Any tips for flute vibrato?

Vibrato on the flute should come from your deepest air support, your diaphragm. Make sure your tone is well supported and try to lower your jaw, opening your airstream to get the best possible tone. Try to create the vibrato sound you hear in your mind by making adjustments to your air stream. It shouldn't come from your mouth or lips- a good natural vibrato comes, well, naturally, in the sense that it should just be a part of your tone. Practice long sustained tones to get your best flute tone, then experiment. Also, listen to the greats- Emmauel Pahud, Jean Pierre Rampal, Galway, etc and get that sound in your head, so you can emulate it. Good luck

Vibrato Flute

Flute Vibrato

1

Vibrato is hard to develop and, as someone mentioned, take anywhere from weeks to years. Don't get intimidated though and don't get let down =]

The basic principle is that you are blowing bursts of air into the flute at intervals. If you have a teacher and he/she has told you to pulse then it is similar to that. If not, then pulsing is basically just putting more emphasis on the first note of say a set of four sixteenths or eigths notes.

When you are actually forming your vibrato you want to blow "hoo" into the flute using a continuous stream of air. So like pulsing, you're just putting more emphasis at some points. Again, like someone metioned, it would be helpful to start at a slower speed and move your way up.

Here's music that I used when I was developing my vibrato:

http://saxshed.com/Vibrato.gif

I know it's from a sax site but it's the same idea.

One thing to be cautious about, you don't want to develop a nanny-goat vibrato. Basically do NOT use your throat to create the pulses.

Hope this helps and good luck with your vibrato!

It takes practice and time, and you'll find that your vibrato technique will change and mature over the years. I've been playing flute for over 20 years now and with each passing year I notice that I'm able to introduce more varied vibrato into my playing at will. It's really fun.

I still remember the first lesson I had from a teacher trying to get me to learn vibrato. It was frustrating, but the technique eventually worked. The teacher had me start with a full breath and a controlled note that I liked. I picked the G right in the staff lines. Then she had me increase the volume of my note in short rhythmic bursts, basically saying "hoo hoo hoo" into the stream (but don't use your vocal chords), and it sounded horrible. Now that was OK though. her instructions to me were to make the note as loud as I wanted, so long as I didn't break the note to the G an octave above. I started with the metronome probably at pulse = 80 (slower than that and you run out of air real fast). Slowly, increase the tempo on the metronome.

Make sure that you're hoo-hoo-ing from your belly, not from your throat. (You'll find later on that that you'll use your throat to help control the color of the vibrato, but for now, just let it be wild, and from the heart, er, stomach.) You might at some point play with another flute player who does vibrato from the throat, and you'll be able to hear it. It sounds like a jackhammer, and it's really not pretty to listen to. Don't do it. Please. Just don't.

By far, the absolute best thing EVER that you can do is to play duets with someone who already does vibrato well, and then imitate them. Listen to recordings of flute players that you like. And behind the scenes, keep practicing your basic hoo-hoo-ing. Eventually what you're hearing and what you're doing will start to match up.

Good luck and best wishes!

What did your teacher teach you?

When I learned to do it, my Italian flute teacher made us use our stomach muscles instead of lips and we were sore for a whole week but then the vibrato came like a dream.

If your teacher is not teaching you correctly then you need to find some one who can.

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RE:

Any tips for flute vibrato?

i am hopeless at it. i just cant get it

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Like the other poster said, teachers are your best bet for this. I'd also recommend listening to some professional flutists. Pay attention to how they use vibrato. Listening to Rampal and Galway improved my playing a ton.