Playing Scales with a New Flute to Learn to Produce Nice Tone

I made a few adjustments to the embouchure hole of my flute per Mr. Doug Tipple’s advice on his site, and it seems to be much easier to reach the low end of the scale than it was. I decided to try to write a piece of music to make playing scales more interesting as a practice piece for myself, and to post it here to help others who might find the stairstep approach up and down an octave to be a little boring. The piece is in ABC format now on this site. I named it: “Swedish Scales (The Wind ’Mid the Sheets)”. There is no sheet music yet, and I probably mangled the ABC notation, as this was my first time attempting to use it. (What I entered played back correctly on “ABC2Win” software. The minimum duration notes are 1/8 notes.) I’ll dedicate the piece to Mr. Galway, whose presentation on YouTube from a master’s class at which he was a guest lecturer inspired the notion of playing scales to achieve better tone, a help to me, as someone with no flute playing experience, and little musical background. I intend this piece as a fun exercise for those of us who are beginners and fond of ITM. (Thank you, Mr. Galway!)

Here is another exercise for producing a nice tone:
Close all holes and play the D. Adjust the embouchure while playing that D. You want that reedy sound, a strong bottom D, that simply sounds good. Once you got that “hard D”, keep on blowing, hold that note, the bottom D is the most important note, once you’ve got that one note sounding nice, all other notes will naturally sound good. If you’re playing that D in a way you like, start rocking back and forth between that D and other notes, try to go up a scale this way DEDFDGDADBD and so forth.

Sounds like a boring exercise and is not convertable in sheet music ( “the hard D air”), but I found myself doing it naturally after a while, the goal is ultimatively that your embouchure adapts to the precise position you need for that hard D.

TMB

Sound advice indeed. Mind the pun.

This clip of Jean-Michel Veillon has something along the same lines:
http://users.skynet.be/berkenhage/nieuweberkenhagesite/muziek/exercises.mp3
more good stuff on that web site (thanks to someone on Chiff & Fipple for pointing it out).
When I first heard it I was so new to flute that I couldn’t even work out what he was doing. A year on I can try the first bit as a warm up as he suggests.

The Berkenhage Workshop ~ a workshop on Irish music…
http://users.skynet.be/berkenhage/

“The hard D air” sounds better than what I wrote! 😉. Since someone else composed it, I may work it into a melody to count as one of my “five” done in penance…. 😉

TMB - I just put up: “The Low D Aire (The Alpine Horn)”. I will be using it with “Swedish Scales” as the basis for my initial practice with the Irish flute. It incorporates your practice sequence as a way of making it a little more fun and musical.

Thank you very much for your kind suggestion.

I’m not actually sure that D is enough… the E for example needs a quite different approach to get it sounding without overblowing on all the simple system flutes that I have tried. (Due to the completely different hole venting…)

I like the stepped scales returning to a pedal note, e.g.
D2EdDFDGDADBAcD (Pedal note off the beat) and back down again.
also (pedal note on the beat): D2DEDFDGDADBDcDBDADGDFDED2

And from E:
E2DEEEFEGEAEBEcEBE etc.
until…
B2BABGBFBEBDBEBFBGBABBBCB

Do these dead slow… Then try them in the second octave.

Chris.

Funny, on my flute the E is somehow tied to the D, when the D is strong the E fits great too.
But I agree there is further amending to be done, but this advice is directed at newcomers, and is meant to develop the embouchure. The low D is not easy to get it sounding good and you will blow a lot more focused when you have it under your belt. Then, with the focused embouchure you can start amending the other notes, this is how it worked for me.

Yes, that’s what I am finding TMB.
The exercises in the Jean-Michel Veillon clip I linked above start with ADADADGDGDGDFDFDFDEDEDED and I find that doing it that way (a fifth, then a fourth) helps me with the intonation of the bottom end of the scale as well as with the low-D.

“Das Flugelhorn” is now in the tunes listing based upon the Jean-Michel Veillon exercise, with tonal shifts from the top end to the bottom end moving to ever smaller intevals in the first part. I’ll use it with “The Alpine Horn” and “Swedish Scales” to practice tonal shifts and the low D note that has proven so challenging to me.

Thank you once again for the additional information.

well, I suppose that if one is of the opinion that scales are not really anything fundamentaly different from tunes, just c r a p tunes, I can’t complain when someone wants to put “scales” in the (crap) tune dats base

Can you suggest any real tunes that give a good workout to that low D pedal ?

I’m learning the rambler at the minute after I heard it from a Paul smyth set, very nice playing BTW.

Here it is here, but Paul and Hammy play it in G which is in the comments of the tune, very nice, it works the D and E very nicely.

https://thesession.org/tunes/510

Andy

IMHO, Jenny’s Wedding is a great tune.
https://thesession.org/tunes/1347

You have the rocking phrase in the first bar, starting on a D2, and recurring Ds in the second line and at the end of the parts. As soon as you arrive at the first bar again, you will hear if your D is still crisp.

And another would be the humours of Ballyloughlin:
https://thesession.org/tunes/210

A great cran-exercise, but even without, 3 of 4 parts end on a LOT of Ds, and the tune features multiple long notes on every note of the D mixo scale bar the B, so this tune actually gives you time to compare the tone of the other notes to your D.
Ah and beside that, you get to practise crans, long rolls and how to cope with those on Cnat and 2nd octave D. A great tune to practise, and certainly fun to play.

And yet another would be the Ships are Sailing,
https://thesession.org/tunes/543
Since neither long notes nor bottom Ds are involved to adjust the tone before you get to the rocking phrase, this tune really shows how good your embouchure is. Apart from that, you have a E-roll right after the Ds, which would be a good practise when you have problems getting a strong E.

These are my favorites tunes for practising the D, but I know few tunes and even among those, this is a personal preference.
Thomas

Some fine suggestions! I’ll add them to the others in my list of favorites, but for now, I’ll keep working on “Swedish Scales”, as jumping into the second register and playing the scale segments smoothly, while producing a consistent “hard” low D note is proving to be sufficient challenge for me. “Swedish Scales” has that other element that I enjoy, a tune that is simple enough to remember without much practice. I’ve heard “The Ships are Sailing” before. I hope the version in the database is as nice as the one I previously heard. Its a great tune! You have fine taste, TMB. (Rest assured that I won’t be adding more tunes, per the Sessioners’ preference. Plenty of good stuff out there, and the question about existing dance tunes has provided some viable “level II” options for a beginner on the Irish flute, like me.)

Good day.

The Goat On The Green offers some good low-E & low-D opportunities… boy, does it sound good when those notes are hit well on that tune!

For D & G arpeggios: The Mill Pond is one of the best of the few tunes that I know….

(been away a couple of days…)

I would agree that once the D is sounding well then it is very likely that all the other notes will too. What I am not sure about is whether spending too much time excusively on the D is the most effective way to achieve that…

’bye