Advanced students, whether high school or adult, are often in search of ideas to include in their practice sessions. If you already have a private teacher or especially if you are working on your own, here are a few suggestions for you.
First…
- Try this. Prepare to play by approaching playing the flute as if you are going to be reading out loud. Say a few practice “read aloud” lines to an imaginary audience, i.e. Little Red Riding Hood went into the woods. And the wolf JUMPED out at her! Feel that kind of emotion and energy when you are playing. You air will flow more freely, your tone will be more beautiful and your musicality will reveal these emotions.
- Next, prepare your breathing by doing some finger breaths. This will help you set up deep breathing, it will relax your throat so you don’t “choke off” your sound and it will help with creating the intention you are looking for in your music. Make even that first note start exactly as you want it to hear it. Your air stream supports the execution of your articulations, your technique and your sound.
Work through the following week by week to incorporate these facets of playing in your practice. They will lead to an enjoyable, musical and accomplished performance.
Increasing Musicality
Try to listen to yourself from the outside, as if you were the audience. Your goal with your practicing is to like what you hear and then be able to reproduce that in front of others.
Do not be tentative with the first note – be intentional with tonguing, dynamics and tone. For very advanced students this includes intentionally selecting tone color. Carry this intention throughout the piece,in every measure, not giving in to just whatever happens in your playing.
Create the phrase, passage or movement though the music like you would create a story as you read out loud. Include emotion with intensity and volume. Give the music direction as it unfolds. Think about the highs and lows and choose the characteristics of notes and phrases.
Use dynamics, articulation, and tempo changes as a way to feel “resets”. Resets can be moments in the music that let you start fresh like after a loud peak note, or let your begin again when a rhythm or phrase is repeated. They can also be a new phrase or new rhythm that allows you to give refreshed emphasis to the next line in the music. This will have a build up and then start again feeling throughout your music and is one of the building blocks of musicality.
Air Movement
Keep air moving out or forward – don’t back off when moving through the music.
Be intentional –
- When going from high to low notes: keep intensity, don’t hold back
- When going from low notes to high notes: keep intensity, don’t hold back
Don’t hold your air in or choke your air off. A full, supported air stream, without un-needed compensation for register or dynamic will make amazing changes in the music you hear coming out of you and your flute.
Tonguing
Choose your articulation – the sound of your tonguing – specific to the musical passage. How will you perform the articulation that is marked? Here are some choices to think about:
Accent –
- Accent = aggressive or
- Accent = important or
- Accent = high point of passage
Staccato –
- Staccato = “spitty” like for a march or
- Staccato = light and delicate or
- Staccato = very separated. Imagine dropping a pencil point onto a paper over and over as an image for clean and separate tonguing. Decide on the intensity for this.
Tenuto –
- Tenuto = very long / fill up beat or
- Tenuto = slight stress or
- Tenuto = don’t move off this note too soon
Listening
While working on a piece, listen to the music played by at least 3 different flutists – YouTube is your resource for this. This video availability really helps. When you can see the performer as well as hear them you really get a better fell for the music. Pick the flutist or performance you like the best and the one you like the least. Then figure out why. Put adjectives or descriptive phrases to these thoughts so you can bring back the feelings you experienced when you play the music yourself. Listen to where they breathe, listen to their pacing and tempos and any other components of musicality and playing the flute that you can identify in each performance. If you liked what you heard, put it into your own practicing. If you did not like something, then practice to avoid that. You will continue to be a more confident listener and be more thorough in your practice and music preparation.
Apply these things in your practice freely and intentionally. Soon enough they will come more naturally, just like the emotion you can already instantly and automatically add to a story when reading out loud.
Body Anatomy for Low Notes
- Keep working on your right hand position: change hand angle, elbow height, flute angle etc. It needs to be comfortable and allow you to play low notes quickly and accurately.
- Aim air at lower teeth as you hold your teeth apart.
- As you descend to low notes, think about blowing across the embouchure hole as you push your chin out and forward.
Low note fingerings: When the music moves down to low B, C# and C, the notes that need R4 to use the footjoint keys (other than D#), sometimes you can lift R4 off early – a couple of notes ahead. If the passage goes down i.e. G-E-C, take R4 off on G and keep it off for E. This allows you to really be in position to play lower notes in time, clearly and accurately. In this example, the C will speak more clearly than if you slide R4 down from E. Be sure to practice those passages so you are used to doing this. Soon your fingers will do this automatically even in passages new to you.
Repertoire
- Continue to include music in your practice that is well edited.
- Pay attention to why the composer used dynamics, and articulations in a phrase. Realise that they did want to make it sound a certain way.
- When you include music from different musical periods or different genres, you will incorporate those new musical ideas into your “bag of tricks” so to speak, and have them at your disposal for all of the next pieces of music you practice and perform.
- Continue to expand the repertoire you are ready to perform. You never know when you will be called on for an event. You want to be ready. Include classical, jazz, folk, modern and sacred. You may want some flute alone, flute and piano or guitar and flute duets. These are easy to quickly do a refresher rehearsal and take to a performance in many types venues.
- Now go out and find some places to play – church, public market, wineries, club meetings and fund raisers. More performances translates into more confident playing.