Jaw motion for flute - Is your jaw jutting too much?

Dear Fluteplayers,

One of my readers wrote to me regarding jaw use. If your flute teacher is telling you to "move your jaw forward and back" and yet you're reading articles, books and blogs by flutists who warn about excessive jaw motion it can be confusing.

I'll refer you first to part 1 of 3, of Walfrid Kujala's "Jaw Boning" article.

Walfrid Kujala and other flute teachers have written about how to use the jaw for dynamics, tone colours, intonation and for reliable and fast 'interval leaping'. These are all embouchure methods that combine abdominal air support and the angles afforded by a slight opening and closing of the lip aperture in a vertical manner. This is the opposite of sliding your jaw forward or "jutting" it forward and back to play the flute.

So to further elucidate with the miracle of web-cammery, I had fun today, making a quick video on flutist's jaw use to explain the basics of easy jaw motion:



For background reading on this topic, you can have a look through these previous blog posts, which have plenty more supporting articles and explanations of jaw related flute skills:

1. The Flute & the Jaw Bone

2. Why the smile embouchure doesn't work well on flute.

For good quotes by Michel Debost in "The Simple Flute" and from Thomas Nyfengers delightfully informative book "Music and the Flute" read on:

Thomas Nyfenger on Embouchure & jaw:

" If the lips are cushioned forward, we must learn to use and control the position of the upper lip which, for many flutists, [unfortunately] just hangs like a piece of dead liver while the lower jaw and lip dance around [excessively]."

"The jaw can move up and down but it moves slowly, and in the process also changes the angle of the airstream as it moves up-forward and down-back. Thus the constructive bug in the mandibular joints, coupled with the effort to compensate for the unwanted motion (at least in flute playing, a more foreign act to the body than chewing) create another in a series of potential isometric [tensions].

To understand this problem, let us discuss the muscles involved in opening and closing the aperture in the lips. First, the ability to raise and lower the upper lip independent of the muscles at the corners of the mouth, and likewise to move the lower lip without "jawing", is essential to efficient, rapid, and smooth [legato during large] intervals.

If you have ever observed an alligator wrestler doing his thing, you will notice that the essential defensive maneuvers consist of holding the beast's jaws closed....This is becuase the wrestler knows that the extreme weakness of the jaw-opening muscles are in no way reflected in the immense power of the closing apparatus. We too are better equipped for closing, tightening, gripping with the embouchure than for opening it."

"I often prescribe exercises requiring a minimum of jaw motion while changing octaves so to increase the student's awareness of this mechanism (of using the muscles around the lips such as those used for sneering, pouting, pushed forward and back, in order to find the senstive area inside the lips, in order to control the size and angle of the airstream).

Later, I add an explanation of how both the jaw and lips can move in any combination to acheive the desired results....My principal contribution in this area is the potential development of the opening and closing muscles, allowing a freedom of movement which can then be employed in conjunction with other means."

Michel Debost on "Jawboning":

"By jawboning, I mean constant change in the angle of the airflow into the embouchure (hole). Playing intervals of more than a third (for example changing from the lower to the mid-range), they seem to need a different thrust of the chin and/or an alteration of the shape of the lip aperture.

My contention is that this practice is neither logical nor totally reliable......in a slow chromatic scale from mid range to low register there is no perceptible lip or chin movement.

Jawboning [has a few small] advantages. It is useful for correcting intonation and in tapering off some long note diminuendos.

It quickly becomes a mannerism if used constantly.

Ninety-five percent of [large legato] intervals in our repertoire are under the octave. These require the involvement of the the whole body, not just the mouth and chin."

Hope this brings out some comments from my readers!!
Use the comment button below.
Best, Jen :>)