Ok. I am doing my grade seven flute at the end of january. I have recently just bought a new flute a Miyazawa, upgraded from a Trevor James.
Before I got my new flute my lips started to quiver and the tone of the notes especially in the higher octaves was awful. The note started to split, and harmonics could be heard!! This is unusual for me as I am usually so confident on the flute. It has knocked my confidence slightly, and thought perhaps a new flute would help boost my confidence. I practice my scales daily and do plenty of piece practise. Since getting the new flute (its gorge) the problem has not go worse but remained. I have had my new flute for a good 5months and feel I am breaking it in. I have concentrated on my emboshure for some time(mouth positioning) the way I hold my flute, throat opening exercises, being bosy with the sound and playing loud as the new flute is powerful! I start my pieces of perfectly but towards the middle the tone slowly goes down and is then hard to rectify. I know I am agood flautist but need to get over this problem any ideas???
I have grade 7 in singing too, and I have heard a few times that the two instruments are not good to mix, do you think singing mouth shapes may effect my flute playing, or is this an old wives tale???

Advise grately recieved.

When i play my horn my lip quivers if i am nervous....maybe thats what ur problems is? Or maybe its because the muscles in your lips are tired?

What u said is definetly an old wives tale! I play 3 different instruments and i need 3 totally different embochures for each and i manage without any problems.

i also play the flute and can say ive never had or heard of this problem! Well my lip does tend to quiver when im nervous and b4 exams but thats about it! maybe b4 u start 2 play u need to b totally relaxed and not tense. dont put pressure on urself 2 get a good tone coz you sound as if ur really good at it so u should and probably can produce a very good tone.
Im looking in2 buying a new flute at some point this year is ur new one any good?

heya catherine - i play the flute 2.im not sure about quivering lips, but my only guess about your tone would be that maybe because miyazawa is a different make the flutes could be designed slightly differently to trevor james - i was talking to my flute teacher the other day and tried out her flute because i was interested in upgrading - i found her flute quite a lot easier and she said it could well be because the actual hole which you blow into was a different shape on our my flute to hers - mine was square and rounded at the corners and hers was perfectly oval.She said that some peoples embouchure were more suited to one rather than the other.If this was your problem (obviously its hard to know)maybe trying out a different head joint with a different hole on your miyazawa could help.Dont know if this will help but you never know!!