The Issue

Many students, especially young ones, do not use enough air when playing. This is normal as the student grows both physically and as a musician, but many fall into a trap that causes the most common flute issues. Using too little air is a trap, a type of feedback loop, growing exponentially, creating more confusion, anxiety, and frustration in flutists than any other single issue I have seen in my years teaching. It is at the core of most flute related issues, and can be very easily avoided by a shift of priorities.

But… what is the student doesn’t see the problem? What if they think they are already using an appropriate amount of air?

This article focuses on this loss of wind while playing the flute, then offers ways to break that cycle. Agnostic toward any specific flute pedagogy, I hope to bring flute teachers, band directions, and students together, focusing on the right priorities during the first years of instruction maximizing utility.

A Deadly Spiral

Beginners are used to unintended sound. Playing the flute well, just like any musical instrument, is a path of “non ideal” sounds, with the hope that eventually things will make sense and the flute will make a “good” sound reliably. Most students would rather this path be a quick one and can sometimes rush the process. Global tension when learning anything new can offer that shortcut, but it can be the very thing that holds them back as they progress. Lets dive in to a general example:

Something doesn’t work as intended. A high note cracks, a low note sounds as a middle register one, or a note is out of tune. Looking to avoid the embarrassment of a mistake, especially when playing for a group or under pressure, the following is common:

• the flutist becomes nervous and anxious (partially from a startle reflex).
• the flutist tightens globally, restricting movement and breathing.
• the flutist tries to “do something” about the problem. The embouchure, along with the breathing apparatus, tightens.
• Some form of this tightness “works”, as compared to it “not working”, and the student anchors the tension as a correct behavior going forward. .
• with such tight lips, the flute now requires less air to play, and will crack if more air is used
• The flutist then uses less air as they normally would
• the flute does not perform predictably and sound good as the airflow is below the place where the instrument responds in a linear way
• the flutist now need even more tension, or a smaller lip aperture, to keep the notes from cracking or sharp…
• the flutist is now anxious and tightens even more.

This tension leads to less air, which needs more tension, which then causes less air. Making things worse, each iteration of the cycle redefines what is mean to take a full breath. The flutists is training themselves to take shallow, tense breaths. Combined with my belief that students, at any point in time, do what they think works in the moment (or why would they do it?), this cycle is responsible for more weird, strange, and illogical flute playing habits than any other cause.

This issue is exacerbated by pushing the student into the third octave under pressure to just “get the notes out”.

Given enough cycles, students (and some people who self-level as “professional”) will then seek out easier to play instruments to reinforce this learning cycle. We see it all the time at the shop, and it doesn’t get any less sad.

This type of tension used is also less than ideal: global tensions become habit. The player just associates the increasing tension as the amount of “effort” needed to play the instrument. Not only does the player rely on tension, mostly in the face, to make the flute “go”, but they also are not aware of the tension that is creeping into their playing.

To a listener, this spiral leads to weak, flat low register notes, and shrill, sharp high register notes.

And… remember, this is what we experience in the practice room or a flute lesson… just think when the flutist is performing! Everything goes in the wrong direction, creating a recipe for unreliable and weak flute playing. No wonder so many flutists get nervous on stage!

The solution, like any set of full body coordinated behaviors, should focus on breathing. Breathing equals movement, and movement is life.

Need more to help your playing or that of your students? Keep reading.

A Solution that works:

I have found good luck breaking this cycle always involves some of the following elements:

• correct mental map
• permission to fail
• direction to use more wind, no matter the consequences
• Anchoring and relaxing.

identify appropriate mental pictures

Taking a page from the Body Mapping community, and therefore, from the Alexander and Feldenkrais traditions, I have always found a quick anatomy lesson useful towards encouraging proper movement through intention.

Discuss where the lungs are, that there are more lung in the back body than the front, and that the lung is largest at the bottom, then the student will want to breathe into the low back. Keep it appropriate for the student’s maturity level, biased toward simple yet correct imagery. Build correct expectations by saying: Do you know that it takes as much air to play the flute as it does the tuba? Whatever gets the student OK blowing more wind without adding a ton of tension is correct at this phase.

If nothing else, this gets the flutist used to something new and different and can ready them to connect a new behavior to a sound that is closer to the goal. Often times, I will ask “does it feel weird” once I make a change, and, as the flutist usually tells me that it does in fact feel weird and abnormal, I will state “Good, play like this anyway and listen to the sound”.

give permission to fail

This is powerful. As they experiment with small changes, the student needs to be okay with certain notes not sounding as good, while others sound better than they usually do. Discovering the line between tension and relaxation can be a messy process. We want to focus on success: a moving average of improvement toward the goal rather than all the notes improving right away. This is how, in traditional pedagogy, we are taught to think about daily long tones.

have the student use more wind no matter what the immediate consequences are

This part should be fun.

First, avoid terminology around “blowing harder”, which connotes more effort. This language causes more problems when it solves.

I use fun truisms when I teach. Things like:

" What family of instruments do we play: a woodwind or a wood-lip instrument? So, because it is in the name, wind is very important to playing the flute. Use more wind and see what happens".

A reminder that we blow across a modern flute, not “down, into it”. As there is nothing really “pushing back” on the air, as in a reed instrument, it is imperative that the student images blowing at a target far away. Some band directors in Texas will hang big bullseye targets on the wall: they are not just for the brass! Coupled with relaxation, both in the face and in the

Anchoring and Relaxing

I mean the word anchor in two ways:

1. We anchor the amount of air, then change other things. Ideally, we want lots of air across the instrument, so make that constant, then use other means to achieve the sound we want. Fix lips and face issues after the correct amount of air is used, not before! Otherwise, the student will always be chasing their tail.

2. We focus on success, then adjust what is wrong. This builds a feeling of ease into their playing.

By this point, what you hear coming out of the flute will sound very different than their usual playing. Some of the time, the flute will become easier to play and sound more full and prettier. Sometimes it will jump the octave: that is from too much tension somewhere in the player, NOT from “blowing too hard” 99% of time, with the exceptions, in my mind, proving the rule.

You want to anchor the good sounds and adjust the others without decreasing the amount of wind.

Both for the student and the teacher, this is part of the lesson: it shows how often, when things aren’t working, students just stop blowing. By keeping the amount of wind constant and more than the student usually uses, you can then focus on other problems, one at a time, to fix those things while keeping the air supply constant.

What was variable amount of air now becomes a constant, allowing the flutist/teacher to experiment, through metaphor, how to correct what is now “wrong”. Otherwise, we can all find ourselves “blowing less”, which is counterproductive.

Some students are on a false quest for perfection. These students will want to control, through tension, their flute playing. Instead of a rich tone, they will sound how they probably feel, tense, nervous, and timid. The ability to use a lot of air starts with the ability to take in enough air, and in that quest, the student will relax.

tying a bow on the lesson

I end the “lesson” usually by saying: *when in doubt, use more wind. When we are unsure, our air usually decreases: so, when something is working, at least make sure the air is at least as much or more…

Here is an example: I make the statement “you should be more relaxed on your high notes than your low notes”. Students don’t believe this can be. Make them show you what it looks like when they relax and it “doesn’t come out”: 90% of the time they are cutting the air away. Keep them relaxed, move the air, then fix what you see. The tone will be great!

Again: encourage the student to listen to the positive, then fix the what is wrong, while continuing to blow!

Things to remember while working on this process

The student might have to breathe more often.

This makes sense, but we can forget if they are using more air, they will have to resupply the air more often. This is a temporary issue. If the student focuses in practice for a week, the issues usually is cured. Give permission to take time more often to bring air into the body.

Useful car metaphor #1

When driving a car at different speeds, the steering becomes more sensitive the faster the car travels. At highway speeds, tiny rotations of the steering wheel cause large changes in direction for the driver in time. When stopped, a child can turn the wheel back and both safely, as the car isn’t going anywhere. The flute behaves the same way: there is momentum in the wiggling of the air in the flute: give me more energy (wind) and you won’t have to change as much to make big changes to the resulting sound.

This is not only the biggest reason why we should priority how much wind a student uses, but is also a decent meditation for all flutists: it would solve many more issues than it creates.

Useful car metaphor #2

Air is the “gasoline” of the flute. If there is an issue with your car, is your first instinct to drain all of the gas out of the car, and/or block where the air goes in? I hope not. Many students jump to doing this in their flute playing. It doesn’t make sense in car repair 99% of the time, so why would it work with flute playing?

A note about this advice

Some of you who teach might be thinking: I don’t want my students just blowing… there should more care in the relationship between embouchure and air. Just blowing through issues leads to ugly flute playing.

And, I would say:

1. Yes, with more wind should always come more relaxation. The lips will not have to work as hard. Air and lips should always be in balance. We are picking one side of that balance (the air) and increasing it . We could approach the problem from the other direction: Have less tension in the face then have to use more wind to fix what we hear. I see this approach a lot, but feel that it is risky: there is always the chance someone else up in the cycle I mentioned earlier… increasing the wind then fixing what we hear through relaxation and easier to see for most flutists.
2. I would also agree that blowing “hard” is wrong, especially with the advanced student. However, I hear many flutists are thinking of everything except the air they use to fix flute problems, when I believe it should be the first thing that is examined.
3. Foreshadowing a future blog post, there is a way to teach vibrato that addresses this concern. It is also a hottly debated topic in flute circles. I think I have a way that helps the air move while keeping everyone happy. We’ll see how that goes!

The beginner flute and flutist (or the instrument as a limiting factor)

Part of this is how we start beginner: beginner instruments, especially the newer models (not naming names!) are designed to be more responsive and work with little air. While this keeps young flutists from becoming frustrated, students can quickly outgrow these starter instruments. Ensuring that the flute is a good teaching tool, the “correct” flute for most flutists should not be “easy to blow”, but rather should be able to handle increasing amounts of air. To do otherwise will limit their growth with that shinny new flute.

There is a limit to the amount of air a beginner instrument can handle. If “pushed” too much, the tone will spread and will be unpleasing to… well… everyone! This is a major sign that the student is ready for an upgraded instrument. I might be biased in stating that nearly all serious students, and many who show promise, should get away from that student flute toward something that can handle more air, but I am more correct than the junior in high school who is still playing on that student flute with a machine made headjoint.

When the fingers wiggle

In general, the above is easier to communicate to students playing long tones or in passages with long held notes. This stems from a misunderstanding of the relationship between fingers and air. When things are working, the fingers and the air should feel like they don’t have much to do with each other: the air should reflex the phrase, not changes between individual notes. One way to see this is that we only play one long note in music: we just alter it with our fingers to the pitches on the phrase.

…but what about playing softly?

If you spend any time around me, especially at a flute show, you’ll eventually hear me complain about how modern flutists “scream” or “yell” when they play. We all seen to be jockeying for position in some imaginary flute race. Does yelling fit with the communication implied in all flute music? The flute yells when you “blow hard” and you stay tense. Is there a chance my advice will backfire and contribute to this growing problem? Yes, only if just just blow more and do not adjust anything else we have control over as flutists: the lips, the jaw, the throat, and the overall tension must release. Tension is the enemy of good, proper flute playing.

Using wind properly is like drenching people with water. The ear is drawn to a full, colorful sound, akin to a bucket of water dumped on the listener: you can still “get someone wet” where they feel the weight of the water with a smaller bucket. You can’t if you push that water so hard that it hurts the listener.

Paradoxically, when asked how to play “soft” on the flute, I will say “Soft is the same as loud… only softer”. Also, dynamics marking instruct a change in character more than mere volume. Piano in music is much more complex than just sounding “soft”. I hope through a full series of articles, paint a complete picture of the physical changes needed, but, for now, know that answer is not just blow less–> that is a road filled with uncertainty and ends in frustration.

At the risk of repeating myself, the most utility a flutist can have from trying what I suggest in this article comes from keeping the feeling of wind in their playing constant, so that other issues and misunderstandings are in plain view. If you move lots of air and something doesn’t work, you will be juggling concepts while practicing.

Wrapping up

I thought this was going to be short article. If you made it through, congrats. I attempted to make it as concise as I could while being complete. In a lot of ways, I was repeating myself on purpose, trying to counter the inevitable voices from the flute community: “but… embouchure; but… soft; but but but. No buts about it: without enough air, the tone lacks momentum, then nothing else works. We need to start from there as teachers.

The air/tension spiral causes more ingrained bad habits in more flute students than any I have seen, so having good solutions for flutists at every stage of their training would help the largest number of flutists. Like many issues on the instrument, the solution is multipart, and must happen in order and in balance with other priorities with the instrument, as well as the student’s level and maturity. Breathing is the start and the end of our communication as flutists, and starting from day one, we should be building good habits in our own playing and in that of our students.

From my vantage point, however, most flute students in their first years of playing do not move enough wind on average to avoid major headaches . The ones I do see are in their high school years. Why learn an activity where its most fundamental issue, and the one that help uncover other misunderstandings of the instrument, but nothing other than a primary focus until it is habitual?

Ultimately, it is a question of priority. I can’t think of any single topic to the pre-college (and sometimes the collegiate flutist) that leads to improvement more than air, most students need more air when they play, yet many flutists are a patchwork of band-aids build on a foundation that doesn’t use enough air.

I don’t claim to have “magic bullet” to solving the issue, but my hope is this article will cause flutists and teachers alike to remember how fundamental air is in tone production. Students do what they think works in the moment; and I am looking at what we are teaching collectively by what I see come in my shop… kids aren’t getting the message most of the time, so I suggest we focus on the air until it is second nature. Otherwise we overwhelm the student, then they stop blowing!

To summarize: breath in big, blow more air, and relax. If something goes wrong, change something else other than backing off on the air. See how it sounds. The results might surprise you.

Next will be a series series of articles on vibrato: the ultimate “get something for nothing” technique, and is complementary to this discussion of wind. In the future, I will also delve more into the mechanics of breathing: much of flute breathing pedagogy is based in physiology that is at least a century old, and it is time to update that information for the average flutist, along with discussing the consequences of our more modern, and ancient, technology.

Did you like this article? Do you agree or disagree? Have a flute question I haven’t covered (yet) or a request for a future article?

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