Additional assignments for students’ lessons are always welcome. As a teacher you want to keep your students engaged, moving forward in their learning and excited to see what is next. Here are some ideas for assignments to include in flute lessons.
Building Breath Control
Timing Sheet
For beginning students, make up a simple timing sheet for them to use over the week. Include the date and a number, #1, #2, #3 , for each try. Leave a space for them to enter the number of seconds they were able to hold the note. [See Timing Sheet Example for a simple printable one] Start by having them stand where they can see a clock with a second hand or turn on the stopwatch on a cell phone. Have them play a note and see how long they can hold the tone. No sputtering is allowed and you must always be able to hear a continual tone. No stopping and starting. I have them do that three times in their lesson, writing down the number of seconds each time. Then, during the week, have them try again each day during their practice time. Hold a long note three times and write down the length of time for each try. It is great fun for them to come back to their lesson the following week and show you their improvement. Continue this for a couple weeks or months for those beginning students who are not used to breathing deeply or controlling the release of their air. This exercise will make them understand what it “feels” like to breathe deeply and to not let their air out in one big puff. We are not blowing out birthday candles. The sense of this feeling helps with the one big blow concept and also helps them improve the “aim” or direction of their air for a steady more pure tone tone. Like aiming at the candles.
One More Note
A next step for intermediate students is learning to make their air last to a musically appropriate place to breathe. Pick an etude or solo and have the student take a deep breath and play as far as they can on one breath. Then have them try again, attempting to make it just one note farther in the music. Ask them if they changed anything to be able to go farther or ask them how it felt to go farther. And then try again for even one more note. Over the week have them continue this as part of their practice time with the goal of breathing at the breath marks in the piece. This is helpful to develop looking ahead in your music and understanding the feeling of playing to the point where you can musically breathe. They can see the breath mark ahead of them and will learn to govern their air to make it there.
An addition to this exercise is the discussion about how to breathe in flute music. How quickly and how deeply do you breathe in a particular piece at a certain point? Do you take a quick, shallow breath to get you to the next breath mark? Or is there time to take a good, deep breathe for a longer phrase?
Controlling your breath also means controlling your dynamic. How much air do you put out for forte or is it more important in the passage to make it to the breath mark? Now you are also beginning to have them think about a component of musicality and how if physically feels to make it happen.
Watch Your Dynamics
Advanced students sometimes tend to really push a lot of air through the flute, maybe trying to fill up their tone, play forte, make a passage dramatic and may not understanding how loud they are really playing. I have found a great idea to help with this. Suggest to the student that they need to make it to the breath mark, no matter what the dynamic marking. They usually can, and are surprised by how that “feels”. This is a huge step toward understanding the control of the release of their air over a phrase. Help them to determine musically if they should reduce the dynamic or add an additional breath for performance.
Composition
Even beginning students can write notes on a staff. Early on it helps them connect with notes, rests, stems, beams, flags, rhythms, time signatures, key signatures, measures, treble clefs, repeats etc. Create an assignment for them to write down some of these components of musical notation. Point out that a measure in 4/4 time must have four beats and things like that. Let them know that it does not have to sound like a song, but you will play it form them if they would like. Maybe add a new item each week. It is interesting to talk through what they have written down and then challenge the student to add a different type of note or rest for next week.
With intermediate and advanced students, let them begin to create their own compositions. Maybe even with a goal of having a studio recital of original music premiering all the new compositions. By the way, these can be for one or more flutes, or for the student and their violin playing sibling. One of my favorites would be to create compositions with sounds made by items at hand in the studio or at home. Let them be creative. Let them figure out possible new notation to indicate these sounds. No one can be wrong.
Free music paper is available to print.
Metronome
As intermediate students work through their etudes, remember to have them play with a metronome sometimes. This is actually a skill that has to be developed in these younger students as they learn to feel an internal beat for themselves. It is a challenge for some to be able to hear the metronome and keep the beat. Playing at a slower tempo at first, will help students work through any difficult fingerings or rhythms and hear more clearly any places where fingerings are not played evenly. As they increase the tempo, they will actually be learning how to play faster, not just how to play this etude faster. Daily metronome practice has the added benefit of improving sight-reading skills by keeping you on task and improving the ability to read ahead.
This is a great assignment for students playing in an ensemble. Have them get the performance tempos from the director. Play at a slower tempo at first being sure that the performance is accurate at the slower tempo. Then move the metronome up to a little faster tempo. By working up to the performance or marked tempos they will be able to participate with confidence, and will be better able to play their part with all the other sounds going on around them.
More advanced students may be rushing or dragging passages, or fingering combinations, without even knowing it. Have them record themselves to hear this. Their metronome practice will again allow them to play solos, etudes and ensemble performance pieces well and up to tempo. Do remember that we all can’t play things at the tempo marked by the composer. Just let them do the best they can, making it sound musical and clean. There are many free metronome apps available.
The Tuner
Air Stream
Here is an initial exercise for working on pitch. Start by playing scales, slowly in whole notes watching your tuner. Make sure that the air used to produce the tone is even and unwavering. If the needle twitches, then there is an air production problem. Try slowing your air stream down or adjusting your embouchure to achieve an unwavering flow of air into the flute. Don’t be afraid to experiment to achieve this goal. After you can play several scales keeping the needle on the tuner still, you will find that not only is your concept of pitch improving but your tone is improving with this exercise as well.
Intonation
- Play the scales slowly striving for even air and exact intonation on each note. Identify the notes and their intonation tendencies with you playing on your flute. Keep these in your mind and make the now learned adjustments when you are practicing or performing
- Next, with your eyes closed, play a five-note scale up and down stopping on the first note. Listen carefully as you play. Then open your eyes to check the intonation of the note. Repeat this process a couple times so you not only hear but feel the accurate pitch. This feeling will change if you change to a different flute. Next, start a half-step higher to play the next five-note scale and so on. Keep this as part of your daily warm-up in your practice sessions.
- It is always good to check certain sections of music you are going to perform and make sure that what you are producing is in tune. Play each note individually. Play and then stop on different notes to check the pitch and so one. Can you start in tune and end in tune?
- Remember that when playing in an ensemble, you will need to adjust to the pitch of the group. This may vary by ensemble or venue. Take into account that a piano’s pitch is already set before your performance. The piano can not adjust as your play, so learn to continue to match the piano’s tuning even as your pitch might change throughout the piece. This is yet another skill to be learned. As a student you will learn to match your teacher. This listening and adjusting practice will help you learn to stay in tune in ensemble playing.
There are many tuner apps available. I prefer an actual dedicated tuner or metronome tuner. These are inexpensive and available from any music store or online. My metronome is an app.
YouTube
Yes, we all love YouTube, and have you have probably watched many YouTube videos yourself. Do not forget to have your students use this as a resource. When they are working on a piece of music, have them find two or three performances on YouTube and write down what they like or do not like about each performance. They may not be able to play the piece up to speed, but will be able to hear dynamics, articulation, ritards and good spots for breathing. This is a great way to move through lesson time after a dental appointment, new braces or a forgotten flute.