I can associate easily. Every situation or story automatically gives me connections to other things or situations. This is combined with images in my mind. Maybe it’s my creative mind, which comes in handy when making music and teaching. When I teach, I like to use images to help students more easily understand the point I am making. I previously wrote about the toothpaste technique, one of my favorites. In this blog I write about the technique of the Saint Bernard dog.
I teach my students to relax their face as much as possible. Of course we need some form of focus, but it should be as relaxed as possible. Then the image of a St. Bernard dog came into my head. The use of this image during a workshop in Belgium made one of the participants laugh, because apparently there are many different types of Saint Bernard dogs. So I almost saw my technique go out the window, but I was able to get myself together just in time. When I talk about the Saint Bernhard dog, I mean the one used in the movie “Beethoven,” the one with the cute big eyes and long cheeks. Sometimes they have a small barrel under their chin.
I will add a photo to this blog so you know what kind of dog I mean. Let’s get to the technique. As you can see in the photo, the dog has very relaxed and long cheeks. That’s how I like to feel when I play the flute; keep the cheeks as relaxed as possible. We do need focus in the lips, but especially in the center of both lips, the part we actually blow through. The rest of the embouchure can be relaxed. We don’t have to smile while playing.
A perfect technique to work on the Saint Bernard dog techniques are ghost harmonics. I previously wrote about this wonderful technique. In short: we use the fingering of a note in the third octave and blow very softly, creating a soft low tone. This is the part where we relax the muscles in the face as much as possible, we use the St. Bernard technique. Now we slowly increase the airspeed to get to the second note, keeping the focus on keeping the facial muscles relaxed. Then we increase the airspeed again to reach the high note, still very relaxed.
This is one way to use the Saint Bernhard Dog technique. The other very well-known technique for relaxing the embouchure is whistle tones, or whistle sounds. These are very soft sounds. They work best when the embouchure is relaxed and focused. We need very little air. It should feel like you’re not blowing at all. I suggest you start on a high note to practice this, for example on a G6. Start playing normally and then reduce the airspeed to (almost) nothing. Relax, relax, relax and see what happens. On the website www.flutecolors.com you will find various videos about whistle tones.