Hopefully you have watched some of my videos on a fast-but-thorough-warm-up. We always need to warm-up before practicing no matter how limited our practice time. But what do you do on your solo?

Running through solos when you are short on time is more of a panic move than a helpful situation. When you are not ready to play that solo, going through large portions can actually do more harm than good. It can cause you to make unusual mistakes that are now part of your playing. You then must take time on another day to correct these mistakes.

If you’ve watched some of my FluteTips videos, you will see that I have videos on using short periods of time to get a solid practice. Videos such as using 30 minutes to practice everything in your solo, and to practice your etudes while doing your tone, technique, etude and your solo practice. It can be an all-in-one.

What Do You Practice?

That is kind of what I’m talking about today. But I want to zero in on when you have very limited time for your solo, then what do you practice?

My college students are very busy, just as we all are. College students think they own the “really busy” schedule. They have no idea what busy really looks like. But, when they’re going from class to class plus have extra rehearsals because they are in the pit orchestra for the musical at the college, and they are preparing for recitals, preparing for concerts, preparing for other people’s recitals that they’re playing in, etc. – practice time becomes a real problem.

So, what should you practice in your solo if you only have 15-minutes? You need to zero in on where the problems are in your piece. For example, if I were to practice the Cantabile et Presto by Enesco, and I have very limited time, I would take some 16th note passage that I know my fingers do not get easily and perhaps that is all I would do in my 15 minutes. It will be all the practice I can get in. I am not even going to worry about tone. I am not going to worry about anything other than what can I do with these 8 to 10 measures in 15 minutes. This will make me move forward and allow me to learn, but also give me the freedom to not worry about all the things I cannot do.

Using this limited time in this way is much better than taking the day off and then picking back up where you left off two days ago. It keeps the piece in your mind, and in your fingers, and may even help you work through a tricky spot.

Don’t let the fear of not getting anything accomplished to make you not get anything accomplished!

So, when you only have a tiny bit of time, do not let yourself think that you cannot get anything done. You can actually get something done. Find a spot that needs work in your solo. Even if it is only two measures, work on that for those 15, even 10 minutes. You will be so happy that you did because you will make progress. You will have practiced a little, your head will feel good because you actually practiced rather than skipping practice.

So, let’s use our time wisely because we know it’s fleeting. We get busier and busier as time goes by. And it’s very hard to get that practice time in, but if we use it wisely, we can progress.

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this idea:

Using Your Practice Time Wisely – FluteTips 156

How to Warm Up in 15 Minutes – FluteTips 152

What to Do in a 30-Minute Practice Session – FluteTips 119

The post Using Your Practice Time Wisely appeared first on DoctorFlute.

This is how I get a full warm up for my practice session even though it will only be 15 minutes long. You really can cover all that is necessary in 15 to 20 minutes. When you do have the time for a longer practice session, this is still a great warm up routine. It will get you going, and get you ready to practice whatever else you have on your agenda.

But for today, 15 minutes is all I have. So, let’s get started.

Scales

The first thing I’m going to do is to practice my scales with Taffanel and Gaubert – the love of my life (my flute life!) Because I don’t have a lot of time, I’m only going to practice the flats today using Taffanel and Gaubert’s #4. If I had extra time, I would play all the way through flats and sharps, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. I am going to play #4 at a tempo that works for me but pushes my fingers. Using the metronome is always a great way to keep me on tempo.

Now, even though I’m doing this in a truncated period of time, I still must make sure that I am playing correctly and listening to my fingers. I always use all those articulations when I play Taffanel and Gaubert. It is very important that we wake up the tongue. The tongue is a muscle. Playing all those different articulations makes that muscle work.

Arpeggios & Tone

After scales I like to move into arpeggios. Today I’m going to play through Reichert’s 7 Daily Exercises #2. Now I like to practice Reichert by tonguing all the way through. Strangely enough, when I practice this arpeggio exercise like this, I count it as tone practice as well. Why? Because I think that when I tongue really short focused ta’s, then I have to make sure that the tone is focused in a tiny little package. It forces me to get a fabulous sound in a short period of time.

The longer you hold a note, the more you adjust your embouchure, and you fix things, and it can sound better and better. But if you can tongue and make that tone to be the tone you want in just a split second, then you know you are on the right track. So, I will tongue all the way through all of these.

Harmonics & Tone

Next, I want to work a little bit more on my tone. My next exercise is for the lip playing harmonics. I am going to play Reveille with harmonics only. In this exercise I only finger the low C, and I play the tune with that fingering. This makes my lip be in motion. I can concentrate on making the lip do all the work. It is a great way to work on flexibility with the lip.

Tapers & Long Tones

For the last few minutes of my short but important practice session I will work on long tones with tapers. I think if I am out of shape, my tapers are rotten. So, I like to consciously practice tapering all the time. Because I want this to be a 15-minute warm up I am not going to play from a high B, all the way down to low C. I will only play one octave. But I want that taper to be as smooth as silk. I want to taper down to nothingness.

Now there are reasons to do short tapers, and to learn how to do them in one beat. But right now, I am going to do long tone tapers as if I have all the time in the world to taper that note.

I have just finished my 15-minute practice and I feel nicely warmed up. In only 15 minutes I am not going to progress in my repertoire. But my lip will not go backwards! Then when I do have the time for a full practice, I will be ready to make good use of that session because my lip is in shape still.

If time is a problem for you, do not skip practice. Keep yourself on that 15-to-20-minute warm up schedule. You will cover everything necessary from tone, to articulation, to your fingers. This a fantastic way to get warmed up and stay in shape.

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this idea:

How to Warm Up in 15 Minutes – FluteTips 152

Always Warm Up Musically – FluteTips 144

What to Do in a 30-Minute Practice Session – FluteTips 119

30-Minute Practice Session Using Mozart Concerto in G

The post How to Warm Up in 15 Minutes appeared first on DoctorFlute.

Is practicing etudes a drudgery for you? Do you intentionally skip playing etudes? If that is you, I’m here to tell you to stop! Etudes are part of a rigorous practice session and reveal so much of what a musician needs to learn.

Etudes can be the bane of your existence, or they can be the gateway to playing well. There is a lot to be learned from etudes. But there are so many people that don't understand the benefits of practicing etudes. I probably was one of them - way back when. There was a time when I thought that playing halfway through an etude was good enough. It eventually repeated, so who cares about that middle tricky section? Oh dear, I cannot believe that I got away with that! Only later did I realize that was erroneous thinking.

At some point in my flute education, I had a really good teacher that told me how to practice etudes.  She didn't come out and say “here are the reasons.” Rather it was how she had me practice these etudes that taught me their strength. She helped me realize that there was music in etudes.

Then I Fell in Love with Etudes

Now I espouse that you can learn everything about music through an etude. I even wrote an article on this topic for Flute Talk Magazine. I have done seminars and workshops on this very topic, because it's near and dear to my heart.

An etude can teach you a myriad of things if you let it. So many of the students that I teach come to lessons without their etude learned. And then I proceed to take the etude completely apart so they realize that learning the notes is only one small part of that etude practice.

Now there are a lot of different etudes and I think every teacher has their thing with which etudes they love and want their students to learn. But I think we all generally agree that Andersen etudes are at the top tier of etudes. They run the gamut from ones that I would do with an intermediate sixth grader to ones I would have a graduate student play. Plus there are Kohler etudes and there are Druet etudes and scads more. It is not totally about which etude you are playing, just make sure you are playing etudes. 

Etudes Harp on Technical Issues

I want to give you some other reasons why you should practice etudes. I have this list of accomplishments that can be achieved through practicing etudes. This list came about because etudes changed my flute playing life. They really did. It was not playing solos that changed me as a flutist, it was etudes. We all know that etudes harp on a technical issue and they harp on it for line after line and sometimes page after page. You can have Andersen Etudes that are two, three, four even six pages long! When the composer targets certain aspects of playing that you get again and again and again and again what a phenomenal way to build your technique… if you are practicing it properly.

This brings me to the first point: etudes can build your technique. I wish that I had known this when I was younger because I would have had better technique at a young age. But for all of us at any age better late then never.

Learn to Practice Perfectly

The second point is to practice perfectly every time. Do not allow yourself to practice, go back and fix, and then re-practice. There is a way your brain works that when you practice you create a pathway every time you learn something and if you learned it wrong first then that path is now going the wrong way. You then have to re-practice correctly so many times in order to fix that wrong path even if you only played it once. Practicing perfectly is very important. This means begin slower. Do not allow yourself to have a mistake. Do not allow that to even happen one time. It takes a lot of discipline to do that, but it is very good, especially if you're planning on a flute playing career. With this method of practice, you will be happy when you're performing on your first recital that you've learned how not to play mistakes even that first time.

Practice with Articulations

Articulation is next on the list of what you can learn in an etude. Etudes have a myriad of articulations, often it is the same articulation that is being worked on in that particular etude. Placement of the tongue when you articulate is especially important. Learn how to get tone at the same time as you articulate. Putting your tongue in the right spot is a phenomenal thing to work on. We do not practice articulations enough. Part of technique practice that I have students use, is the 10 different articulations found in Taffanel and Gaubert's 17 Grand Exercise for the Flute. I have students practice etudes with many different articulations, not just what is written. This method can then be applied to solo practice. Technique can be learned if you use your metronome and 10 different articulations. Practice with articulations while you are learning your etude. It really helps to learn, and it is a strong way to practice.

Work on Tone

How about tone? Can you work on tone in an etude? Absolutely! When you are looking at your etude, and I think Andersen are especially wonderful in this, there are melody notes hidden among the myriad of technical notes. Practicing those melody notes you can work on tone. I think all Andersen etudes could be used in solo festivals. They are so phenomenal. But I would work on tone with a student by pulling out those notes. When you work on focusing tone on a tiny, short note it can really help tone. Tone disappears often when you are playing an etude because we are so bogged down with all the technique. So, stay focused on tone when practicing.

Find Your Cadences

Musicality is really something great that occurs when practicing etudes. Phrasing, when you find that melody and realize it moves to a cadence. You learn to shape the melodies within the technique and find your cadences. I teach students to play that melody like it is the most beautiful thing and it is the only thing that you are going to play. Then your job is to play the etude up to tempo with all the phrasing to the cadence points. It is a fantastic workout.

Learn to Play Through

How about a less concrete reason: concentration. Learning to play with concentration is learning to play through without stopping. I was one of those who could have benefited from this strategy much younger. Concentration is something I battle when performing.  Etudes are where you pay the piper and learn this skill. Practice by starting at the beginning of an etude (after you have already worked on it and know it) and put your metronome on at the tempo it should go. Now play through and pay attention and do not stop for anything. Do not fix a wrong note. Do not go back to catch something. Learn to play through. This a great technique that is often missed when working on etudes. Sometimes, when I have not learned an etude up to tempo but I’m half to ¾ the way I will put the metronome on and play with this skill in mind. Sometimes it takes more stamina and concentration at metronome speed 80 to play through the etude than it does at metronome speed 104.

These are several reasons why you need to be practicing etudes every day. I hope that you can see why practicing etudes can be so beneficial to all aspects of your flute skills.

If your teacher is not having your practice etudes, I do not think they would mind if you added them to your practice routine. You can find several at my website to download for free at the DOWNLOADS tab above.

Enjoy working on etudes. They should not be thought of as drudgery! Think of them as solos. Beautiful, wonderful solos that will make your playing rise to a new level.

Have Fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this:

Why You Should Be Practicing Etudes Every Day - FluteTips 121

How to Practice Etudes

What to Do in a 30-Minute Practice Session

The post Why You Should Be Practicing Etudes Every Day appeared first on DoctorFlute.

Life is rarely ideal by giving us all as much time as we want to practice. Instead, life is crazy busy. Whether it’s the job, family, too many classes and papers, or a combination of all of them, life can take away all of our practice time. This holds true if you are an orchestral musician or a college professor too. We all have the events in life that keep us from practicing.  But there is a way to keep in shape while making progress on your solos.

What is this beautiful secret? Here it is: Use your solo as your practice.

Yep, I’m saying use your solo to practice all 3 areas of a typical well-balanced practice session: tone/technique, etude, solo. You can definitely learn your solo AND progress as a flutist by practicing only your solo.

Use Your Solo as Your Practice

Yes, you can use your time wisely and get a full practice session in only 30 minutes!

That is what this topic is about – making the most of your limited practice time.

We all have busy lifestyles without the luxury of enough time for practice. There is never enough time for practice. Except when we were flute majors in college and our schedule had built-in time to practice. I did not think so then. If you are a college student now, you probably think you are too busy to get enough practice time. But once you leave school, you will realize that while in school, you did have built-in time to practice. When you are out of school, working a job, trying to make time for your friends, raising a family, making dinner, taking the kids to soccer practice, and to music lessons (kids of music majors must take music lessons) your practice time becomes an absolute premium. So, when you finally get a chance to practice, then you need to make the most of that time.

I have gone through various iterations of what to do when I only have a tiny bit of time to practice. Sometimes that just means that I only run through all my scales and say that I am done! Life is very busy in my household. I have four kids. I have homeschooled them all. I teach at two colleges. I have a large private studio, I maintain DoctorFlute.com, and make videos for this YouTube channel. Life is busy. Those four kids have lots of activities. Finding time to prepare for a recital can be a little bit tricky.

So, I have come up with my plan, and it's based on the fact that one time when I was in music school and I was talking to one of my piano player friends, I was just flabbergasted when they said all they ever practice are solos. Here I was struggling along in my practice room with my Taffanel and Gaubert and my Marcel Moyse tone studies, and then my Etudes. Then finally, finally when I am all done with all that, I get to practice my five or six different solos that I was working on at one time.

Tone/Technique, Etude, Solo

How does that pianist get away with only practicing solos? I know that there are some Hanon and Czerny books that pianists use in their younger days. But from what I understand, piano majors at music school just work on technique within their solo practice.

That was a revelation to me. I realized that perhaps we flutists can do that as well. Is it ideal? Probably not. I would much rather have my practice time divided into my thirds with enough time to do my tone and technique, enough time to do Etudes and enough time to do my solos. But that's not always reality once life hits.

Alright, now what? In any practice time, I want to start off with technique. Now there are the people who are tone people and others are technique people. I am a technique person. The first thing I want to do is move my fingers. I know other people who say the first thing they want to do is play a joyous sound. If that is you, more power to you! But it does not work for me. The first thing I want to do is get my lip going by moving. Because I just don't feel like I'm going to make that joyous sound unless my embouchure is warmed up.

Now in a normal practice session where you have lots of time, you divide your time into 3rds. Technique and tone are the first third of your practice; etudes are a third; solos the last third.

In my 30-minute practice session, I practice with a solo, and concentrate first on technique. For example, if my solo piece is the Bach C major sonata, to practice technique, I will begin with the 2^nd movement as it is an Allegro where there are a lot of scale passages and articulations. 

Warm Up with Technique

To begin with, I will take a few measures and set my metronome to a tempo that keeps me steady and perfect. Then I will use the Taffanel and Gaubert articulations to play through these measures. This gives me time to move the fingers, wake up the embouchure and practice articulations at the same time. Then I will move down the page practicing a few measures at a time. This is a fantastic way to practice technique and get warmed up.

Tone is next. When I am doing a short practice where I need to accomplish a solo at the same time, I don’t separate technique with tone. Once my embouchure is feeling good, I begin to work on tone at the same time. I listen to what my sound is like and then work on angle of embouchure and try to make sure that it is very relaxed. Next, I go to the slow movement and use that as I would long tones. I play through slowly, concentrating on my tone and generally doing the things I do when I play long tones.

Working on the solo this way includes “etude” practice, but you learn your solo at the same time. Use your 30 minutes and practice thinking your way through the solo. That is, approach the solo like you need to cover all 3rds of your practice time: tone & technique, etude, solo.

The difference between using a solo as your practice and taking a third of your time to practice a solo is in how you think about it. It is all in the approach.

I want to reiterate that this is not the ideal form of practice. Use this method when time is not your friend. When life is just so busy that you either do not practice or go right for the prize (the solo). It will work for you. You will stay in shape and learn your solos. Plus, it may help you keep your sanity when your life gets crazy-busy!

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this:

What to Do in a 30-Minute Practice Session - FluteTips 119

30-Minute Practice Session Using Mozart Concerto in G

5 Ways to Improve Your Technique Today - FluteTips 141

The post What to Do in a 30-Minute Practice Session appeared first on DoctorFlute.

However, with planning, a quick, quiet and deep breath is not only achievable but mandatory.

Trevor Wye once said at a flute convention, after judging a competition, that Americans breathed too loudly. I don't know if that is true, or if that statement actually applied to the whole world of flute. But whatever the real truth, I decided that I needed to analyze my own breathing... and I didn't like what I heard! My breath was noisy. I was grabbing breaths with my throat tight, thus making an unseemly noise. Drat it all! Wye was right!

Breathing properly is something that we do spend time on. But breathing quickly in the middle of the solo is not. In the middle of a solo we just let it happen. You are playing along in a fast passage with multiple lines and you keep grabbing those little breaths when needed. The problem is, if you take a moment to listen to those fast quick breaths, these quick breaths make noise. There is a gasping sound, whether loud or soft, it's still there.

The good news is that this can be fixed - and quite easily too. It just takes thought and practice.

I'm not going to get into how to breathe properly. I've done that before. You can look that up here. In review, keep in mind that when you fill up, you're filling up your stomach and your rib cage. You're expanding them both so that they are completely filled. When you inhale you create support by pressing against the ribs and tightening the muscles. In this way you control how fast that air is used.

Breath Deep

Now the thing to remember when breathing is that when you take a breath make it a deep breath. When you take a gasping breath in the middle of a piece, you are not taking a deep breath. A deep breath is quiet breath. All you need to do this is relax the muscles in the stomach and ribs and relax your throat. When we gasp for air, the throat tightens up. When it is loose, the intake of air can go low and fill up. All you really need to do is relax. Then since nature abhors a vacuum, the air will come in with very little help from you.

I would be hard pressed to say that this breathing took longer. I think the gasping breath and the deep breath are equal in length. That is, I can do the deep breath in the same amount of time, and perhaps just as easily as I can do the short gasps. If they are both the same in length why would we ever gasp again?

Breathing Quietly

Learning how to breath deeply applies to breathing quietly too. Generally, the reason why your breath is not quiet is because the throat is tight. Let's get a little more specific with the tight throat. When it is tight, the back of the tongue is too high, the the soft palate on the roof of the mouth is down. We want to act like a singer. When a singer takes a breath everything is open. The singer lowers the back of their tongue, and raises the soft palate. That way the sound can resonate in the sinus cavity.

The best way to think about that is to take a yawning breath. What I mean by that is when you yawn everything opens up and generally it opens up all the way to your sinus cavity. It creates a straight line all the way up to the sinuses. This is your aim. When you get ready to breath relax the throat and open it as pipe or tunnel. Think about it as being big enough that an orange could fit. This opening up to the sinuses has an added benefit of giving you a better more resonant tone.

Breathing Quickly

I've mostly established this already. When you breath deeply filling up all the way and relaxing the throat to breathe quietly, you also breathe quickly. It all works together. If one of these components doesn't work then pretty much none of them do.

It's not always easy disciplining yourself to take yawning breath in the middle of the piece. It takes practicing this method of breathing. It takes discipline to do it every time. This is the tricky part. It's not the act in and of itself that is hard. It is the practice of doing it every time no matter how fast you are playing.

If I don't actually take the time to learn how to do it in practice, I won't do it in performance. It's something that you train yourself to do. Train yourself to take that quiet breath and not have to have some recording device or editing to take that breath out. It's very important and it's doable. You can do it.

So, practice breathing deeply expanding your rib cage and your stomach when you breath by relaxing those muscles. Relaxing those muscles, allows the air to come in and it wants to come in, and you only have to add a little bit of effort to fill it up. Next open your throat, which means take a yawning breath. When you relax the stomach, the rib cage and the throat all together, it becomes a quick breath and you can do it very quickly and very quietly.

Practice this. It takes a little bit of practice to, to figure it out so you can do it in any solo at any time, no matter how quickly or how slowly you're playing. But it does take work. It takes training, especially if you're not used to doing it because when you are nervous, you will resort back to your old habits. You have to train new paths in your brain to do your breathing this way, that that is your only option.

Try it. You're going to find out that it really will work for you. You'll have a lot of success. Not only does your breathing become quieter, which everybody likes, because who likes to have the gasping sound in the middle of a performance? But by opening up, taking that yawning breath, you're going to have resonance that you didn't have before.

Try it. You're going to like it. It will work for you!

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch my video of this: FluteTips 97 Breathing Quickly Quietly & Deeply

FluteTips 11 Support – Ribcage Air

FluteTips 56 Improve Your Tone by Opening Your Throat

FluteTips 21 Quiet Breath

FluteTips 26 Open Sinuses for a Better Tone

The post Breathing Quickly Quietly & Deeply appeared first on DoctorFlute.

So, now I'm getting back in shape.

I've been doing a lot of technical exercises because working on my technique is what is going to get me back into shape the fastest. But now it's time for me to work on tone. Now when I'm out of shape, I don't love working on tone because I feel like my tone is not there and we all love our tone. When you're in shape, it's wonderful to practice tone because you like your tone, and your lips can work on the subtleties of your tone. When you're out of shape, those subtleties aren't there and it's just depressing.

My embouchure muscles are still feeling like they need more work but they are beginning to respond. So, today I've done a lot of technical stuff and now I'm ready to work on some tone. I'm not going to go right into long tones. Instead, I'm going to take out Moyse’s book Tone Development Through Interpretation. I'll start in number 36 and stick to the low register exercises.

Remember that it's all about the embouchure, getting the lip to be flexible. When the muscles are out of shape, they're not going to be flexible. Just like in basketball, if you can shoot a hoop every time, and then you take a massive amount of time off, your muscles are probably not going to remember exactly, precisely how to shoot that basket.

It's the same thing with flute. Our muscles atrophy a little bit. We need to get them to remember what it is they're supposed to do. So, when I start this number low tone exercise, I'm not going to try to get the best tone I possibly can. I don't want to fight my embouchure that is a little bit out of shape. I want to play very lightly as if I'm doing one of Trevor Wye’s flexibility studies. I want to play very lightly. I want to hold my breath because I'm going to make my lip do all the work. Whatever tone comes out comes out. It's not my number one priority.

This exercise has a very narrow range but there are still some higher notes that work my embouchure. I need to get up close and personal with my embouchure. I'm also thinking about keeping that lip plate very light on my lip. I even pull it away ever so slightly as I play.

I'm going to do it very, very carefully, very lightly. I'm holding back all my air because a lot of times when you're out of shape, you tend to blow more air. So, just get used to holding that air in again, and getting the sound back slowly and carefully. This is going to do it.

When you're out of shape and you've done your technical exercises (I mean who can play tone exercises when you're out of shape? They're just depressing!) then begin to work your tone by playing Tone Development Through Interpretation and play only the low register. Play them softly and lightly. Hold in your air and make your lip do all the work. You will find that you get back in shape faster, and your lip will start working.

As I always say, slow gets you faster, faster.

Enjoy working on your tone and getting back into shape. It's not as depressing as you think.

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this Getting Your Tone Back in Shape FluteTips 89

FluteTips 88 Using Reichert 3 to Get Back in Shape

FluteTips 79 Single Tonguing to Improve Tone & Get Back In Shape Fast

FluteTips 61 How to Get in Piccolo Shape

The post Getting Your Tone Back in Shape appeared first on DoctorFlute.

I've played flute with gigs. But we know that practicing and playing are two different things. There is this weird phenomena of playing, that you can play a lot and yet still get out of shape. I know isn't that just the strangest thing?!

Now it's all about getting back in shape. I am working on the basics to get my muscles working again. That's what you do when you are out of shape - the basics. Today, I've pulled out my Reichert studies: Seven Daily Exercises.

When getting back in shape, it's all about longevity. You want to play a lot and not get caught up on what you sound like, and what it feels like. However, I am going to use this Reichert both for my fingers and my embouchure.

I'm going to begin playing through #3. I don't want to play this for speed. It will be more about working the embouchure. My finger muscles will get back in shape just by playing whether fast or slow. It's my embouchure that I will work on with this exercise.

As I play through this first line in C major, I'm going to get up close and personal with my lip muscles. This first line is very easy for my lip as it doesn't go too high or too low. This line does offer the option to play it up the octave. But I am not going to do that. Going up the octave to the 3rd octave C will stress my embouchure too much at this point in my playing. Keep your playing in the middle registers much like this exercise does. At the end it reaches the 3rd octave B. By the time I get there my embouchure and lip muscles will be ready for that octave.

Pay attention to the arpeggio at the end of each line, as it gives you a chance to work the flexibility of the embouchure. When I'm using this exercise for my embouchure, I slow down when I reach the arpeggio. This allows for me to make sure that my embouchure is being flexible. That while I'm going up, the lip is getting these notes with an open sound. I work at not tightening, or closing up the lips. When using just the embouchure, I make sure that I am in complete control over my air and holding it in with my stomach muscles.

Sometimes when I'm out of shape, when getting back into shape I have a tendency to put more pressure with my head joint against my lip. This is something I've noticed from others as well. Knowing this helps me to keep it light on the lip as I play. Pay attention during the arpeggio to keep the lip plate light, even pulling away slightly as you go up to insure that you are using your flexible embouchure.

Don't worry about breathing. Take a breath when you need to as it's not about speed but about the lip.

When getting back in shape it's important to make the embouchure muscles work. If you pay attention to your embouchure, you will realize that you can get back in shape really quickly.

Sol, to get back in shape use any of your exercises. Play them slowly and carefully. Think about what's happening. Most importantly of all, think about your embouchure. Think about those muscles, make it fluid and flexible, and you'll get back in shape faster than you thought possible.

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this FluteTips 88 Using Reichert 3 to Get Back in Shape

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If you're getting a little bit bored with the scales that you're practicing now, this has got some new ones for you to use. Because it's not about just playing the scale. It's about interacting with the scale. The more ways that you can interact with that scale, the more it is going to benefit you in a great way. Now, that first, exercise that I just played is part of the first exercise. And what I like about that one is that it goes through all the major keys and all of the harmonic minor keys. So that was the key of F. then I would go into D.

And we're going through the circle of fifths. So, if that was one flat and the next one would be two flats and so forth. Now, the exercise number two is one of my favorites. It's not per se a scale exercise. It's an arpeggio exercise, but I think it's really good. It's good in that you're training your ear as well as your fingers. This one goes through each tonic and dominant chord. So, this is what it sounds like

And then you're supposed to play it up the octave too, and then you go into its relative minor and so on and so forth, and you travel through all the, keys and their minors. There's some really interesting ways to play your scales note. I really enjoy, number… there's nice chromatic scales is number six, where you're just going through all your chromatic scales, but I think it's number seven that I'm looking for right now. And this goes like this way.

It's really a fun exercise. It gives you a good chance to practice your triple tonguing as well.  When it's all set in, in triplets and you have to decide whether you're going to go Ta Da K-TKT or Ta Da T- TKT or if you have a different system, but you, you know, you get to practice that and put it into place. The, so he's got some really neat exercises in these scales and it's well worth your time getting this book and using them as daily exercises. And I frankly like to use all seven as a daily exercise, whether he meant you to go through the whole book or just choose one as a daily exercise or two, I'm not sure his original intent.

But I think it's a great book to go through and just to play through all your scales. It's fantastic for your ear, it's good training and it mixes up the usual way of playing our scales and gives you some variety. So, check out Reichert's Seven Daily Exercises and start including that in your warmup routine.

You'll be glad that you did.

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this Practicing with Reichert's Seven Daily Exercises Opus 5 - FluteTips 85

Loosening Your Embouchure While You Are Playing – FluteTips 165

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I’ve have used this book so much that it’s tattered and missing its front cover. It’s that good!

De la Sonorite

Yes, it was written long ago. But it’s so good, with so many exercises that we can still use today.

The exercise is written in sections. The first is whole notes grouped in measures of 4 followed by half notes, quarter notes and eighth notes. Moyse instructs the player to crescendo and diminuendo through the 4 measures with the quarter note = 60 on the metronome.

When I started working on this particular exercise, I could IN NO WAY do what was being asked! To crescendo for 8 beats going towards a double ff and then diminuendo-ing for 8 beats at 60 is quite challenging. But it is well worth working on.

This Work is Worth it!

What’s really good about this exercise is that it teaches you to hold in your air, to not let it all out! Because, if you let too much air out, you won’t last 32 beats of crescendo/diminuendo. Your goal is to get this all in one breath! In other words, you’re working on holding in that air by developing your air pressure. Are you creating and using your support? Are you able to keep it and control it? Working on all of this will help to rich-up your low register.

As the exercise goes on, Moyse changes the combination of notes slightly. As you work through, he’s got a number of different combinations of notes. I recommend that you stay on the same combination of notes for a month. Just do the same ones every day.

Work with that and learn to hold in that air, keep up the air pressure, to listen to your tone, to keep your embouchure open, to keep it relaxed, learning to crescendo and diminuendo through there by opening your jaw and closing it as if you were tapering.

In 1 Breath

Get through all of  ex 1 in one practice session. It’s a good workout for your lip. It’s a great workout for your air, and learning how to hold it in, and to use your air wisely which of course, we need to do on a lot of solos where air is at a premium, at least for me. Plus it helps to take the air out of the tone. What you are left with is a beautiful rich sound.

Have fun working on your Moyse Low Tones Exercise in De la Sonorite!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this: FluteTips 72 Rich Expansive Low Register

How to Crescendo and Diminuendo

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We all want beautiful phrase endings. It is really what separates the professional from the amateur. When I hear flutists play with a beautiful ending to a phrase, whether in the middle of a piece or at the end, I know I need to take a second listen.

How does this happen? What do you do to end notes like that? The operative word is tapers!

A taper is how you end a phrase, or end a note at the end of a phrase so that it softly dissipates, rather than abruptly ends.

Sure, we can just stop the air at the end of the phrase. But that’s just a little bit abrupt. It doesn't add to the phrase. A beautiful phrase needs to end just as gorgeously as it began.

Gentle Lift at the End

How do you do that?  It's a twist and a lift. We have to twist off the ending and gently lift at the end.

This is accomplished by moving the jaw and the lips. I used to think that it was all just in manipulating your air stream. But I discovered that it is more mechanically accomplished with our jaw and lips.

There's actually more work involved than arbitrarily doing the right thing with the air.

When I taper I think that I'm going to lift that note right off the page. What I'm actually doing is moving my jaw and lips up and out. This will gently close it off.

In other words, I'm going to gently twist off, and that gives my ending a nice stop.

Twist Off the End

If you do it fast, it just closes too fast and the note ends too abruptly. So, it takes work thinking about it.

Now another way to do this is when you are moving your jaw up and out to also move to the side a little bit. I saw someone do it and it really looked like they twisted their lips just a little bit to the side.

Try this and see if it helps you end the note. I feel like this really does help. However, try this both ways: moving straight out, and going to the side. In both cases use your jaw, but really think about your lips too. Your lips are going to do the ending.

If you work on that over the ends of your phrases on a long note, then you can eventually shorten that up. So, you don't have to taper only on a whole note. You can learn to do it quickly! You can make all of your phrase ending notes taper, even ending on a quarter note, or an eighth note - but in a microcosm taper.

Vibrato Until the End

When working on tapers in phrase endings practice it with your long tones. Take a nice long tone and taper it before you run out of air. If you're running out of air while you're doing your taper, you're not really learning how to taper. Hold that long tone only long enough until you get the sound that you desire. Then start your taper. Learn to do the taper while you still have air.

Another thing to work on when you taper is to continue the vibrato until the end. It's a common habit for us to stop vibrato while we're doing the taper. But you want to practice using your vibrato all the way through your taper. It goes against what feels natural. It feels natural to just stop the vibrato while tapering but fight it and keep your vibrato going all the way through the taper.

Have fun working on your tapers they make a huge difference in your performance.

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this: FluteTips 71 Tapers

FluteTips 31 Learning How to Crescendo and Diminuendo

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