I have heard it talked about in musician circles that certain instruments fosters great kissers. Well it’s actually a hilarious subject to me, because first of all, who started this questioning anyway?
Haha, it just makes me giggle. But, I think hands down it has to be the flute players who end up on the top of the list the most often!
It takes around 112 muscles around the lips and face to kiss.. and even more to play the flute!
We spend every second at the beginning, (when you are first learning how to play the flute) trying to make our lips and mouths move just right so we can have the best tone. The longer an individual plays the flute and continues to practice moving their lips and mouths just right, the better they become at moving all the tiny muscles in and surrounding their lips.
I heard somewhere that it takes around one hundred and twelve muscles of the lips and face to make a good kiss. I wonder how many that means we use when we are jumping octaves or playing with real dynamics on our flute? I bet it’s even more than that!
Haha, well in short, we flutists get really, really good at learning to use the muscles in our faces – especially the lips and mouth. The higher level of a flute player, and the longer we’ve played – the better! What do you think about this?
I have a little assignment for you. As I’ve mentioned before, learning to move your lips and mouth well is extremely important to learning to play the flute well. So, take a minute right now to look at your lips in the mirror. It might sound a little weird- but trust me.
We have to be able to understand which directions our lips can move naturally in order to become the best flutists we can. Try stretching your lips back in a closed-mouth smile and then bringing them forward (while still keeping them closed) into a pucker – can you do that? How full can you make your lips by pushing them forward and out away from your teeth? How tight and closed can you get them?
What we need to do is experiment with these different positions. Certain small movements hinder tone while others help tone. And, we need to be able to move in different directions depending on what we need while we are playing.
I think you’ll agree that this subject is one that you can’t help but giggle about. Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any comments or questions about your experiment. Have a beautiful week fluting!