Why not extend your palette with special
effects? Part 1 By Dean
Stallard
We are now
going to look at techniques that belong to the realms of special effects.
However, as before, their practice and use will give you more flexibility and
certainly this first technique should be a part of your daily practice because
of the benefits you will gain.
This
technique goes by several names, as do many extended techniques, presumably because
they are discovered and taken into use by different people, in different
countries, at around the same time.
The third
name for this technique is flageolet, but I choose not to use it as this
name causes confusion. Flageolet means different things to different people,
depending on their musical circles and Nationality. To some flageolet will be a
penny whistle, to some it simply means the playing of harmonics and to others
it means whisper tones.
The
confusion arises because flageolet was originally a small recorder type
instrument used to train birds to sing. From there the term became applied to
the playing of harmonics on open strings of the violin which resembled the
sound of this flute and I suppose the term then became applied to whisper tones
on the flute, as these closely resemble the quality of the string harmonics.
However in some circles and countries the term flageolet means harmonics played
on any instrument, including the flute, because of the original string
application.
The term whistle
is also surely referring to the resemblance they have in tonal quality to
whistling, because there should be no resemblance to that activity in the
embouchure.
Well at least you now know what these tones should sound like, even if you are a little unsure of what to call themJ I choose to call them whisper tones because that`s what Robert Dick does and that`s a pretty good reason (even though I might think of them as whistle tones!)J
In actual
fact whisper tones are, in essence, harmonics. You will remember from my
harmonics articles that when playing a tone on the flute there will be several
sympathetic (and desirable) vibrations set in swing above this note. Whisper
tones are the exact opposite. We are trying to single out only one harmonic (of
several available) yielded by a certain fingering. How easy this will be
depends a lot on your level of control of breath and embouchure, but striving
to play whisper tones will in turn give you good steady breath control combined
with a precise, flexible embouchure.
As with normal harmonics a poorly set up flute will make things more difficult. Check your cork placement and make sure that the head-joint is drawn the correct distance for your flute.
I find that
the fingering for G is a good place to start. With this fingering your first
whisper tone will most likely be a D3. Play a good solid G2 with no vibrato
(who said this was going to be easy?) and remember the set of your lips.
Now play
again but using so little air that you are hardly breathing at all. Keep the
breath steady (very difficult at first) and gradually focus your lips more. If
you are getting no note at any time you might want to angle the air a little
more into the flute, if you are getting the odd piano G2 then you are blowing
too hard.
It doesn`t
matter if you only get the whisper tone for just a moment. You are
experimenting with air speed and angle to find out where the whisper tone is.
Try to single out the angle at which you most often get a whisper tone (no
matter how fleeting) and then start working on the focus in the lips.
You might
well find that what is stopping you is your breath control. An erratic jumpy
air stream will cause the whisper tone to jump between 2 notes or to simply keep
dropping out. If you feel that this is what might be holding you back try
playing long, quiet notes on the recorder or penny whistle (you know- the
flageolet!J). Any unevenness of breath will
show up as fluctuations of pitch and it can be easier to iron these out if you
can hear these changes.
Once you
can play a whisper tone of a few seconds in length using the G fingering, see
if you can use the same fingering and switch to another note. This will require
new experimentation with lip focus and blowing angle, as will playing whisper
tones with other fingerings. As I wrote, this technique will give you precise
but flexible embouchure control.
Finally, if
at first you don`t succeed, try and try again. It`s easy to forget how
difficult things were when we were beginners, expecting now that all things
will come easily. Persevere for a few minutes each day until you can
successfully play a whisper tone and then use them regularly as part of your
warm up, or simply to relax your embouchure after a hard bash on the piccolo.
The benefits really are worth the hard work.
Next time we`ll take a look at another type of whistle, this time the Jet variety.