Question:
Air supply on flute
Hey guys,
Im taking flute up as my second practical subject for next yr so im learning it soon. I was worried about the air supply. Ive been told that there is actually a resistance to the instrument when you can play it properly. This comes from my sis who is a good player. But how much air supply do you need to play this compared to the alto or soprano sax?
Thanks,
Michael

Answer:
Without taking measurements, I'd say flute is roughly similar. On flute the very high and very low notes use more air.
However, beginners tend to use air very uneconomically on flute, in which case a flute would use more air.
If you are doubling, you are likely to use more air on flute, than would a flute player dedicating to embouchure perfection for flute only.

Answer:
Here is some interesting thought from a flute player on this subject
I found it enlightening and very helpful in my quest to sound like a flute player.
Click on ABOUT DOUBLING
Good luck.

Answer:
IME, flute takes more air than sax (well baritone at least, which is the only sax I play). But not all that much more, so I wouldn't worry about it. People tend to exaggerate the differences.
That said, when starting on the flute it's a good idea to experiment with just DUMPING entire lungfuls of air into the instrument. This isn't how one would really play, but it is a good training exercise to avoid a common pitfall of flute playing - weak, wimpy, wispy tone. Don't be afraid to pump some air into the flute and get the thing to really ring out. That's how you get a big, rich sound. Eventually you refine it to get that fat sound with less air and more support from the torso and embouchure. But IME it's better to start with a big sound and refine it, than to start wimpy and try to build it up.
Now if you're playing bass flute... whole different story there. Getting a bass flute to really ring and project with a fat rich sound can take an entire lungful for every measure!
P.S. flute embouchures fall into 2 classes: smiley and pouty. Smiley is lips pulled back against your teeth, pouty is lips pushed forward like you're gonna kiss somebody. Avoid smiley - it tends to produce an inferior tone with less control. With a pouty embouchure, blow tones in front of a mirror while rolling the headjoint around, left, right, out, in, etc. to find the sweet spot where the tone locks in. Always play around with it and experiment. Be flexible - don't get locked into a certain way of blowing and be afraid to change.

Answer:
Flute takes no more than sax, and possibly even less, if you have a good embouchure. I have a bass flute and it takes a bit more air than a concert flute, but actually not much more. Again, it is a question of using the air correctly.
There is no resistance as such on the flute, as the mouth is not connected to the instrument. However the size of the embouchure creates the resistance. The more control you have the smaller the hole can be.
Toby

Answer:
I suppose it depends on the player, the flute and one's own subjective interpretation of tone quality. I too can get a tone out of the bass using about the same air volume as a normal flute. But getting the fat, resonant nearly french horn like sound the bass flute is capable of requires considerably more air - about twice the air volume needed for a normal flute.
I wouldn't say either tone is better or worse, only that the bass flute is capable of quite a wide range of tone colors, each appropriate to certain artistic use, and each using a different embouchure with different volumes of air.
This is also true of the regular flute. While its tone colors and dynamics may be just as broad, the embouchure differences to achieve them seem less extreme. Overall my experience is that the bass requires about twice the air volume as the normal flute for any given tone color. Of course that's just a subjective impression - I haven't hooked it up to a flow meter to actually measure it. But perhaps not totally subjective, since I'm also going by how many measures I can play for each breath in any given octave at any given tone color and level of dynamics.
Here I speak only for myself - non professional yet a skilled amateur... every player and embouchure is unique and YMMV.

Answer:
Originally Posted by MRC01 That said, when starting on the flute it's a good idea to experiment with just DUMPING entire lungfuls of air into the instrument. This isn't how one would really play, but it is a good training exercise Just in the interest of balance, I exactly disagree with this statement. Right from the start it is very important to teach flautists to focus their airstream...only focus is the path to great tone. When I learned I was taught to hum as I played longtones, as this limited my air supply and I was forced to really focus the air stream to get a reasonable tone. If you can hum as you play a high E, then you WILL have a powerful flute sound.

Answer:
If you listen to really good flautists, you will hear the edge to the tone--they push it right to the limit before it breaks to the next harmonic. This is a function mostly of air speed, not air volume. It is the same principle as attaching a nozzle to a hose--the same amount of water can do a lot more work when it is more highly pressurized, even if the stream is smaller.
On flute a smaller air stream means less wasted air spilling over the edges and top of the the embouchure hole and entering at the wrong angle, but it requires much more control to put the air where it really needs to be; and since each note requires a slightly different optimum airstream length (the higher, the smaller the distance between lips and hole) it is all the more difficult to play with an optimal embouchure than with an "overkill" embouchure.
I just got out my bass and concert flutes and did a little long-tone test: first and second octave G on a normal breath, played at a comfortable mf. First octave G was almost the same: 26 secs on the C flute and 24 secs on the bass. 2nd octave G was a surprise: 18 secs on the C flute and 20 secs on the bass. The reason is actually pretty clear: the size of the embouchure hole on both flutes is almost the same--just a tad bigger on the bass. But while the bass thus requires a slightly larger embouchure opening, the air speed necessary is much lower than for the C flute, especially in the second octave. It must be said, though, that I have an old Rudall, Carte bass flute with a rather narrow bore, which would affect this somewhat. Modern bass flutes are optimized for strong lower octaves, while this one is rather weak in the very lowest register but plays sweetly right up to C4.
Just for comparison I got out my clarinet and did the same test: 52 seconds for both Gs. This is, of course, because there is no "wasted" air--it all goes across the vibrating reed and into the bore, plus the fact that the reed is closed about 25% of the time, and only fully open the same amount. Because the register change is accomplished by a vent and not by overblowing, the amount of pressure is about equal for both octaves.
Toby

Answer:
Originally Posted by shmuelyosef Just in the interest of balance, I exactly disagree with this statement. Right from the start it is very important to teach flautists to focus their airstream...only focus is the path to great tone. When I learned I was taught to hum as I played longtones, as this limited my air supply and I was forced to really focus the air stream to get a reasonable tone. If you can hum as you play a high E, then you WILL have a powerful flute sound. Perhaps even more explanation is in order. Once again, I am not suggesting somebody actually play the instrument this way. The point is to experiment to find how to get a rich sound. IME, 4 out 5 amateur flutists have a wimpy, wispy sound and most of the time it's because they hold back - afraid to really drive the airstream. I have found this kind of exercise to help people get past that and reach a bigger sound. Once they discover that bigger sound yes they need to focus it. But until they discover it, there is nothing to focus.

Answer:
Originally Posted by kymarto It must be said, though, that I have an old Rudall, Carte bass flute with a rather narrow bore, which would affect this somewhat. Modern bass flutes are optimized for strong lower octaves, while this one is rather weak in the very lowest register but plays sweetly right up to C4.
One of my duet partners has a bass from the 1930s - I don't recall exactly but it may be a Rudall Carte. It has cork at the tenons. Nice tone in the midrange but as you say, the low end is anemic (not due to leaks - it was professionally adjusted and padded). Not only is the bore smaller, but its blowhole is smaller and more elliptical where the Jupiter's is larger and squarish. The Emerson bass I played for a couple of weeks was the same way - beautiful midrange tone, but weak bottom end. Both required less air than my Jupiter bass.
The Jupiter's blowhole is nearly twice the size of my regular flute, and considerbly larger than the RC or the Emerson. The RC and Emerson both had a slightly more refined and focused sound in the midrange, but since the bottom octave was so weak it made their voicing inconsistent throughout the range. Also they seemed to have a narrow sweet spot which provided effortless nice focused tone, but I couldn't get as much flexibility in tone color or dynamics from them. The Jupiter's midrange tone is a bit softer - not weaker, just slightly fuzzier, rather like blowing the first overtone of low C compared to fingering it properly. But the Jupiter's stronger bottom octave makes its voicing more consistent throughout the range. Also its embouchure is more flexible and forgiving, making it more predictable.
P.S. Just for comparison I tried the sustained note myself. A middle octave G on the normal (soprano?) flute with a fat purple tone at MF was about 25 seconds (I could do a longer one, but not with a fat tone at MF). On the bass, 15 seconds. YMMV.

Answer:
Hey Gordon (NZ),
How long have you been playing the flute? I've been a flautist for 40 years and in the lower range the flute takes LESS, not more, air flow unless you want to fracture the tone. Methinks one should not give advice that one doesn't know about. Also, the higher range doesn't take more airflow if one knows the PROPER fingerings for the higher ranges.
Just my $.02 worth.
Jon

Answer:
I was comparing how long I can last with say a 2nd octave G, and a low C, played with EQUAL VOLUME. Of course, if you play low C with a wimpy sound that almost nobody wants to hear - that is if they actually CAN hear it, then you can conserve a lot of air.
"...Also, the higher range doesn't take more airflow if ..." You totally misrepresent what I wrote. I quote, "... the very high ... notes use more air." I challenge you to play a note above third octave Bb for as long as you can play that second octave G.
The VERY high notes do use more air, simply because of the huge air SPEED required in an instrument not optimised for such notes. If it were physically possible to play with a lip aperture of a few microns, then yes, they may use less air, but the lip tissue is not rigid enough to cope with maintaining such a small aperture with such low air pressures.
When a new person enters a party or real-live-life discussion that has already been operating for quite some time, it pays to listen for a while before opening one's big mouth. Same in a discussion forum.
I haver been playing flute, as my first instrument, with thousands of public performances, for only 46 years, with "CORRECT" fingerings all that time. The insults are not required.

Answer:
I find something different from what you guys are saying: bottom octave = high volume low pressure, top octave = low volume high pressure. The bottom octave takes the MOST air and I can hold notes the shortest. The middle octaves require the least air and I can hold them the longest. The top octave takes more air than the middle, but not as much as the bottom. Theoretically the top octave should require the least air - highest pressure, highest velocity lowest volume - but the lips are not prefect enough for that. The extra pressure needed for good tone in the top octave makes it impossible for the lip aperture to be as ideally small as it could be.
I'm not saying this is "right" or "wrong", just my experience, as an amateur flutist playing and non-professionally performing on the flute for 27 years. I suppose it only goes to show that every flutist and embouchure is different. FWIW, I play around NFA level G-H - for example my daily routine includes the Anderson & Berbiguier etudes, etc.

Answer:
I totally agree wiith that.

Answer:
Gordon,
Apparently you need a lesson in semantics or proper word choice/usage. More airflow is not the same thing as lung capacity. Lung capacity has nothing to do with airflow, per se, but rather how long one can hold a particular note/range. I guess our capacities are different mine being slightly larger therefore was my disagreement about needing more airflow at lower and higher ranges. Just to stimie your off-the-cuff remark that I'm sure is coming, Yah, I know I'm full of hot air.
Cheerio, Mate.
Jon

Answer:
Lung capacity is not the variable. Surely we can assume we use the same lungs, filled the same amount, for:
Test 1: Play low C for as long as possible.
Test 2: Play middle G for as long as possible.
Test 3: Play the 4th C for as long as possible.
The note that lasts the shortest, needed the largest flow of air. It's not rocket science!
I DO happen to have a basic education in things technical !!!

Answer:
Jon Turner,
You have a PM from me, I strongly suggest that you read, and abide by it.

Answer:
Speaking of air supply, here's an observation & question for you guys. On piccolo I can hold notes longer than the normal flute. For example in March of the Lion (Carnival of the Animals) there is a middle G trill that lasts for 10 measures. I can play the whole thing in one breath (just barely, with a solid, sweet woody tone) but there's no way I could do that on the flute.
Now a piccolo middle G is the same base frequency as a flute high G. So theoretically wouldn't it require a similar air velocity to high G on the flute? So why is the piccolo so much more air efficient than the flute? Is it because the blowhole is smaller, optimized for twice the frequency?
BTW, it's funny describing a tone as "woody" on a plastic piccolo, but that's what it sounds like. I find that a decent plastic piccolo and headjoint sounds surprisingly similar to a wooden one. Must be the headjoint cut.

Answer:
It seems to me it requires less velocity on piccolo... perhaps something to do with a design that optimises higher notes, such as smaller embouchure hole, and much smaller bore.
You do not need much air to get a pretty loud note by blowing across a "22" bullett casing. But imagine how more difficult it would be if that casing were twice the diameter... 5 times the diameter.....

Answer:
Originally Posted by Gordon (NZ) It seems to me it requires less velocity on piccolo... perhaps something to do with a design that optimises higher notes, such as smaller embouchure hole, and much smaller bore.
Hmmmm... I seem to recall from years ago when I first played a piccolo, that high "D" or "E" seemed to be comparable to highest "C" on a normal flute. I was already a competent flute player but I could only hit high "F" on the piccolo and took a few months of regular playing to go up to high "C" - gradually note by note. It wasn't linear either. High G was a real b!tch of a note to reach, as was Ab, then A was easier, altogether taking only a week or so. Then the next 3 notes took months. Even still today I strain to hit highest C on the piccolo, probably because piccolo isn't my main instrument so I don't practice it every day like I do the flute.
Even today it seems to me that the highest piccolo notes require a more extreme embouchure than any note on the flute. Of course this is totally subjective - just my experience.
Interestingly, the main difference I notice between playing my plastic piccolo and my duet partner's Haynes is not tone quality, but how easily it speaks. Indeed the tone is different and the Haynes sounds sweeter, but it's not as big a difference as one would expect. The bigger difference is how much more easily the Haynes speaks at the extreme top and bottom of the range.