You've no doubt noticed that I often talk about improving your tone on the flute...

5 Things That Make Your Flute Tone Fuzzy

It's because improving your tone has such an incredible impact on the rest of your flute playing, such as:

• You'll use your air more efficiently (and therefore not run out as often!)
• You won't get dizzy (ever!)
• High notes become much easier.
• And of course, you sound better!

It's so important that I just made a new YouTube video on the 5 Things That Make Your Tone Fuzzy, and you get to see if first!

The five ways to improve your flute sound

I'm about to show you the five things that make your flute tone fuzzy. I'm Jane and I love showing flute players how the tiniest of adjustments make a huge difference to how good they sound and how easy it is to play.

Exactly what it is that makes your flute tone fluffy

In this video I'm going to show you exactly what it is that makes your flute tone fuzzy. And you'll probably be able to fix a lot of these things yourself. If you’d like more help in knowing exactly how to fix these things, then come and join me in a free 3-day minicourse at www.flute.school/free.

Number 1 cause of fluffy flute tone - embouchure hole too big

Okay, the number one thing that makes your flute tone fuzzy, and this is the biggest thing is having two big a hole in your mouth. The best way to show you this is by demonstration.

So this is how I normally play with a small hole. And you can hear that the sound is clear. Now, if you try this yourself and you open up the hole in your mouth and make it bigger, you'll hear that the sound instantly goes fuzzy. Whew. And you also run out of air.

So the good thing about knowing this is that it works in reverse. If you make the hole in your mouth smaller, you're going to instantly clear up your sound. Two. That was only by changing the size of the hole in my mouth. So to try that as well.

Number 2 cause of fluffy flute tone - lip plate

Oka the number two thing that makes you sound fluffy is if the lip plate here is in the wrong spot, on your mouth. If you're just a millimeter too high or too low with this lip plate on your mouth, it's gonna make you sound not only fluffy, but just kind of sound bad. So this is normal.

And this is too high on your mouth. So you can see it wasn't exactly fluffy, but the sound didn't really come out and too low. It's like an effort to try and get this sound.

If you want more help with that, knowing exactly where air to put it on your mouth. I go into more detail in the free minicourse that I just mentioned. So come and join me there. I'll teach you exactl how to know that you've aligned it correctly on your mouth.

Number 3 cause of fluffy flute tone - too tight an embouchure

Okay the third thing that makes your sound fluffy on the flute is having too tight, a mouth. So too smiley your mouth. Being really smiley on the flute is not a good idea. It ruins your sound and it ruins your high notes. So this is normal. And this is too smiley.

You'll see that I tighten my mouth. Can you hear that the sound is thin and it's hard to get those high notes out.

Number 4 cause of fluffy flute tone - direction of blowing

The fourth thing that makes your sound fuzzy on the flute is blowing in the wrong direction. So this is normal. But if you find that your sound is a bit squashed and flat like this. It means that your blowing too far down or in other words, your flute is too far rolled in.

If the opposite happens  and your sound is wispy and thin and very fluffy it's because you're too far rolled out in other words, blowing too far up. So compare that to normal. And that sounds a lot clearer.

Number 1 cause of fluffy flute tone - blowing too hard

Okay the fifth thing that makes your sound fluffy on the flute is if you are blowing too hard. Now, this is an interesting reason why this ruins your sound and it's not the blowing too hard that makes your sound fuzzy. It's that blowing hard forces the sound to come out and it hides the other problems that you've got. It's not a great sound that comes out.

And two, you'll never learn to truly get a clear sound on the flute because you'll just be forcing the sound to come out like this. I'm going to demo. I will have too big a hole and I'll have too smiley mouth and I'll be blowing a bit in the wrong direction, but I'm going to blow hard. The sound will still come out, but is not great and I ran out of air.

So blowing harder on the flute can mask the things that you're doing wrong.

Instantly improve your own flute tone here

If you'd really like to learn more about how to fix these things with your flute playing to make your sound a whole lot clearer, come and join me at www.flute.school/free. It's a minicourse, it is free. And I will teach you a whole lot more detail about how to instantly improve your tone. I'd love to see you there.