Overthinking the apocalypse

Instructions unclear, produced ura sounds.

I'm thinking about conflicting advice today. In the era of youtube learning you get a lot of that, all the “dialects” of pedagogy get exposed. Some shinobue teachers for example teach that the change between register is all hara (diaphragm), you cannot rely on head or jaw or lip movements at all. Others will explicitly teach you how to direct the angle of the air by pushing and pulling the bottom lip, or bobbing your head up and down, or do not do any of that but just move your chin up and down. Many teachers tell you to smile (/i/ vowel position), while others say to pout a little (not as much as /u/ but like, halfway there). Some teachers teach you to incline the flute a little bit, with the tail closer to the ground than the head. Others will metaphorically whack you on the head if the flute isn't exactly parallel to the ground.

I don't know how much of that is anatomical differences. I seem to only be able to do a small enough hole with a bit of a pout, but my lips are quite different than a typical Japanese face, and much fleshier. On the other hand, wouldn't fleshier lips mean I should smile even more, rather than pout?

In any case much of this conflicting advice must be just a matter of style and habits—I bet you can make it work in many different ways. If I had a teacher, I'd just try to copy them and follow their advice—there's something that makes it easier to do subtle body movements when someone's in front of you doing them—but I cannot for the life of me find a shinobue teacher in Germany. I considered getting a shakuhachi teacher or even a concert flute/piccolo/anything teacher and hope that the technique carries, but also I'm broke.

So the only way I can walk the labyrinth of conflicting advice is to trust my ears, and try to note down whatever I'm doing in those precious moments when the timbre hits just right. Maybe even make a flute diary, like Miki Saito advises. The idea felt intimidating to me but I guess she has a point.

Some principles I think are universally agreed upon. Tension is bad, that seems clear; my notes get strained and bad-sounding and unstable when I can produce them at the cost of lots of facial muscle work. If you're doing position adjustments at all, they should be minute, almost imperceptible. If you have to nod all the way down and up to change registers, you're probably not controlling the air too much. Diaphragmatic breathing is certainly key, you need a strong pillar of air coming stably from the core whatever you do up there, I can't see how that would otherwise.

If I find positions and techniques that are able to produce all notes clearly and not whispery nor strained, in tune, consistently across the entire range including with big jumps, then I couldn't care less whether I'm smiling or pouting or what. Big “if” though.