More Excuses

It's been another good week for excuses.

Flute players can only make a good sound with perfect embrouchure. Eddie Izzard calls this a 'kind of vegetable that flute players have to deal with,' in his Sexy Tunes sketch but it's all about your mouth. This week my pupils have had difficulty making a good sound and they've all had good reasons for it.

"I'm sorry, I'm just too happy, I can't stop smiling. Have you noticed that you have to be sad to make a really nice noise?"
"I ran here and I'm a bit sweaty, my flute keeps slipping down."
"My arm is all tingly, so I can't hold my flute up properly. We had hockey today, I don't like hockey."
"My lips are really dry."

This week we had an outbreak of lipgloss/balm. I struggled to think of a way of warning my pupils about the perils of lipgloss that was politically correct. I learnt about lipgloss from a sixth form pupil (who also happened to be the headmaster's daughter) when I was a 'turd year' (year 9), as our music teacher called us. The lipgloss was passed back from the violins. It was one of those extra shiny ones, that came in a clear bottle with a red cap which twisted off to reveal a sticky rollerball. I took it with glee, pleased to be part of the trendy, kissing potion club. Manda (I never did work out what happened to her A) snatched it from me, "You don't want that. It fucks with your embrouchure."
Her words come back to me every time I see lipgloss. With the cold weather a flautist walks a fine line between dry chapped lips and lip balm both of which are disastrous for beautiful tone.

Today, however, I heard the best embrouchure excuse ever.
"I'm sorry. I really mucked up in the class assembly. It was my moustache. It's really hard to play with a moustache."
I can imagine it would be but there are some very brilliant and talented flautists with a lip caterpillar. For example, James Galway, Michael Cox (BBC symphony orchestra) and Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull). We discussed these players and watched some clips of them playing.
"Are there any girls who play the flute who have a moustache?"
A good question to which I had to confess I'd never heard of any.
"Well, there you go then. You should warn all your pupils who are girls never to grow a moustache."