A 7 year old pupil I have been teaching recorder since Christmas is now trying the Yamaha fife, until she is big enough to hold the flute properly. I want to know any good analogies for teaching embouchure with someone this young (all previous beginners have been at least 9/10 or older). After two 'quick gos' she can get a vague sound without fingers down, and blow B so hard it is more like C. Liz Goodwin's book talks about hamster, rabbit faces, bottom lip over top, none of which make much sense.

We are having a break over Summer (as are all my pupils), so any ideas for when we start again?

How about blowing soap bubbles or holding a paper on a door by breathing on it?

The most successful thing I do is to get them to stand in front of a mirror with me behind them, and they copy what I do. I've had 100% success with this method: before I tried lots of things and it was very hit-and-miss.

Saves me typing a lot of stuff : this is exactly what I do

If they still find this difficult, I keep a packet of thin straws in the music room - I get them to hold one straight out in between their lips and blow gently. This is a similar sensation to blowing across the flute if the straw is thin enough. I have been known to get them to do this with the head joint in the correct position, then as they blow I remove the straw and hey-presto there is usually a reasonable flute sound. It sounds fiddly, but works!

I had this problem when giving my trombone playing boyfriend a crash course in fluting recently. He got to grips with the basic making a sound okay, but soon got frustrated with the breathiness, inability to control dynamics, and off intonation. (The problems with being a good musician, and starting a completely different instrument!)

I wasn't quite sure how to explain the complexities of fixing all these things. I don't think about how I correct intonation, for example, I just do it. It got to the stage where I pointed out most people don't play 2 flute octaves after 4 attempts on the instrument, and that a lot of it is things that you learn and implement instinctively... with practise . Somehow this didn't seem very satisfatory though.

Any thoughts?

That is incredibly sensible and has NEVER occurred to me d'oh!

assuming you don't already play, perhaps have him teach you some trombone; i think he should get the idea quite quickly after that!

Oddly enough, I did resort to that. And discovered that playing the trombone in tune is practically impossible. Seriously, it shouldn't be possible to bend notes that far!

He spent the whole time telling me I had to blow harder and play louder (as if the neighbours hadn't suffered enough), which was the complete opposite of my instructions to him while fluting. ("You want to use less air, faster, and more focused with a bit more support from the diaphragm. Playing louder won't make you stop muffling up the notes." etc) I honestly didn't realise you could play the flute quite that loud.

It was a fun exercise, but I think we both learnt that we aren't much good as instrumental teachers.