Long tones: the five-minute flute exercise for a better tone

Ask a flute teacher how to get a better sound and you’ll almost always hear the same answer: long tones. They’re the plainest exercise there is. You hold one note for as long as is comfortable, listen to it closely, and then move to the next. They work because tone is learned by ear, and a note that lasts eight seconds gives your ear time to notice what’s happening.

How to do them

Start on middle B, the note in the middle of the staff. It speaks easily on most flutes and doesn’t need much air.

1. Take a full, low breath, with your shoulders down and your belly moving out.
2. Play B at a medium volume and hold it for about four slow beats.
3. Rest for as long as you played, and breathe.
4. Go down one semitone to B flat and repeat. Then A, A flat, G, and so on, as low as you can play cleanly.

This descending order comes from Marcel Moyse’s book De la sonorité, published in 1934 and still used by flute students everywhere. The idea is to carry the sound you have on B down to each lower note, matching it as closely as you can.

What to listen for

Pick one thing per session. Trying to fix everything at once fixes nothing.

• A clean start. Does the note begin clearly, or with a puff of air first? Try starting some notes with no tongue at all, just air.
• Steady pitch. Does the note stay put, or sag at the end as your air runs low? A tuner makes this easy to see.
• The same sound on every note. Does the low G sound like the same player as the B? Low notes need slower, wider air and a slightly more relaxed opening.
• The end of the note. Stop the air without the pitch dropping first.

Ways to vary them

Once a plain long tone feels steady, add a change in volume. Start soft, get louder over four beats, then softer over four more, keeping the pitch level the whole way. It’s harder than it sounds, because the flute goes sharp as you get louder and flat as you get softer, so you have to adjust the air and the angle to hold it still.

Another option is to play against a drone: a steady note you hold your own note against. Any clash between the two shows up as a beating, wobbling sound that smooths out when you’re in tune.

How long to spend

Five minutes at the start of each practice is enough. Long tones are tiring for the lips if you do too many, and the benefit comes from doing them often, not doing them for a long time.

Flutio has a two-minute long-tones game that refills one Breath when you finish, and the drone is in the free tools. If you only have a few minutes for the flute on a busy day, long tones are a good way to spend them.