clarity of articulation, smooth legato and correct intonation.
Acoustical requirements are projection of all levels of dynamics and colours even in big concert halls, good projection in competition with other instruments ( in an ensamble), clarity, smooth legato and contrast when recording.
After big media boom with getting recordings, radio and travelling around different national styles of playing started to merge. Today everyone can hear everything, just sitting by the screen or watching Internet videos.
Individuals gain access to an ever-widening knowledge base with the wide availbility of literature in books, magazines and Internet articles. The latest innovations are made known worldwide very quickly. It is earier to share opinions worldwide, since Internet discusion groups are easly approachible.
Today we can also choose different and large vairety of instruments and different materials, aswell as some modern techniques , avangarde use of chords, microtones, noises made by the keys, tongue clicking, multiphonics, singing while playing etc.
Ideal flute tone also depends on the traditional classical compositions and their style- it is not the same to play Baroque or Classical music.
It is really difficult to know what good flute tone is. It depends to the type of music being played, the time period, the techniques used by the composer, the type of instrument used and personal taste. It is better to focus on similarities that on the differences, since it gives us the best advices of the methodes.
The best way of working on improving tone quality is working on the following topics:
The embouchure
Lip flexibility
Vibrato
Tone colour
It needs to go in this exact order: vibrato should not be tried updated before we removed all embouchure limitations.
In the next weeks I will write more about those topics and discuss how to upgrade each of them and show my experimentations.
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The sources are from work of Gerda Reinette Wilcocks "Improving tone production on the flute with regards to embouchure, lip flexibility, vibrato and tone colour, as seen from a classical music perspective".
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