Anyone have any good tips on improving your tone? My band instructor moved me down a seat because my tone wasn't good enough. If you can please help me that would be great. Thanks!
Tone exercises such as those in Moyse's De La Sonorite or Wye's Practice Book on tone are invaluable to any serious flutist. These exercises should be practiced on a daily basis, and are the only way to serious work on tone quality. Ask your teacher about these and other sources for such work. Anything can become a tone exercise if you slow it down so you can focus on tone quality and color (and making your sound homogeneous throughout the range), so until you can find something written specifically for tone work, take a relatively simple piece (or scales) and use it. Find a pitch where your sound is at its best, and work chromatically away from it (slowly) in both directions, trying to match the sound of each note to the last one. Listening to recordings of great musicians (and they don't have to be flutists) can also be a good way to better develop the concept of the tone you want. Hope tha helps!
I second both of those books...they are amazing. Wye's tone book is one that is always in my bag...I am about to re-order Moyse's book---one of my students walked off with it. Both totally worth it! With Wye's book, it may be worth ordering the omnibus edition...it has all 5 of Wye's book in it and is usually less then buying two books! Great deal! I also like Moyse's Tone Development Through Interpretation...it is out of print right now (as far as I have heard) so if you see it somewhere, grab it! I still occasionally find it at a music store, where it has been buried behind others. This book uses great lyrical melodies to help you focus on tone...mainly opera arias. It is a little more challenging, but nice to work on melodies along with the other books (mainly long tone exercises).
But, if you cannot buy a book right away, practice long tones and I also like to practice harmonics...they will help you focus more on air and embouchure placement, then just fingerings!
I actually just bought the tone development book (original had died and gone to music heaven courtesy of a mud puddle) through florida music service. flute world is on backorder...
these are all great books and methods, all very near and dear to my heart, but without a really good teacher they are just notes on a page...
here is something I do on a daily basis, inspired by Moyse's Tone Development through Interpretation book, simply play a favorite melody nice and slow, repeat in up an octave, or down an octave, then repeat in as many keys as you can...if you want to strenghten your breath control, use the metronome and get gradually slower and slower..
to develop you pallet of colors and timbres, think of the words in each verse and shape your tone accordingly, etc, etc...
sometimes we musicians can't precisely get what our music instructor would like to happen...basin upon my experience,when that happens to me, i just challenge that instructor,this quote directly spurt into my mind, "if others can, why can't i"...so, all i have to do, is practice...coz you know, practice is the only key to mastery... no matter what music school we studied, the mastery of your music depends on your perseverance, patience, and commitment...so all i can advice, just practice and of course with patience... Good luck...
I agree with the books. Trevor Wye's tone exercises helped my tone DRAMATICALLY with only just a year of rigorous practice. And I still use them to further improve my tone. They can be "tedious" but if you just have enough patience and carefully assess your own tone, I will guarantee that you're tone will get better eventually. If you just "play" the exercise without assessing your tone or attempting to improve, these tone exercises will really become no use to you. Just have the right mindset, listen carefully to your tone, listen to other professional players (somehow, that helped my tone for some reason...i'm not so sure about others), and if you just believe that you will become better, your tone will at least /sound/ beautiful to the player. And there will be a point in time when you think your tone became worse, which is actually just the player's thinking. After effectively playing tone exercises, your ear will pick up more flaws in your sound, which will be another step to your improvement. Consistently play these exercises and your tone /will/ improve. Try playing musically as well. Don't just "play" the notes, use dynamics, try your best to smoothen out the flaws, and keep attempting to make the sweetest sound you possibly can.
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