Sliding Into a New Sound: What Makes the Glissando Headjoint for Flute Special?
What do slide whistles, trombones, and electric guitars with whammy bars all have in common? They can do some serious pitch bends! While flutists can manipulate the pitch of their notes to some extent with their fingers or air, pitch bending can be taken to a whole new level with the glissando headjoint for flute. It opens up all kinds of sonic possibilities, plus it is a ton of fun to play!
How to Traditionally Play Pitch Bends & Glissandos
On a normal concert flute, a player has a few options to bend the pitch of their note.
The most common is by either changing the embouchure to lift the air higher or lower or to roll the headjoint in or out to change the amount of the hole being covered. However, even combining these two options together, the range of the bend is pretty limited with a note being able to go flat or sharp by only about a half step at most.
Another option is for flutes with open holes. A flutist can slide his or her finger slowly across a key with an open hole, incrementally raising or lowering the pitch. But there are some limitations to this approach. It of course can only be done using just the keys with open holes, and they are generally much easier to do while raising the pitch by sliding the fingers off as opposed to lowering the pitch by gradually covering the hole. And without simultaneously gradually raising or lowering the key, which can be quite difficult to do smoothly, the limit of the bend is only about a quarter tone, or with the key included, at the most a whole step.
Sometimes flutists don’t just need to bend their pitch, but they need to do a full glissando between two notes spaced farther apart (greater than a half or whole step). Usually what flutists do in this situation is to play a very fast chromatic scale between the two notes. This approach hits as many notes as can be traditionally played, but of course it does not sound like the same kind of glissando possible on a trombone which can have a truly smooth slide between two different notes hitting every pitch that’s possible in between.
What Is the Glissando Headjoint for Flute?
So how does a flutist get a true glissando? Well by playing with a glissando headjoint of course!
The glissando headjoint (also sometimes known as the glissando or gliss flute) was invented by flutist and composer Robert Dick in 1992 and has been available commercially since 2004, although he came up with the idea back in 1978. Fun fact, the glissando headjoint was partially inspired by Jimi Hendrix and the electric guitar’s whammy bar! (Check out the second recording in the YouTube playlist below for an example of what Jimi Hendrix’s music sounds like on flute with the glissando headjoint). Robert Dick is well known in the flute world for extending the flute’s sonic capability with extended techniques since the 1970’s especially after the publication of his manual called “THE OTHER FLUTE: A Performance Manual of Contemporary Techniques” in 1975, and he continues to expand the range of what a flute can do.
The glissando headjoint has a lip plate that slides left and right in a carrier tube. There are two metal wings on either side of the plate that rest against the player’s cheeks allowing the performer to move his or her arms to the left and right in order to slide it back and forth. It’s home position is with the plate all the way in and the pitch lowers as it is slid to the left. Depending on the note fingered, a slide can cover an interval as big as a major third. Just like how trombone has different slide positions, you can move the lip plate incrementally (usually in quarters or thirds) to get different pitches along the way.
Besides making really cool, smooth slides, what else can you do with the glissando headjoint? For one, you can extend the lower range of the flute. If you finger low B with the headjoint fully extended, an A below that comes out (check out the first note on the recording of Czardas in the YouTube playlist below) or if you only have a C foot, you can still go down to a B flat. You can also more easily play microtones, notes that are smaller than a half step. Or you can use it to transpose down within a short range without changing fingers. Additionally, it can simply be used as a normal headjoint but with the ability to slide a little to help intonation issues. So the glissando headjoint can be used to play contemporary classical music with extended techniques, rock, jazz, world music, as well as traditional classical music.
What Does the Glissando Headjoint for Flute Sound Like?
Check out this YouTube playlist for several examples of the glissando headjoint being played!
Looking for More Resources & Music for the Glissando Headjoint?
For more information about Robert Dick and the glissando headjoint for flute, please see his website.
Check out Flute Specialists to get your own glissando headjoint and to obtain a great handbook for performers and composers called “The Glissando Flute” by Melissa Keeling.
My arrangement of The Mandalorian Theme for flute choir has a solo for an optional glissando headjoint, mimicking the whammy bar of the electric guitar solo!
And if you want to practice pitch bends (with or without a glissando headjoint), there are several of them in the free Spooky Flutey Music which was specifically written for Halloween but can be fun to play any time of the year.
Slide on!!
