Three things I never skip in my flute warm up

Three things I don’t skip in my warm ups. I consider these extremely useful tone exercises for resonance, tone colour, depth of tone, dynamics, flexibility, and more. When I started using these in my own practice, I noticed a difference rather quickly, but that of course came with consistency with using them along with my other warm up activities.

Just as the saying goes “don’t skip leg day” - I don’t skip these. So let’s get going with a few of my favourite things.

Singing and playing

This is my ultimate favourite thing to do out of these three. The idea is that by singing the same note that we’re playing (in a comfortable octave) we’re training to set up our vocal chords in the optimal position to resonate to the note we’re playing. We are resonators for the sound we produce with the instrument, and so throat tuning gives us even more of a boost with depth of tone and resonance.

Personally I can get a more relaxed throat and opened up sound with singing and playing. With this I like to do simple things like chromatic long tones (like you’d find in early pages of De la sonorité) as well as slow-moving interval exercises.

How to do it? This is how I explain it to folks who have never done it before. I tell people to imagine blowing a steady stream of air and humming/singing quietly at the same time. Although a lot of people find it easy to start with the voice first and then bringing in the air, some find it easier air first then voice. This can be straining on the voice if you practice it for too long and aren’t used to it or not a singer, so only do a little bit at a time and stop if it starts to feel bad.

Flutter Tongue

I find this helps with waking up my air support feeling a little bit, but it also helps with the richness and responsiveness of my low register.

I’m speaking here on the forward flutter tongue - the one that is actioned at the front of the mouth with the tongue (not the back of the throat.) It can be difficult to get a sound in the low register with this style of flutter tongue so to practice and achieve tone instead of only percussive wind sound, we’re placing the airstream in a very precise location on the strike wall. Practicing this way, I like to see how low I can go on chromatic exercises, experimenting and adjusting as I go, can help me produce a super rich low register that responds just as quickly as other registers.

This type of exercise helped me get a low register that can compete in the heavier parts of Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata (and especially the colour and response that rehearsal 4 in the first movement calls for), some of the sudden low register pointed notes in Luciano Berio’s Sequenza I, as well as a powerful attack and colour on the expression labelled quasi tromba in Maurice Ravel’s Chansons madécasses.

Who ever said the flute’s low register was quiet?

Harmonics

I like to use harmonics in a warm up because they assist in training (and maintaining) flexibility in the embouchure, as well as working on fullness and resonance in my tone.

Building up this flexibility and strength opens up a whole world of things you can do. As an example, and something on all of my students’ wish lists, is playing quietly in the high register without sacrificing tone quality and clarity with a comfy embouchure (as in, not pinching.) For this I use the harmonics exercises provided in Philippe Bernold’s Le souffle, le son, and go comfortably beyond what’s written on the page.

Do you do these regularly? And do you have your own unexpected things you never skip on a warm up? Let me know!

If you want me to help you implement this faster and easier than doing it yourself, let’s talk.

If you’re looking for a flute teacher, wanting to try flute lessons, and try some new warm ups, tone activities, or just nerd-out on the flute and watch your skill grow (or start a new skill and watch that grow), I have space available in my online studio - I would love to work with you! I have a couple of different offerings - click here for info on regular enrolment for ongoing flute lessons, click here for info on my fall into flexible flute lessons bundles, and click here to contact me if you’d like to get started but don’t know what’s right for you!