POSTURE and FLUTE HOLDING SUGGESTIONS
on this topic:
with the Right Pinky? Locking? Double-jointed?
with arm, neck or hand pain?
this out, put it in your flute practice binder, and bring it to your
lesson. Use the blank column at right to sketch pictures, and add your
own notes. Jennifer Cluff c. 2002
And Holding the flute.
To get the feeling of the
correct posture, imagine that you are
being held up by a string, like a puppet, from the top most
vertebrae of your spine. This is the vertebrae that your skull rests
on and is located between your ears, and behind your nose, in the
center of your lower skull. To find it, just nod "YES" for a
second or two. Your skull is sliding back and forth over the top
Now imagine that there is a helium filled air bubble right on
top of that vertebrae. It rises upwards so that both the front
and the back of your neck are equally relaxed by being pulled up.
This helium bubble is so powerful that your head keeps pulling up
even higher, and your neck is stretched gently, shoulders staying
down, allowing your whole spine to follow in the upward movement,
to gracefully fall in line under your head. The back is pliable
and pulled up to its strongest position, and your torso is lifted
up out of your hips. Your hips stay down in order to give support
to your upper body. Your knees are loose in their sockets, not
For maximum breathing freedom, feel as if you've stretched the
sides of your ribcage so that you're long and tall between hips
and shoulders. Then the ribs will move easily as you breath and
WHILE HOLDING THE FLUTE: STANDING AND SITTING
Stand to practice to increase ease of breathing; sitting is
for rehearsals of ensembles.
Stand with feet slightly apart so that your weight is balanced
between them, and avoid putting all the weight on only one foot.
Your knees and hips should be at a 45 degree angle to the music stand,
so that your lower body is slightly turned to the right. Turn your head
to the left. Nod your head to say "yes" to make sure you're
lifting from the top of your spine.
Bring the flute up to
you, now that you're standing upright and feeling like a puppet held
from the top vertebrae. Don't bend your face, head or chin down to the
flute. Bring the flute up to you.
Turn the chair to the right in ensemble rehearsals so that it's at a 45
degree angle to the music stand, and let your knees point to the right,
while your head is slightly turned to the left. Look over your left
elbow at the music stand, and lift up the top vertebrae, first finding
it by nodding "YES", to be sure that the spine is lifted and
ARMS AND SHOULDERS: Your arms can hold the flute either
parallel to the floor, or an inch or two down from actual parallel, it's
up to you. Try to let the arms almost hang, so that they are not rigid.
They should be suspended gracefully out from the ribcage. Avoid poking
out your elbows. Let them hang as much as possible. Experiment with arm
positions that feel natural and relaxed. If your arms ever become
slightly tired rest and shake them out. Stretch and relax them fully.
If tiredness occurs
during performances, try relaxing all the arm and hand muscles one tiny
inch of muscle at a time, so that inch by inch the whole of the arm and
hand gets to relax totally (like melting an inch at a time.) Do this
while the flute is still in position to show your arms how to adjust
themselves while you're still playing. It's very important to keep your
flute still while you play, so avoid making larger movements with the
arms once they have found a position that's relaxed and poised or else
you'll use up too much energy and tire your body out. The most caloric
waste in energy derives from waving the arms around, or swaying too much
to the music, since any extra movement can jar the flute off your lips,
and makes your hands hold on too tight. Let your arms float. Shoulders
are to be down and relaxed back. The scapula (wings)can be flat against
the back and almost melting downwards toward the floor. Your collar
bones should be spreading apart, going in opposite directions. Shoulders
should not rotate forward, nor should they be artificially lifted, or
pulled back. A good shoulder release exercise is to rotate both
shoulders slowly around in every direction, all the way up, all the way
forward, all the way down, backward, up again, and finally drop them and
leave them dropped.
NECK AND THROAT:
Be sure that the underside of your chin remains parallel to the
floor so that the throat is free. Remember that your spine is being
lifted up by an imaginary helium bubble at the top neck bone, so that
the head will be in a straight line with the spine, and not pull
forward. The back of your neck should not be tense at all, but straight
and unkinked. Try the experiment of bending your head back and looking
up at the ceiling while still continuing to play your flute. Your arms
will follow upward too of course. Feel what a relaxed back of the neck
feels like while you're playing.
If you tend to lean your head in toward the music stand, remind yourself
to let your eyes do the work of looking downwards, instead of your neck
muscles. Leave your head upright. (For some people it might even feel
like they're leaning back while reading the music, but really it's just
having your head upright, and inline with your back bone. You need the
windpipe in your throat to be unbent, and your throat to be free.)
Check as you play that your under-throat (under your chin)remains
parallel to the floor. Step back from the music stand and practice
reading the music with your eyes only, not with your head bent in to it.
Allow yourself the freedom to pout your flute away from you, or raise
your chin slightly to get different angles on the airstream. Allowing
your jaw to hang open becomes way easier if your chin is level, instead
of tucked down.
JAW AND MOUTH:
Drop the jaw open like a big yawn, and relax it open. The back
teeth can be apart and jaw open, even when the lips are pursed to play.
For relaxing throat muscles, open the throat into a large relaxed
cylinder shape like a yawn. When you play a flute you do not use the
throat to control the air stream, as you do when you speak or sing. It
is just an open pipeline in flute playing. The air is controlled first
by the lung muscles, and secondly by the shape of the opening in the
The face is relaxed completely except for those muscles that position
the lips. Once the lip position is in place, even the lips themselves
relax as much as possible so that the center of the lips are free to
vibrate as the air hits them. Relax your forehead and eyes.
In brief, let the head relax. Hold the flute still without any extra arm
tension, and allow the back muscles to give strength to your body.
HAND POSITION ON THE FLUTE:
If your flute headjoint is lined up properly your hand position will be
quite easy, so it is important to check when you put your flute together
that the embouchure hole is lined up with the center of the keys. The
consensus for 75% of professional players is to lineup the FAR SIDE of
the embouchure hole with the center of the first C/C# key: See
article on this here.
The first time a student
changes to the "Rockstro" or "Modified Rockstro"
alignment of the headjoint they may feel that the embouchure hole is too
The solution is to turn
the body of the flute outward, and leave it turned outward so that the
lip hole feels like it's either in it's previous position, or even one
or two millimeters more rolled out than usual. Keys that tilt slightly
forward made the flute balance better in the hands for some players.
Check that when your flute headjoint is set up in this way, that when
you put it up to your face to play that your left arm doesn't have to
cross your chest so dramatically, and instead, by swinging your right
arm forward in an arc, that you can allow the left shoulder to rotate
back, and down in its socket.
Once you've experimented with the rotation of the left shoulder so that
it can freely hang down in its socket, proceed to mark your flute using
the marking idea below:
Clever marking idea
Once you have determined a comfortable headjoint placement with
regards to assembling your flute, clean off a little area on the barrel
and headjoint with a Q-tip dipped in isopropyl alcohol (from drugstore)
and affix a tiny set of stickers (cut out little rectangles from a
cassette label, or use cuter stickers for children if they prefer.) You
can also mark the "set-up" position with coloured nail polish
if you'd like a little coloured blob to line up to.
HAND POSITION SPECIFICS:
The left hand should act as a "shelf-bracket" to hold the
flute's weight just above the lowest knuckle of the index finger,
curling it underneath enough to hold the flute up. If this feels odd,
shimmy your left hand down the barrel of the flute a few millimeters,
getting closer to the Ab key. If your left hand fingers look curved over
the keys, instead of straight, then they will be twice as fast at
repeated movements, so get used to this new position gradually, and
check often in the mirror to see that those fingers remain curled over
the keys at all times.
The right hand should balance the flute ON THE TIP OF THE THUMB,
somewhere comfortable underneath or slightly behind the flute , between
the F key and the E key. If the flute rolls inwards too often, and you
feel you have to clench your hands to keep it stable, a small square of
a wine-cork glued on the back of the flute, above the thumb with contact
cement, will act as a terrific "roll-bar" and make your whole
body more relaxed, while stabilizing the flute in your hands. (ask for
more info. if necessary on the thumb "roll-bar".)
The right hand's baby finger should land naturally on its key.
Start with the standard footjoint alignment, and then readjust It to
suit your own finger length. The standard alignment is if the foot joint
of the flute is lined up so that the beginning of the rod of the foot
joint (where the spherical ball is) is in the center of the lowest key
on the middle joint of the flute. Check that the fingers of your right
hand make a 90 degree angle to the body of the flute. All the fingers
should be placed gently on the center of each key to be closed. Check in
a mirror that you are neat about landing in the middle of each key and
that your fingers aren't dancing around when they are lifted up. The
main thing to remember is that your fingers have only one job: opening
and closing one key each. Except for a few exceptional cases, each
finger almost never leaves the key it belongs to, so why raise them high
and make them hunt for their key every time they have to close it? Leave
the fingers hovering about a half inch or less above their own key when
it is open. Then there is no side to side finger movement, only up or
For more articles on
flutist's hands and arms see these articles:
with the Right Pinky? Locking? Double-jointed?
with arm, neck or hand pain?
help with your right thumb?
lifting exercise for keeping fingers low
Place your hands, cup-shaped, and palm down, one at a time, on a table
top, letting the wrist rest on the table too. Curve the fingers
naturally, just as the hand naturally falls when placed down on a
surface like this.
Lift each finger lightly
and easily one at a time, so that the fingertip only rises less than 1/4
inch or so. Tap the finger extremely lightly and silently while thinking
only of the LIFTING action.
LIFT ~ LIFT ~ LIFT ~
Continue with each finger
in turn, allowing more latitude with the pinky and ring fingers who do
not function with the same ease as the index and second fingers. If it's
easier to raise and lower the ring finger with the pinky staying down,
or staying up, find out by trying both. Note how relaxed the back of the
hand must be in order to allow the less agile fingers to tap.
Be sure an experiment
with raising and lowering two fingers at a time too, and observing the
ease of this motion when the fingers stay low and curved, never rising
more than a 1/2 inch at most.
Relate what you've
learned to your flute playing.
Look in the mirror during
flute playing (trills, longtones, scales) to see that the hands stay in
very similar positions to the exercises above.
The hole in the center of your lips should always be lined up
with the center of the embouchure hole in the flute unless you have a
"tear drop" hanging down in the center of your upper lip.
Check it in a mirror, and try to sensitize the lips to feel when they
are in the right position by waking them up and feeling with them. The
edge of the embouchure hole can be felt at the line of red that is the
start of your bottom lip.
WHERE ON THE CHIN DOES THE FLUTE ACTUALLY GO?
When correctly placed you will feel the pressure of the flute's
lip plate on the gums covering the roots of your lower teeth. It's a
gentle pressure, and the gentler the better since you'll need some
freedom to pout your lips while your flute is still in place.
Experiment by placing the pressure of the flute as low on your chin as
possible being sure that the near side of the embouchure hole is still
right at the red line of your bottom lip. See
picture.Without blowing yet,
pout, and push your lips softly forward and then back. Then try pushing
your bottom lip forward slightly by thinking that the flesh of it is
travelling diagonally up and forward. Then drawing it back again.
Experiment by beaking out your upper lip (you can arch it in the center
slightly, and then direct the air downward, having moved the lower lip
inward again. See
picture.) Tone will always
improve with a
slight air-space between the upper lip and teeth, with it beaked out in
this manner. This beak also allows you to avoid rolling the flute IN to
get a great tone.
A very light hold on the flute, with your hands, allows longer and more
enjoyable practice sessions. Allow your hands to lighten until you can
let the flute follow the natural flow of your body. Does the flute stay
in good contact with your chin while you move your body to relax it?
Good. Don't lose that contact.
The jaw only needs to
move a maximum of 2 millimeters forward or back when changing from the
lowest to the highest notes, so use the flesh of the lips instead of
making huge muscle alterations in your face and head. If you had been
taught to play by making jaw movements, look out of the corner of your
left eye at the very crown of the flute, to be sure it almost never, or
only barely moves when you're playing, to teach your body how to play
with an open and relaxed jaw position.
FOCUSING ON POSTURE AND FLUTE HOLDING:
The best time to focus on your physical holding of the instrument and on
your easy-breathing posture is when you're not also thinking about all
the other things that reading printed music demands (such as tonguing,
fingering, or complex rhythms.)
So use your Longtone
practice time to zoom your mind back and forth between the sound of your
longtones and the sensations of a relaxed and balanced flute holding
Start with a very light touch on the flute's keys: Pretend they are
butterfly wings or rice paper.
Pull up on the sides of your ribcage, elongating your torso, so that
each time you breathe you can feel the "floating ribs" expand.
As you blow a long note, leave these ribs expanded as much as possible.
Shake out your hands and arms if you feel any tension, so that you
restart with a tingley or numb sensation to counteract any clenching or
Allow your right arm to swing the flute around in an arc, so that your
left shoulder can relax downward in its socket instead of being pulled
across your chest.
Listen to your tone, and relax your face, lips and jaw to find a way of
playing that has the best tone quality, but the least amount of muscular
Let your tone become more and more beautiful. Each time you take a deep
relaxing breath, re-create the best tone quality you just heard, or can
imagine, jumping back in to keep the room ringing with sound.
Allow each of your body's muscles to readjust many many times while
holding a longtone, so that you do not feel stiff, or frozen. The idea
is that you'll constantly readjust everytime you even feel the slightest
tension in any muscle.
Use the "Inner Game of Tennis" book ideas that your body WILL
find its own most relaxed and natural posture if you ask it to.
Slur the sets of two notes in your longtones using low, easy fingers,
and allow them to nearly touch the keys even when they are up.
Take frequent breaks so that your body never feels like it's being
Once you've achieved a good posture for easy breathing, and relaxed
balancing of the flute, proceed to practicing your daily exercises and
scales with this same easy posture.
Good luck, and ask questions of your teacher for special needs.
Also see my Flutenet file on: "Hand and Arm Pain, what you can do
about it" if you feel any pain from imbalance of the hands, or
__________________Jennifer Cluff. April 2001 update
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