1. Practice Slowly
How slowly is slow? It is as slowly as you need to play so you do not miss a note. You would not read out loud so fast that you could not enunciate the words, so practice slowly enough that you can think, finger and blow each note without mistakes.
2. Place Each Note
Be sure that you actually finger and blow into each note. Do not let some notes be weak and others strong. Yes, you do this. All students do this. Listen to yourself as if you were the audience. Can you hear each note? Full tone? In tune? Make every note speak even those in fast passages or runs.
3. Do it On Purpose
Do not play a low note soft and weak because you have not practiced it strong. (Excuse the grammer.) Do not let your dynamic decrease or your pitch or tone change just because you are playing a descending passage. Do everything on purpose and your musicality will increase exponentially. Dynamics, articulation, expressions, tone color must all be done on purpose. Practice them as you want them to sound. Perform your music with intention, not just however it happens to come out.
4. Support = Read Out Loud
Take any book available in your studio and read a passage out loud. To be able to read a couple of sentences in a row, you will need to take a deep breath and make it last as long as you can until the sentences are finished. Guess what, this is the same way you learn what “support” feels like, just without the complicated descriptions of diaphragm movement and lung location. Great for students!
I would like to point out that the energy and inflection used in reading out loud is also a great way to feel or explain musicality. By manipulating volume, intensity, and speed, for example, you will innately understand expression = musicality.
5. Dynamics: Snakes – Small and Large
Make the hissing sound of a snake. Now make it soft and then loud. Do you feel how you need to keep air pressure going and blowing out for this sound. That is what happens when you are playing louder or softer. You cannot just blow hard,or worse yet try to pinch your lips to hold in air and play softly. You must keep the air pressure going. You must keep the air moving out to sustain the tone and pitch. Then you can work with your embouchure shape and aperture size to achieve the dynamic you intend. With practice your diminuendos will die out to nothing so that the audience can hardly tell when you were playing the last note and when you stopped. It just musically, and beautifully, faded away.
6. Tone: Homogenous
Be sure that you are making your best sound all the time on all notes. Find a note you like and try to carry that tone up and down the scale. Listen for that particular sound that you like. For advanced students tone color changes must be intentional.
(Marcel Moyse’s long tone exercises are great for this. See De La Sonorite .pdf download, starting on page 6. )
7. Vibrato: “AH/TRAIN”
James Galway taught a masterclass in Seattle at the 1982 National Flute Association Convention in which he outlined learning vibrato by the following steps:
- Spend time in your first week playing your scales with the syllable “HUH”. Do not tongue. Do not try to make a beautiful sound. Make the “HUH” sound like you were blowing on a window to fog it up. Blow from the diaphragm and with a very open throat. Make each breath a slow pulse. Try four pulses on a note, using whole notes for your scales.
- During your second week, change the “HUH” to an “AH” shape in your mouth and throat and do the same thing. The air going through your mouth will feel more like it is going over the roof of your mouth and out. Different from the HUH which seems to come directly out of your throat.
- In week three, connect your AH’s so there is no break, by making one stronger or louder and the next one weaker or softer. It will sound like a train – a sort of coming and going effect. Keep them even. Again thinking of a specific number of pulses on each note.
- Week four. Now get out your metronome and practice varying the speed of your AH’s. Take time to practice at different tempos. You will find that fast music uses a faster vibrato and slow music needs a slower one. You need to practice changing speeds and being able to control the speed.
- In this fifth week practice starting a note without vibrato and then adding it in and then fading it back out and stopping the note without vibrato.
- Finally, on week six, no more scales. Now try adding it into the music or exercises on your music stand. Remember that vibrato is a decoration to be added on certain notes and phrases to enhance their musicality. Vibrato is not to be played on every note and it is not to be played on the notes in fast runs.
- You will probably come across music marked “senza vib.” which means it is to be played without vibrato. Remember to continue to include non-vibrato practice sometimes as well.
Vibrato is currently controlled and the speed is varied according to the feel of the music. Early 20th century flutists (and singers) used a very, very fast vibrato – sometimes described as “nanny goat” vibrato – which is not the style now. Be sure to listen to examples of professional flutists and listen especially for their vibrato. How it sounds, how they vary and control the speed and where they use it to enhance a piece of music.
8. Articulation: TO, TU, DO, DUH, HAH, PAH, TAH, TUH, TUT, PFF
If English is your first language, then you are taught to tongue on the flute by placing the tip of your tongue right behind your upper teeth and “saying” the word “to or tu”. You will then come across times in your repertoire that call for varying the character of your tonguing sound. Experiment with some of the sounds listed above and any others you can think up, and see how they sound in the musical passages in your current etudes or solos. You will be surprised how a change in tongue sound used can clear up a fast passage or make the exact musical choice you were looking for in a piece.
Staccatos are separated notes with a light “TAH” sound without much air pushed behind them. Think of a pencil point bouncing off the shelf of your music stand. A pinpoint of sound – light, quick and yet fluid.
Marching Band needs projection and this comes from clean articulation. “TUT” might be used in this situation to keep notes speaking at the beginning and the end of the note.
“PFF” is an “articulation” created by parting the lips with your airstream. It is sort of a non-articulation articulation. This can be used very effectively in a passage that starts mysteriously or when you want a hazy or foggy sound.
9. Fast is Last
Practice your music slowly. Get everything right. Yes, everything. Then put it to a metronome. Start at the speed at which you can still play everything accurately. Now move the metronome up a notch. You will find that step by step you will be able to play your music up-to-tempo if you have perfected it at a slow tempo. You will spend more time practicing and working out mistakes if you try to play too fast too soon. In your practicing and recital preparation, speed is the last thing you should add to your practicing. Note: You do need to find etudes on which you can practice playing fast. This is an important technique that does need to be practiced.
10. Blow Out
I think that this is one of the most important things I discovered as a flutist and that I must tell every student. You must blow out. We seem to feel that we must hold air in to get a better sound, hold a phrase longer etc. We must blow air out to create our tone – we are a wind instrument. Focus on a spot as a target at the top of your music stand or think about your air stream rustling the top of the pages of your music. You must blow out. Think about the size of the room – spin that air through your flute to create that silvery, singing tone to reach the people in the back row.
See also: Fabulous Flute Playing Tips.