A Beginner’s Guide to Vibrato

Hello and welcome to the first installment of my free online flute tutorials! If you are a flutist who is wanting to learn to play with vibrato, a flutist who plays with natural vibrato but wants to learn how to control their vibrato, or a teacher wanting to learn how to better teach vibrato to beginner’s these videos are for you! You may download this free resource created for flutists just like you! A Beginner’s Guide to Vibrato.

What is Vibrato?

Before trying to learn how to incorporate vibrato to your flute sound, I like to have students first place a hand at the top of their belly and say, “Ho Ho Ho!” very loudly. Saying this phrase should engage the belly muscles and you should feel them move (expand and relax). This is the exact movement we will try to add to our flute playing!

Find Your Abdominal Muscles!

We can play with different speeds of vibrato and different speeds use different muscles. The first muscle group we will work on is our stomach/belly/abdominal vibrato. Our abdominal vibrato (or belly vibrato) is demonstrated below. This kind of vibrato is great for slower rhythms like quarter notes and eighth notes and helps us feel the larger beat within music.

Controlling Abdominal Vibrato

If our large muscle groups help with slower, wider vibrato, then a smaller muscle group will help with a faster, narrower vibrato, right? Right! To play with a faster vibrato, we are going to use our throat/larynx, which is sometimes called “laryngeal vibrato”. This just means we are using the muscles in our throat to play with a faster vibrato. 

Putting it all Together

Once we have learned how to control our “belly” vibrato and our “throat” vibrato, we will then work to combine both techniques together!

 Now that you have learned how to engage each of the different muscle groups for the different speeds of vibrato, it is important to practice these techniques. You will find demonstrations of various exercises I have created to help myself, and my students, in crafting our vibrato.

These exercises can be found in A Beginner’s Guide to Vibrato.

 A few key points to remember before getting started:

1. Do not move on to a faster vibrato rhythm until you are comfortable and fully in control of the slower rhythms.

2. Do not over practice your vibrato – 5-10 minutes a day is plenty if you are consistent!

3. Some of these exercises are quite long and are intended to broken up as needed.

4. Breathe whenever and wherever you need to. As you progress through the warmups, try to plan different breaths for different days.

5. If you feel or hear tension in your sound, stop! Take a break, walk away, and come back later. We never want to play with tension, especially in our throat.

6. Feel free to message me (on here or social media) if you have any questions or concerns!

7. Have fun!