My flute students often ask me, “Why is my tone so unfocused? How can I sound more resonant?”
I spend a great deal of time helping my students develop a luminous tone on the flute—light, focused, and resonant. But sometimes, no matter how many Moyse and Trevor Wye exercises they work on, a small change in the way they hold the flute or their posture suddenly brings their tone into focus.
And, if you’ve never heard what it’s like when you find the center of a note and have an in-tune tone with ringing overtones, it’s a sound you’ll know when you hear it. All of a sudden you sound louder and more resonant without even trying. And your sound will naturally carry further.
Moyse said, “When I do something with my body, the flute—it reacts.”
That’s exactly what we’re exploring in this blog post.
Your body acts as a natural resonator. When you impede its natural ability to vibrate by having sub-par posture or excess tension, you don’t have a focused and rich tone.
In this post, you’ll learn 5 ways your posture could be holding you back from having a round and resonant tone. Plus, at the end, I’m giving you some tips for better posture to help avoid performance injuries.
Let’s dive in!
⬇️ Don’t forget to click here or down below to get your FREE Expressive Long Tones Guide. ⬇️
#1: Avoid Squeezing the Flute Too Hard
Have you ever practiced a difficult passage and found your fingers tensing and squeezing the flute? It often results from not having worked out the necessary coordination between the fingers and tongue. But, having a tight grip on the flute prevents it from vibrating, which could make your tone sound dull.
Plus, when you have a vice-like grip on your flute, it causes tension in the fingers, hands, and wrist. This could lead to tension in the shoulder, which could find itself to the jaw, further inhibiting the sound quality.
Instead, try keeping your fingers relaxed when approaching challenging sections. The lighter your fingers are, the easier it is to play faster. It seems counterintuitive, but you’re creating less work for your body when it engages fewer muscles. And, tension causes muscles to contract and tighten, thereby increasing your body’s workload.
Properly Balance Your Flute
Another culprit of squeezing the flute happens when it isn’t held in an optimum position. Because of the weight of the rods, the flute wants to roll backward, toward your chest. To counteract this, your chin, left index/first finger, and right thumb need to work in tandem to keep the flute balanced.
Ensure that your left index finger keeps the flute anchored towards the chin. The right thumb, should oppose the left hand and gently push the flute away from the body. That dynamic opposition helps keep the flute in place.
Take a careful look at your right thumb position and make sure it’s not too far under the flute. Try to keep it behind the flute so it can counterbalance the left hand.
If you want to test your flute to see if you’re balancing it well, hold it in a playing position with only your left index finger and right thumb. Keep all other fingers off the keys. If the flute rolls backward, it’s not counterbalanced.
#2: Be Aware of Any Tension in the Jaw, Tongue, Throat, and Face
Flutists are athletes of small muscle groups. All the double and triple-tonguing that’s required can wreak havoc on the jaw, tongue, and face.
Jaw
Changes in register or technical demanding elements, like double-tonguing, should not cause the jaw to tense up. If you feel discomfort in your jaw, be sure to take a break, and try to play with the jaw completely relaxed. You can drop your jaw to help with pitch and depth of color, but it should not be tight when doing so.
Unfortunately, Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) syndrome sometimes occurs in musicians. If you experience prolonged discomfort in your jaw that radiates to other places, I highly recommend seeing a doctor. Playing the flute should not be painful.
Tongue & Throat
Fast articulations like double and triple-tonguing can cause tension in the tongue and throat. When playing any articulation, regardless of its speed, ensure that your throat is relaxed and that your tongue does the least amount of movement possible to achieve the result. Keeping your tongue in an engaged and tightened position makes it difficult to articulate well and can impede your ability to play fast passages with good tone quality.
Face
The face contains 43 muscles. Some of the ones used for playing the flute include the obicularis oris, buccinator, masseter, depressor anguli oris, just to name a few. Pulling the lips back, like when smiling, reduces flexibility in the lips and can lead to additional tension in the tongue and jaw. Additionally, closing the lips as the sole means to change register can lead to muscle fatigue, which will, in turn, affect your tone quality.
#3: Bring the Flute to You Not You to the Flute
Think about how you bring your flute to your face. Do you bring it directly to your chin, or do you bring your chin forward to meet the flute?
When you bring yourself to the flute, it causes your neck to crane forward creating a kink in your airstream as it travels from your lungs up your throat and out your mouth. Additionally, bringing your neck to the flute may cause tension in the neck, making it difficult for you to produce your optimum tone quality.
Neck tension can also lead to shoulder discomfort. This happens because your body has to make adjustments to balance the forward position of your head as a result of craning your neck forward. Like finger tension, this can also impact the tongue and lips hindering your tone quality.
If you find yourself bringing your head to the flute and not the other way around, try to remain steady, keep your head still, and bring the flute to you. This ensures that your head stays in a balanced position.
#4: Check your Back, Hips, Legs, and Feet
Slouching while playing the flute, crossing your legs, and standing on one foot can prevent you from having an optimum tone.
When standing and playing the flute, your feet should be under the hips and flat on the floor. I love wearing high heels, but I find that unless they’re the perfect pair, having my heels 4” off the ground impacts my tone regardless of how cute they make my outfit look.
I often see students whose hips are over the front of their feet and toes. This tilts your pelvis and in turn, arches your back, which means it’s not as free to breathe as it needs to be. Instead, your hips should be over the back of your feet near the ankles. If you sit and play, make sure your feet are firmly on the ground and that your chair isn’t too tall for you.
Your shoulders should be over your hips and relaxed. Because of the awkwardness of the flute, it’s easy to let the shoulders hunch and come forward. But—like bringing your neck forward—it impedes your airstream. Plus, it doesn’t allow your lungs to fully expand and resonate.
Also make sure that you’re not clenching your knees when playing. Many people don’t realize they do this when they get nervous. Not only is it not good to keep your knees locked in the incredibly unfortunate event you pass out, but it causes tension in other muscles. Your legs connect at the same place as the diaphragm. Any additional tension in the legs impacts the free movement of your diaphragm.
#5: Avoid Squeezing Your Abs When Playing
When you squeeze your abs, especially at the end of a phrase as you’re running out of air, it causes tension in the body. This tension can travel all the way up to the base of the tongue. Not only that, but it can cause tension in your back where your diaphragm connects to the spine right below the lungs affecting the way your lungs inflate.
Instead, try to keep your abs relaxed and continue to allow your ribs to expand even while you’re exhaling. If you constantly feel like you need to squeeze out your air to reach the end of the phrase, then you need to take a bigger breath or sneak in a sip-breath to finish the phrase. You should have a little bit of air left in your lungs at the end of a breath.
Tips For Better Posture & Preventing Injury
Aside from impacting tone, tension can cause performance injuries. I remember when I was a younger player, I’d often have pain in my left hand first finger because I wasn’t holding the flute in a balanced position. This forced me to push the flute into my chin with my left hand. I also had tension in my shoulders. It got so bad I developed inflammation in my right shoulder and had to delay my senior recital for two weeks.
I’m not the only one, I’ve heard countless stories from musicians who’ve had to either give up their performing careers or take significant breaks while they dealt with a posture-related injury.
Awareness
If you experience pain while practicing, take a break. And if it persists, seek medical attention. There’s no award for playing through pain and the last thing you’ll want is a career-ending injury.
One of the best things you can do when practicing is practice awareness. Once you begin to notice where you’re carrying tension, you can tell your body to make a correction.
I started taking Alexander Technique lessons during my Master’s degree to help me learn where I tended to carry tension and how to make adjustments to play without discomfort. If you’re able, I highly suggest looking into the Alexander Technique or Body Mapping. There are some great books by Pedro de Alcantara and Lea Pearson on each practice.
It’s important to be mindful of your setup. As flutists, it’s easy for us to hold the flute in a way that compromises posture. Lorna McGhee talks about orienting north, south, east, and west. This is a great way to take an internal look at your flute setup and ensure that you’re standing tall, allowing space between your body and the flute, relaxing your shoulders, and standing firmly on the ground.
Now that you know the different ways your posture could affect your tone quality, you’re ready to self-assess on the fly. If you’re still refining your tone, try to see if these adjustments help you. And, if you have a bad tone day, revisit these tips to make sure your setup isn’t hurting your tone quality.
Remember, playing the flute—or any instrument—should not be painful. It’s better to take a preemptive break than over-practice and cause an injury.
Check-in with your body from your head to your toes to find any places where you might be carrying tension. Once you’re able to release that tension, you may find that your tone improves because your body can better resonant.
If you’re looking to improve your tone quality throughout all registers of the flute, I highly encourage you to download my free guide on expressive long tones. It expands on the exercises from Marcel Moyse’s De la sonoritè to help you develop a round, resonant, and focused tone.
And, if you do need some extra help with a bad tone day, I’ve written a post to help you with that.
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