Tone Development on the Flute

Hi everyone,

In todays post I will be talking about developing your tone on the flute.

Developing your tonal quality on the flute can take some time to get right, and not too sound airy when you are playing the flute.

Relax Your Embouchure

Keep your embouchure as relaxed as possible, and try your best not tighten up your embouchure while playing as this will make your flute tone sound harsh and airy.

Air Support

While keeping your embouchure relaxed, you need to support your air really well. This requires a bit of push up from the diaphragm. On lower end of the stave, you need a air support and you should be aiming for a little more depth in tonal quality; and the higher up the stave you go; the more you should be able to 'push through' to get the higher registers to sing.

'Pushing Through' Your Airstream 

What this means is at the same time you are supporting yourself; you will also have to 'push through' your air the higher up the stave that you go. By doing this, you should also get a fuller, richer sound the higher up the stave that you go. But, you should also get a depth to the lower end of the stave. This will take some practice, and a little bit of getting used to. But, it's definitely worth it; as your overall tone quality will improve immensely. 

Embouchure Crisis

While improving your tone on the flute, there's a chance that your embouchure will need to change to help you to get the best overall tonal quality. It can take weeks to sometimes months to solve to get back playing the flute to your usual playing standard, but with a better tonal quality. All I can say is, please just persevere with it; as in the long term it will make you sound better, and become a better player.

Exercises to Help You to Develop Your Tone

Trevor Wye Practice Books for the Flute

Trevor Wye has some brilliant exercises to help you to develop your tone on the flute. But, within these practice books; there's a book dedicated to just tone development.

The exercises from the Trevor Wye Practice Books that I like to use are :-

- Expressive Scales

- Machiavellian Exercises 1

- Low Register Tone Exercises

- Middle Register Tone Exercises

I've always enjoyed playing through the Expressive Scales from these practice books. The one in C Major would be really beneficial to learn, as it starts on low C. Because it starts on the low C, it should enable you to focus on getting a really nice tone in the lower register; and hopefully getting a tone that has a little more depth.

The low/ middle register tone exercises are really gentle tone exercises that will help you to develop your tone even further. There's also a variety of tonal exercises that you can do within these exercises. I would recommend starting off on easier exercise at first just so then you can slowly build up.

If you fancy a challenge I've thrown in the Machiavellian Exercises 1. Please don't attempt these until you feel ready.

Moyse 'Beginning the Flute'

I know that this book is aimed at flute learners who are just starting out, but there's some really great exercises within this book that would also be great for helping you to develop your tone. There's a couple of really nice exercise to help you to ascend and develop your tone down to a low C (Exercises 9/10), and from Exercise 11 onwards the exercises will help you to develop your tone in the higher registers up to the top A. All of the exercises in the book seem to pretty gentle, even though there's a few challenging bits thrown in along the way. Once you start working on an exercise within this book; please just take your time with it.

Developing your tone on the flute will take time for you to learn and develop, but it will happen. Also, you should over time start to hear a massive improvement in your overall tone quality.