by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Jul 9, 2020 | Embouchure, Performing, Practice, Teachers, Tone
What is tone color? Tone color is one of those things that’s just a little bit ethereal. What really is tone color? And how do we do it? What does it mean when we play the flute? I remember when I was in college, thinking, “All right, so what’s this...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Mar 19, 2020 | Embouchure, FluteTips, Intonation, Practice, Support
Playing softly is an art that needs to be practiced all on its own. Everyone has their own way of playing softly, sometimes correctly, but more often incorrectly. The usual way of soft playing is to squeeze the embouchure. It can be quite difficult to break this habit...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Jan 23, 2020 | Embouchure, FluteTips, Practice
It’s all well and good to practice flexibility when you work on exercises specifically designed for that purpose. But, do you work on it in the middle of your solo? Often times in when we are in the middle of a solo, right in the thick of it, the idea of moving...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Dec 19, 2019 | Embouchure, FluteTips, High Register, Low Register, Practice
Is your embouchure flexible?Does it adjust to the octave in which you are playing? The embouchure is an amazingthing. It has the ability to move and adjust to help us get the best tone. Theproblem comes when we don’t move the embouchure but leave it static. The...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Dec 12, 2019 | Embouchure, Extended Techniques, FluteTips
Have you ever practiced pitch bends? This is an extended technique that is utilized in contemporary music. Composers put pitch bends in their music for a particular effect. Pitch bends aren’t necessarily difficult to execute although bending up is...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Oct 31, 2019 | Embouchure, FluteTips, Practice, Tone
Do you know that a tight embouchure is not what will give you the best tone? I think most of us know that is not the way to play. But I have experienced that students don’t know what a tight embouchure actually means and have no idea how to loosen that...
