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 | Dec 5, 2019 | Daily Routine, Etudes, FluteTips, Practice
If you don’t have the practice book Seven Daily Exercises Op 5 by M.A. Reichert, you need to go out and purchase it. Mine has this nice yellow cover. True to its title, it contains 7 scale exercises – and they are great exercises. If you’re getting a...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Nov 21, 2019 | FluteTips, Practice, Tone
Do you have vibrancy in your tone? Do you know what it is? Vibrancy is something that I discovered when I was in college and I was listening a graduate student. I remember thinking that there was something different about their tone that I didn’t have. I kept...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Nov 14, 2019 | Breathing, Flute Convention, FluteTips, Performing, Practice, Technique
Taking a quick quiet breath is not as easy as it seems. Sure, we all know how to take fast breaths when we exercise. But when you’re playing through a fast passage, and you need to breathe while in tempo, you’ve got to learn how to do it quickly AND quietly. Here’s a...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Nov 7, 2019 | FluteTips, Low Register, Practice, Tone
Have you ever played a staccato passage in your low register and found that the only thing that came out were puffs of air? You are not alone. We can all have trouble getting our low register notes to come out. But with a bit of specific practice, your low notes can...
