The Secrets to Clean Articulation on Flute
Learning to cleanly articulate on the flute is a big and difficult part of the instrument. Articulation is a delicate balance between your fingers, your breath, and your tongue. It takes practice, practice, practice, but here are a few important tips to clean tonguing and beautiful articulation on the flute.
Push enough air
If there’s not enough air, you’re never going to get beautiful, clean articulation. At best, your tone will get fuzzy during tongued passages, at worst, your fingers and your tongue will get completely out of sync, leading to flubby passages.
Learning diaphragmatic breathing techniques, practicing with breath trainers such as a breath builder, and focusing on breath and tone continuity will help you build beautiful articulation.
Try “tummy tonguing”! This is one that I learned from Michel Debost’s The Simple Flute. Basically, you’re trying to simulate tonguing without actually using the tongue, but using short breath pulses. Practice scales this way, as it will help teach you the role of your breath support in single tonguing.
Tongue position
It took me years to realize part of the reason why I would simply lose it while single tonguing fast passages or double and triple tonguing, is that my tongue was wayyyy far back in my mouth. Now, there’s some debate about the position of the tongue and where it should be touching when you create your “tooo tooo tooo,” but every method requires you to be at least at the back of the teeth.
French tonguing requires tonguing between the teeth. Personally, this isn’t something I’ve ever subscribed to, but it’s said that French flute players have immaculate articulation, so if it works for you, give it a try!
Personally, I like to tongue just behind the front teeth. Tonguing any further back requires your muscles to contract, which is a less natural position. It makes your tongue work harder, leaving you open to fatigue, so you’ll end up falling apart after playing more than just a couple of notes.
Let the tongue disrupt the hair, not the other way around
The idea with clean, beautiful tonguing is that the breath is the most important part. The tongue should more or less flit forwards, disrupting the air briefly, before the air pushes it back out of the way. Some people find it easier to do this using the consonant “Ti” and others find it easier using the consonant “Di.” Di is a great option for light tonguing, and Ti is a bit more pointed, best used for staccatos.
I used to have this idea that I needed to use my tongue to push the air out of my aperture when it came to articulation and tonguing, but using the air to push the tongue out of the way will keep you from getting fatigued, allow you to tongue more dynamically, and allow to you more easily get into extended techniques such as double and triple tonguing, as well as flutter tonguing.
It’s best to practice all of these things from scales, first and foremost. I really like the Scale Game outlined in The Simple Flute (more on that later) because it gives the opportunity to utilize these different styles of articulations and then apply them to your repertoire. Eventually, changes will become second nature and easy, but easy takes practice, so keep at it!
If you’d like to see if I would be a good fit as a teacher for you, please reach out! I offer lessons in a variety of ways, including online and asynchronous.
