Start with the Sound You Want

Your goal is to have the first note come out with a fabulous tone, vibrato, liveliness, and color. The first note tells the audience what’s coming next.

We all know what we want to sound like when we perform. To get there, it’s important to start there.

But sometimes we think that the first note is too short to put on some vibrato. Perhaps we don’t consciously decide to not put on vibrato. It just doesn’t happen.

Always ON Vibrato

Here’s how to make sure that the very first note has presence:

Decide now, that every time you pick up your flute, it’s as if a switch has flipped and your vibrato is turned on. Your vibrato default setting is “ON.”

Convince yourself that your vibrato setting is always on. Then when you start a piece, the first note comes out with vibrancy and life. Your sound will be lively from the start.

If I start without vibrato, it starts off dead. There’s no life to that first note. But the quality when it has a liveliness is amazing.

When that first note is not long enough to have vibrato, you can still decide what you want to do with it. You can know exactly what tone you are looking for. You can play around with embouchure placement. You can move it around on your lip. You can adjust that angle of your air across the lip plate strike edge. Figure out where you get the best tone. Then every time you pick up your flute to play that again, you have the makings of a lively tone.

Lively Start

Then, even though it’s not long enough to hear vibrato, you’ll start with that tone having liveliness and vibrancy. It’s going to start alive. The audience can tell that you’re excited for something that’s coming.

Are there times where I might not want vibrato? Sure. The opening of Afternoon of a Faun. Most flute players start with no vibrato. Part of the reason in this opening is to conserve air. You know what I mean if you’ve played this piece. But it also gives you the ability to change the colors. You’re manipulating your vibrato and that opening note, but you’re doing it consciously. You’re doing it because that’s the color you want. That’s what you want to create.

You might also start the Fauré Fantaisie without vibrato, as many intermediate flutists often do. But it’s more often that it’s just not even thought about what you want to do with that note.

It just starts with no vibrato without any rhyme or reason. Now, I might want to start off with no vibrato, but I’m going to think about it. What if I were to start with vibrato?

We need to start with vibrato unless it’s a conscious thought to not. But I think it’s more often than not, we start with no vibrato, with no real reason, except that you just didn’t put vibrato on it.

Start with your vibrato going. Your motor is going right off the bat.

Because when you start with that vibrato, it has a life and movement, and it’s going somewhere right away.

Record Yourself

Record yourself when you’re practicing for a performance. Identify how you want to set up that first note for what is going to come. Determine whether that first note has a fabulous tone and vibrato and liveliness and color. Does it tell your audience what’s going to be coming?

The first note should make the audience sit up in their chairs, on the edge of their seats, excited for what is to come.

Listen to yourself. Plan that first note with just a little bit more thought. And it can change your whole piece. By doing that, it really can change your whole piece because you now have a different attitude about the whole piece.

Focus on that first note!

Have fun!
DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this using:

Mozart Flute Concerto
Fauré Fantaisie
Jade from Ferroud’s Three Pieces

Playing the First Notes of Your Solo – FluteTips 186

FluteTips 84 Adding Vibrancy to Your Tone on the Flute

Producing a Lively Sound on the Flute – FluteTips 115

The post Playing the First Notes of Your Solo appeared first on DoctorFlute.

Sometimes you can go over and over a section and never get anywhere. You may just need a fresh approach to help you fix it. A new method of cleaning up a spot can oftentimes be the answer you are looking for. So let me give you a few pointers about how I work on those spots that just cause me problems, the things I concentrate on, the things that I know stump me, and there are more than one.

Pesky Problems

Let me pick one spot from the Fauré Fantasy and show you how I work on it, and how I have my students work on that spot. Let’s look at measure 192. If you have your Fauré Fantasy, go get it and let’s look at the Allegro in measure 192. If you do not have it, download a free copy of it here: DoctorFlute.com/downloads. Then you can take a look at it yourself and see what I am talking about.

This spot has got so many accidentals and it moves quickly. It is arguably the most troublesome spot. It’s certainly a little bit tricky. When I have my students work on it, I show them that section and tell them to start working on it right now. It is not the only difficult spot in the piece. But this one can be a stumper.

The first thing that you’re going to do is just learn the notes. This means woodshed! If you don’t know my practice process method I’ll just give a short little rundown on that practice process. It is how I practice all of my etudes. It is how I practice all of the really tricky, fast fingering sections. I would use a modified approach to slower, more melodic sections, but this is how I practice finger technique.

The Practice Process

The first thing I am going to do is find a tempo on my metronome that I can play the section accurately. It does not matter how slow you go. You go as slow as you need to as long as you do not make a mistake.

Then you use different articulations to practice this. I like to go through all of Taffanel and Gaubert’s 10 different articulations: slur-three-tongue-one, tongue-one-slur-three, slur-two-tongue-two, tongue-two-slur-two, slur-two-slur-two etc. I will not go through all of them because you can find them. Keep the same tempo while you play through all the articulations and then slowly move the tempo up still using those articulations.

Some people think that this is a long process and well maybe it is. But let me tell you that you learn that technique cold.

Now let’s say you’ve done that. You have gotten it up to, you know, the tempo is 144. So, let’s say you have really done it well, and you are at 144… and you still have some problems. What now?

Sometimes you still have one run that just sticks, and you just can’t get it. You know, sometimes you get it right, and sometimes the next time you play through that section, it is wrong. And then the next time it is right, or another section is wrong. But you are sure that you now that technique.

Problem Solve

It can mean you have to relearn it, re-woodshed it with all those articulations and work it up again. One thing to remember is that if you have it worked up one day to a tempo, that does not mean the next day you have got it at that tempo and you do not ever have to work at it again. Over a long period of time, you are probably going to redo all those articulations. Because if we do not keep that woodshedding going and all those articulations with that metronome, we can still lose it. There is a point where our brain just stops learning. I do not know what the term is but we have to sort of take it apart and relearn it. But when you do that, you learn it better than you knew it before.

There can be other issues. Sometimes it is a glitch issue. When you take that run apart, that particular section of technique that you are having trouble with, you need to analyze: is there a glitch that is causing that problem? A glitch means that some fingers are not as fast, or they are faster than other fingers so that when you move from one note to the next, you are causing a little clunk in there. And when you do it fast, it does not really sound like a wrong note, but it just doesn’t sound smooth.

For example if you are going from a G and then you have to go to a B you have to get that thumb on. So, you are going from a high G to a B. G to a B and that thumb is not working properly. Maybe it is the thumb that was slow or the fingers coming off. Sometimes it is coming off and by analyzing what that is, you have discovered the problem. Now you can fix it. Fixing it is all about concentration. Going slow just in that little section, going very slowly, really concentrating on moving those fingers. It is a mind over matter thing. Yes, you are training your muscles. But it is also you are thinking about it that is going to fix it. Thinking about how fast they are moving.

There are times when your fingers come off too fast and they pop the sound. You want to bring your fingers up fast, but not high or jerky. Keep your fingers close to the keys, keep them touching the keys and just lift up. If we jerk them off the keys, we move them really fast, it makes the sound pop. And that is the same as having a glitch. So, unless you are doing extended techniques, that is not the sound that you are looking to get.

One other area that I think is a strong area of why we have problems, once we have learned the technique, is sometimes we are rushing. So, when I analyze, I figure out what note is rushing through, or maybe I am landing on that note ahead of the beat. I have to find out where I’m rushing or where I’m anticipating the next beat? Then I usually put maybe a tenuto line over the note so that I make sure I land on the beat. Or I’ll put an arrow going that direction so that I know that I am rushing through that run. And that helps me to remember that I need to go at tempo, not slow down. I just want to use that arrow to not rush. If I just make my eyes concentrate on that one note, I will get the rest of the run.

Concentrate

When we play our fast 16th note sections, we are not really looking at every single note. We are looking at the whole group. It is like when you read, you read the words not each letter. If I look at the word friend, I am not reading F R I E N D. I look at the whole thing and I know the word spells friend. I think that is the same way with your runs. We have learned the whole run. I know it. I do not need to read each note C D E G B. I do not need to individually think what those notes are. So, when I am playing that run, sometimes there is one note that I do need to think. I need to make sure I land on that G. Because I am looking at the group of notes as this big clump of notes. And there is one note that I am rushing through, or one note that I am not landing on.

These are just some of the areas that I use to work on difficult spots in my solos and how I have my students work on these difficult spots to make sure that when I play that solo, when my students are playing that solo, they have got that technical aspect down.

So, when you are working on your technique, find those difficult spots, use these techniques that I have just talked about and how to make sure that your runs are steady and smooth and effortless. You will be very happy that you did.

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this idea:

Working on those difficult spots in your solos – FluteTips 163

Fauré Fantaisie Op 79 for Flute and Piano Dr Angela McBrearty flute, Dr Gretchen Hull piano

How to Practice Etudes

Fixing the D to E Glitch – FluteTips 160

FluteTips 96 Are You Rushing Here’s How to Fix it

FluteTips 17 Finger Positions

The post Working on Those Difficult Spots in Your Solos appeared first on DoctorFlute.

Let me give you a few pointers on what I wish I’d known in my younger years about how we can work on this area of performing. I used to think that it was really something that you just had to do. It was just a matter of willpower. And while it is a matter of willpower, there are ways that we can work on that self-control and that will, to achieve better results.

Know it Cold

One of the ways to work on this is to make sure that you know your piece cold.

Probably the first thing that I’ve had to learn in my career is to know a piece better than I think. Because the moment that you are nervous or the situation that you’re performing in is not optimal, then your concentration is affected. And if you don’t know your piece absolutely cold, then that’s going to invite disaster – flubs that you don’t necessarily need to have in your performance. But if you know your piece cold, you know the tempo, you know it faster than you want to play it, you know it slower than you want to play it, then you’re going to take that little bit out of the equation.

Play Through Difficult Spots

The second thing that I would say is learning to play through your difficult areas. And I mean, play through them. Oftentimes we take our difficult spots that cause us to flub up when we’re performing, and we just work on those flubs.

We do what I call the practice process which uses all the different articulations with your metronome on. I practice this way until I’ve learned that spot cold. But guess what? As soon as I do a play through with my piano player, that spot falls apart (at least it used to for me). The reason why that spot then falls apart, when I know it, I’ve learned it, I’ve done all the things that I need to do is because I haven’t learned mentally that I know it. So, in my mind, it still is a difficult area. What I must do is to erase the fact that that’s a difficult area from my brain and learn to play through that difficult spot without flubs. Then I will make new paths from my eyes to my brain, to my fingers saying, “oh no, it’s not a difficult spot anymore. I can play that spot.”

How Do I Play Through?

So, I learn to play through difficult spots. What this means is that I will add a measure before and a measure after the tricky spot – thus playing through it. However, you cannot start this until after you’ve done all your wood shedding, and you know that particular run or those particular measures that are tricky. Know them cold, then add a measure before and after. Then learn to play through.

Now you must play it through with your metronome on, because you don’t want to allow yourself the luxury of slowing down in those spots. When you have the metronome on it forces you to play through, hopefully up to tempo.

Plat at Tempo

And so I can put my metronome on the tempo and I can play the measure before the measure after, and I can play through that and I can do it again and again and again, and I can do it tomorrow with my flute cold, not having warmed up and I can play right through that spot because you’re teaching your brain a new path through that section because your brain learned the path that was wrong, that it was a flub area that you had problems now you have to learn that is not a problem area.

What you want to think about is that your brain no longer says, “that’s my tricky spot.” Your brain now says, “I’m just going to play because I know this piece, I can play it all the way through.”

Play Through a Section

After you’ve done that, played through with a measure before and a measure after, then I would go with a line above and a line after. Now you might want to say, well, what does it mean to play after? Because if I’ve gotten through that section successfully then I’m good right? Well, again, it’s teaching your brain how we think and how we learn. That section is no longer a problem. I no longer have to fear it and I’m going to erase that little niggly fear that comes in when I’m performing that says that’s a tricky spot.

Play Through a Page

Now’s the time where I might want to do the whole page. I want to play through the whole page with the metronome on. If you put that metronome on and you can play through that tricky spot, maybe another spot is revealed to you where you flub up and then you can mark that area and come back to it and start working on that. But it’s playing from top to bottom that is going to teach you how to concentrate all the way through and not allow yourself to have those flub areas. The areas that you’ve learned are tricky spots are more strongly erased and now we have no tricky spots.

Etudes Teach Concentration

Now the best place that I’ve learned to really work on that concentration and really stamina as well, meaning I can make it through a tough piece, keeping my brain on track and keeping my concentration is through etudes. The longer the etude the better. The Anderson etudes for example, get trickier and harder and more difficult as you go along. So, if you can make it through them concentrating, you can make it through a solo that will have measures of rest and places where you can put your arms down.

I am a big fan of etudes. But not just for technical skill and not just for learning music, but also because it really helps you to learn concentration and build stamina, when all the way through your metronome is on, you’re playing straight through. You are not allowing yourself to stop on those tricky spots because you’ve learned them and now your concentration is taking you through the whole piece.

Go get out a tricky etude and begin working on your stamina and concentration. It’s good work, it’s solid work, and you’ll be happy that you’ve done this kind of wood shedding and this kind of concentrated work.

Have fun!
DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this idea:

Concentration and Stamina in Your Playing – FluteTips 162

The post Concentration and Stamina in Your Playing appeared first on DoctorFlute.

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.

When I was in school, I distinctly remember playing a lesson for my teacher Georgetta Maiolo. I came into that lesson with the Hindemith Sonata. I only played the opening phrase before she stopped me cold to tell me her story. She had been a child prodigy that premiered with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra when she was 15 years old. She happened to be taking lessons from the principal who was also a professor at a college and that’s where the lessons were held. Now there was a method of teaching back then that would not fly today, but this is what happened. She went to her lesson and played the opening to Hindemith as I had done for her. However, her teacher threw a chair across the room and told her to get out and not come back until she could play that musically!

Georgetta had no idea what she did wrong. So, she left and went to a practice room until some kind soul came in told her what to do. This older student told her it was musicality that this teacher was listening for, and that meant the musical line.

I am very thankful that my teacher did not do that with me! But she did teach me that I was not playing the musical line. Even though I was playing all the notes on the page, I was not playing the musical line. Her story opened my eyes to see beyond what is on the page.

Finding the musical line is like reading a story in a schoolbook and then finding out from your English teacher that there are all these hidden meanings in that book. It is not just the story or the words on the page. When you are looking at your solo, you want to find that musical line because it's going to make the music more meaningful to you. It's going to add so much more interest for you, the player, but also for the person who is listening to your performance.

There are different ways of finding the musical line in your etudes and solos. Looking for regular phrase lengths or discovering that there are no regular phrase lengths such as in Baroque versus 20^th-21^st century music, can help you get started. If you are having difficulty knowing where your phrase is going you should listen and follow along with your music. Mark where your ear tells you the musical line is moving to. If you can find where the phrase comes to a cadence, mark those spots. With these markings you can then practice following along with your markings.  

Consider the opening of Mozart Concerto in G. Now in the opening, it is easy to know where the phrase is going, because there are 3 beats, rest at the end of it. That is the beginning of my phrase map. Then I want to look and ask what are the predominant notes? Here the predominant notes are one and five or G and D and then we end on a B, so G B D and the chord.

Now, every solo that you have, especially if they're in 20th, 21st century, are not going to stay in that key, or outline the chord so nicely. So, then you need to use visual or oral cues to figure the phrase out.  

It is your job to figure out what you want to bring out, and where you want to aim for in your phrases. It is perfectly fine for you to have a different idea of a phrase than I do. Maybe you hear something slightly differently.  That's why musicianship is a fantastic thing and why three different performances will give you three different ideas of what's important in that phrase. You can decide what idea you like and go for it.  

So, that is why you need to find the musical line. To play musically, you must play with that musical line in mind, so that you are not just playing the notes on the page. You are making music.

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this:

Finding the Musical Line - FluteTips 145

What is Nuance? FluteTips 140

The post Finding the Musical Line appeared first on DoctorFlute.

Now I could play my scale study up and down until next week without even thinking about them. If you were listening, you would say that I did them well. That is, they served their purpose of warming up the muscles of fingers and lip. But what about the music? Should I even play anything if I do not play intentionally musically?

You Perform as You Practice

The bottom line is that if you play your exercises musically, this musicality will carry over into your solos. So, since you do want to perform your solos musically, then you should practice your exercises musically.

Let’s face it, warm-ups are the foundation of everything we do on the flute. It is here where we begin to pay the piper. Work on these seemingly insignificant exercises with intentional musicality, and you will go a long way to making music in your etudes and solos and ensemble music.

But Scales are Boring

The next question is how do you make boring scales interesting? You need to look for a way to shape these scales going up and going down. If you were to think of these the same way you would look at the same type of passage occurring in say a Mozart concerto, how would you play it? Where would you emphasize a note (maybe at the top), and that arpeggio might need the first note to be brought out. 

Each scale exercise is different and can be phrased differently each time you play. That is a great exercise to change up the musical line of that scale to help you hear something you perhaps have not heard before.

Where’s the Music!

I played an unmusical scale one time for a teacher. She immediately stopped me and exclaimed “where's the music? What are you playing? Where's the music to what you're playing?”

At the time I didn't really know what she was talking about. She worked with me and taught me how to make music with everything that I play, not just with solos. It was a fantastic lesson to learn. 

This teacher also taught me to listen to my articulation when playing scales. She always had me play my scales with all the Taffanel and Gaubert articulations. But I didn’t always phrase these articulations. So, she had me slur a section first. Then she had me do the articulation, but make it sound like a slur. This was an eye-opening experience. It made me realize what a musical phrase should sound like. It really did change me and my playing.

Play Arpeggios Musically?

How about arpeggios? Can you play them musically? Absolutely! I love playing Reichert’s 7 Daily Exercises no. 2. It is an arpeggio exercise that moves between an I chord and V chord. It can be played musically phrasing each chord as it leads into the next. Additionally, every time you play that exercise, it can be phrased differently, thus giving you something to think about, and keeping you focused.

It makes me have so much more joy in playing that, because I find that I'm not mindlessly playing just a scale exercise or just an arpeggio exercise that doesn't mean anything. Now I feel like everything means something.

This Becomes Automatic

The benefit to this type of intentional musical practice is that when you run across parts of these exercises in your solos, you will automatically play them musically because you have learned to play them musically.

So that's my advice to you for today. Start your next warm-up session with a musical warm-up because playing musically is much more interesting for you, the payoff is great, and you'll be much more interested in doing those exercises, if you make them musical.

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this:

Always Warm Up Musically - FluteTips 144

Why You Should Be Practicing Etudes Every Day – FluteTips 121

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

The post Always Warm Up Musically appeared first on DoctorFlute.

That something extra that they have is called nuance. A nuanced performance has special meaning that the performer is expressing to the listener.

Nuance is the meaning given to a musical passage by the performer. It is expressed differently by each musician.

But what does nuance really mean? Nuance is one of those tricky little words such as support that’s thrown out into music circles, and we all think, oh, yes, I know exactly what that means. But I think for a lot of people, they have only a vague idea of what that means.

How Do We Add Nuance?

Let's talk about that idea. Nuance is something that's not just a flute thing. It is something musicians and non-musicians talk about. When you refer to a topic of conversation as nuanced, what you are saying is that the subject under discussion has multiple meanings or interpretations. That is sort of what we mean when we talk about nuance in music. We are saying that I may give the music a different meaning than you give to the same piece. That is, I emphasize certain parts of the music that I deem more important. Whereas you emphasize different parts that you deem more important.

I think it's like saying, “The boy went on a walk” and then someone else would say “The boy went on a walk,” meaning there was something going on in that walk or the boy, a specific kid went on a walk. You can emphasize something different, and it gives a slightly different, more subtle meaning to the sentence. That's what we want to do with music.

Give More Weight

Now I’ll do that in a phrase, but I might decide this time when I play, I will give one note a particular meaning. How am I going to give that note meaning? Well one of the ways is to give a note in the phrase a little bit more weight than the other notes in the phrase. What does weight mean? In plain English weight means to hold a note just a little bit longer than other notes. Once you know this piece of information, then listen to some of your favorite solos performed by the great flutists and determine where they are giving weight in a particular phrase.

Play a phrase from the slow movement of your solo. Listen to a couple different recordings of this solo and listen to the weight put on certain notes in the phrase. Then practice doing what you heard. Play that phrase a couple different times imitating each of those performers. When you begin to hear this phrase, then try on your own to determine what you like. Make that phrase your own.

Change Color

Nuance can incorporate color changes as well. With color, we're talking about your tone color. How can we change tone? Your tone has many different colors to explore. You can play a woody sound such as the sound a Baroque flute would make. Or you can play a 21^st century dark edgy sound. I like to experiment with colors to see what I might like in a phrase. Feel free to take that same phrase you were just working on change that color a few times to see what you might like best.

Vary Vibrato Speed

What else can we do to effect nuance? We can vary vibrato speed. Vibrato speed is something that I think we do not use often enough to give us different color changes. I can use a slower vibrato or no vibrato to give a phrase a completely different sound altogether. Slow down your vibrato to sound woodier. Speed up your vibrato to sound more intense.

So, use all the tools you have available, weight on the notes, color changes and vibrato speed, and that all gives you the idea of nuance.

Now, if you have never experimented with nuance, then just take a phrase, and begin by just putting weight on different notes. As you explore and change, listen for what speaks to you as something important. Then vary the color. Start off woody, then end edgy. Next keep it woody all the way through. Try to give it an edge at the beginning, then go to wood. Finally, experiment with vibrato.

You can use the same phrase and change it over and over. Eventually you will see and hear what sounds good to you, what is important. This gives it meaning – more to the point it gives it your meaning. Not mine.

When I teach students, I teach them basically my meaning. But eventually I want them to come up with their own interpretation. I want them to have an idea of what they think the music is saying.

That is nuance in a nutshell. It is giving meaning to notes – giving your meaning to those notes.

Have fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this:

What is Nuance? FluteTips 140

Varying Your Vibrato with Speed with 14-Year-Old Student Allegra - FluteTips 124

Does the Cut of Your Lip Plate Make a Difference on a Professional Gold Flute? FCNY Sponsored

The post What is Nuance? appeared first on DoctorFlute.

For this blog (and Flute Tip) I will reference a book titled The Virtuosic Flutist which was written by a good friend of mine named Nina Assimakopoulos. You can find her on Instagram under her name and The Virtuosic Flutist. This If you don’t have it in your library go get it. It's a great book to have in your repertoire. The technical aspects of flute playing that she describes, vibrato and breathing and different things about parts of your body and how you use them, are really very well thought out. There is a lot of reading material and then there is the exercises that you then apply what you read. Also included is real musical examples and exercises to apply the skills you are learning.

Let’s talk about the first aspect of grounding mentioned in the book and that is your stance or how you are connected to the ground. Do you have a nice, solid playing stance that allows you to be flexible, be relaxed, but also solidly in place? I have seen many people play for me with a bad playing position. They are uncomfortable and unsteady. Oftentimes their feet are too close together. This is not a solid stance from which to begin practice. Consider that our feet should be a shoulder width apart in a comfortable position, so that you are standing straight and tall when you breathe. Your breath can come from your toes and go directly up into your sinuses. You should feel that you are a solid rock right here as you stand. There's nothing that's going to tip you over or get you off balance. You're right there.

Another aspect of grounding is what Nina refers to as breath energy, or the process of how you're taking that breath. Are you opening up your sinus cavity? Are you opening up your mouth? Are you opening your throat in? And are you filling up your stomach and ribcage? Does the playing position allow you to fill up from the feet and then create air pressure or support which is so necessary to have the sound that we're all looking for? Nina goes into a lot of detail about your vocal tract, the different parts of your throat and your mouth and how it all works together. It is interesting and helpful so please read her book!

 Another important aspect of grounding is your finger engagement. Do you keep your fingers right over their keys? Are they light? This is something that I find very important in my playing and teaching. A lot of students miss the importance of a light touch on the keys. I see so many times fingers that are not just on their keys but fingers that hang onto the flute as if on a branch to keep from falling. Those fingers are going to be very stressed and tight.  Besides the light finger touch we need to not let fingers fly up after being pressed or not being used. We all can see when students’ fingers fly up. But in reality, you should keep them low on their keys with the pad of your finger resting on the hole. That's the best most relaxed position to be in. Make sure when you use those fingers, they are also light! When I play, my fingers are completely relaxed. They're loose, and can move with agility. Tight fingers are going to create tight hands and arms and a tight throat, and affect your tone.

It's all connected!

If you are having trouble with that, I would use the exercise that I learned way back in my youth which is to play Taffanel and Gaubert’s 17 Grand Exercises for the Flute exercise 1 or 2.  Because the exercise is in scales you don't have to think about it and can work on your fingers. Learn to keep them light and not use any pressure at all. Nothing. Then your fingers will never ever get tired.

On to breathing. When you take your breath, do you take a real one? In other words, do you fill up your stomach and ribs and completely fill up from bottom to top. If you don’t learn to fill up all the way then you need to work at stopping and breathing.  Take the length of time you need to take that breath, and then come back in. That's the best way to learn how to breathe properly; come to a full stop, come back in, and resume playing.

When you take your breath, you need to open up the mouth cavity. It is very important that your mouth is open with your teeth being a finger and a half apart. This openness allows for the throat to stay open and the sound to come out. It makes a world of difference in your tone when you open up. It is immediate gratification!

Now, the fun part of this is the exercise. Since you've learned to breath properly, open your mouth cavity, open throat, your stance is good, and your fingers are close and light, you have now earned the right to practice this grounding exercise. You can listen to the exercise in the video to know what it sounds like, but basically it is a version of a scale with no skipping around. To play each note Nina says to use a stomach, "Huh" as you play, accenting your different notes. Now, after having practiced this for a bit, I will tell you that if you work on this, you're going to have great abs. It's a strong exercise for your abdominal muscles and playing it for a little bit can get tiring in the stomach muscle area. In the video I demonstrate how to play the exercise with the stomach “Huh.”

Breathe anywhere that you want. Keep your fingers close, and then be aware of what you are playing. Think about it, don't just play it. Think about what you're doing, your stance, your fingers, your throat, your mouth cavity and your stomach. She then advocates that you play these in all major and minor keys.

The exercise is about two-thirds of a page but I can tell you that just after a line or two, my abdominals are a wee bit tired. It's a lot of work! But I hear it just working on my tone right now making my tone get bigger and fatter and more resonant.

I love this exercise. If you haven't gotten Nina's book yet, it's available both in a digital copy and in hard copy so wherever you are in the world you can get a copy. You can do that either from Nina's website or you can get it from any online retailer, such as Flute World.

This should be in your arsenal of technique books. There are ways of thinking about flute technique that aren’t your everyday traditional way. So, get this book, work on this exercise, do your sit-ups, you'll be happy, and you’ll hear your tone get better and better as you do it.

Have Fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this:

Grounding from Nina Assimakopoulos book The Virtuosic Flutist FluteTips 112

Tone Color from Nina Assimakopoulos book The Virtuosic Flutist FluteTips 107

The post Grounding appeared first on DoctorFlute.

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 tone color thing all about?" Up to that point I played one way, that's it! If there were tone color changes, well, they just mysteriously happened. I didn't really think about color, or about how I could color at will. I didn't understand tone color, much less the fact that it is a performance tool that you can use to make your music more enjoyable to perform, and more interesting for the audience.

How Does One Change
the Color of One's Tone?

Simply put, you can change the tone color by changing the shape of your embouchure, the tightness or looseness of your embouchure, and the angle of your airstream.

For example, If I play with my head up and embouchure long, that will give me the kind of the sound I want when I want a woody sound. That's a tone color. If I play down, moving the angle of my air down, and widen my embouchure, it's going to give me a completely different sound.

To talk about tone color, I'm going to use a book titled The Virtuosic Flutist which was written by a good friend of mine named Nina Assimakopoulos. You can find her on Instagram under her name and The Virtuosic Flutist. This is a great book. It's got wonderful writing about tone color and how to achieve it. Nina also gives exercises for you to practice changing your tone color. I'll use her exercise to explain to you how she says to start experimenting with this tone color. Then I'll tell you how I'll use that in a piece to vary my tone color in a performance.

Now there is a lot more that we could discuss about tone color than what I write here, but this gives you a start. It is a place to begin. This book gives you the tools to show you how to begin. When you get this book read it from beginning to end like a book. Then get your flute out and try the exercises. In the section that tone color is discussed Nina says to practice tone color by using vowels.

Think of Shaping Your Embouchure
by Saying Vowels

eee (E)
eh (A)
oh (O)
ooh (U)

Let's talk about vowel sounds. If you make your mouth different shapes, as far as vowels go, A, E, I, O, U, they change not only your mouth shape, but also the inner cavity of your mouth. This has a direct application to your flute sound that you can apply to your playing. She uses four vowels sounds, eee(E), eh(A), oh(O), ooh(U). Say those and notice that when you say eee, you are wide, eh, a little bit wide, but longer, oh, shape is different, and ooh, those are very different shapes.

The exercise in the book uses a five-note pattern where you play these patterns with a particular vowel shape. So, an eee shape on F maybe a little bit different of a sound than an eee shape on A. Again, this is for you to experiment with, and this is just a jumping off place.

When I use the eee vowel shape, to me it's a very present sound. I feel like it's modern and edgy.

Then when I use the eh vowel shape, I feel that opens up the sound a little bit more. It takes some of that edge off.

Try it, I think you can clearly hear the difference between these when you change the shape of your embouchure in this manner. These differences are the nuance known as tone color.  

If you watch my video, I will demonstrate how you can use these vowel shapes to change your tone color to get the effect that you want in a piece. I'll play a passage from Bruce Stark's American Suite, the 3rd movement called Muse. This is supposed to represent some places in Arizona and the Nevada mountains, and the ocean in California. I think specifically the ocean at night.

I'll use these different vowel shapes and play and see what they sound like. Then I'll decide what combinations of vowel shaped embouchure that I want to use to make the piece my own. This makes it interesting for me because I like this kind of challenge. And I like to think that it makes it more interesting for the audience.

Nuance

Noun - The subtle differences in the sounds
of the notes that you play

Verb - Using your embouchure to vary the sounds
of the notes that you play

There are four different tone colors that you now have at your disposal to use in any piece you perform. If you've never thought about tone colors before, or you didn't really understand the idea, or like me, I knew I could get different colors, but didn't know how or where do apply them. Then this gives you a great tool to use to experiment with changing the tone color.

Now is the time to start experimenting with tone color. You have a lot of different ideas presented to you in Nina's book, After trying these exercises it's time to try it in your solo. Take a phrase and use these vowels sounds to express this phrase differently. See what you like and then mix it by using more then one vowel sound in the phrase to change the color. There is no right or wrong. It is completely up to you. Go ahead and decide what you like.

This is where music gets to be really fun and makes practicing exciting. Music comes to life! If you've never practiced with tone color, get Nina's book. Practice it, read it, do what it says. It's going to change your playing.

Have Fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this:

Tone Color from Nina Assimakopoulos book The Virtuosic Flutist FluteTips 107

Grounding from Nina Assimakopoulos book The Virtuosic Flutist FluteTips 112

The post Tone Color appeared first on DoctorFlute.

However it seems that there is always some little problem that keeps it from sounding clean. We've all had this problem. I remember so many times when I was in college thinking, why can't this passage sound clean? Why is there always a flub in the middle? I didn't really figure that out until long after college, unfortunately. But there is always an issue with fast passages. We always have something going on and we have to figure it out. Once you've done the work and it's still not clean what do you do?

There is hope. To play fast and clean there are usually three different areas that cause the problem.

Before you can fix any problems the first thing I can tell you is that getting clean fast passages has to begin with knowing your scales and arpeggios. I can't say that strongly enough, know your minor scales, know your major scales, and know your arpeggios like the back of your hand! This is the work you do when you warm up going through all those exercise books. It's not enough to play scales but you need to interact with your scales in different ways such as when you see scales in your Taffanel & Gaubert, or the Trevor Wye exercises or the Moyse exercises. There are many different ones out there but the important thing is learing them evenly at a fast tempo. If you don't have them absolutely steady, then that's where you start. We all have issues we can work on more. Pay that piper and it will pay you back! Okay?

But perhaps you are saying to yourself: I have done all that work. I know my scales and arpeggios. But those passages are still not clean. Read on!

The 3 Culprits

Once you have those skills in your fingers then you can deal with the 3 culprits that will keep you from playing cleanly:

1. Your fingers are rushing – faster than your tongue or eyes
2. You have a glitch – your finger combinations are not working together
3. Your fingers want to skip a note!

Here’s some ideas for fixing these three problems.

Rushing

The first reason I'm going to tell you for messy fast passages is that your fingers are rushing. Nine times out of 10 that's the issue. For my students, even when there's another issue going on, rushing is always part of it. With fast passages we often think we don't have time to get all the notes in. It's instinctual and it takes a lot of work to totally control the fingers. When you come across a fast run in a piece, it is difficult to evenly space those notes across the beat. Work with a metronome using various articulations to even out the fingers and to distribute the notes across the beat evenly. Each time it feels good on the fingers you move the metronome faster. The key to not rushing these passages is the metronome. It is essential! When you have articulated fast passages the rushing occurs when the fingers rush, but the double tongue is steady or the opposite.

You know the feeling when you are playing a solo and the fingers and tongue get off from each other. Most of the time the fingers are rushing and the tongue is slow. How do you fix that? Well, going back to your Taffanel & Gaubert exercises and putting your metronome on. Use the articulations in exercise 4, begin slow, use those articulations. Then get a little faster and use them all again. Continue until the desired tempo is reached. This sounds simple and I know that it's a long process. But the process works. It takes time but it is well worth the work involved. it's a solid way to practice to teach the fingers not to rush and for you to have absolute control.

Glitches

Time to move to the second problem: the glitch. Many times, the reason why a fast passage doesn't sound clean is because there is a glitch. 

Lets just make sure you know what a glitch is. A glitch occurs when all your fingers don't go down on the keys in absolute perfect unison. There are some finger combinations that are horrendous going quickly from one note to the next. When one finger lifts up another goes down and they don't exactly do perfectly. This causes a glitch.

To fix this, your job is to figure out where your glitch is. You need to analyze where the problem occurs. What finger is moving slowly? Is it possibly a finger that goes up and an opposite goes down that is causing the problem? When you have a glitch, it doesn't mean you haven't done your due diligence. It does not mean you didn't do the work to learn the passage. It only means that all our fingers are not created equal.

Once you have have determined where the problem fingers are, then you can fix them. It takes a lot of concentration. You must play that combination of fingers very slowly. Concentrate on moving those fingers. Really concentrate on moving those two or 3 fingers. Very slowly move them being sure to move exactly on time. If one finger is still slow then concentrate on that one finger. It really is "mind over matter." When you get it to work going slowly, then move the tempo a bit faster. I cannot tell you this is an easy process. It is very slow and painful but it works. It truly is a process that teaches finger muscles to work evenly.

The good news is that when you work this slow painful process the work you do does carry to other pieces. It will make this combination as well as other combinations easier. You have to do the work, but the payoff is plentiful.

Skipping a Note

Number 1 is rushing and number 2 is finding the glitch. The third one is related. Sometimes even after doing all this work there is a note that your fingers want to skip. It is related to the glitch because your fingers just aren't fast enough to put down that particular note. So they skip over it altogether!

I remember practicing the orchestral excerpt from Daphnis and Chloe. The opening run was not that difficult, except it wasn't clean. Every note wasn't heard. After a careful work through the notes I found that I was skipping one note.

There are a couple of ways to approach this. The first way after identifying which note is being skipped or delayed is to work on it like a glitch. Take the note before it and the note after it and slowly make sure that every finger does what it is supposed to do. When you fell like those 3 notes are smooth, add another note before and after. So, you start by playing slowly and then with increasing speed, those 5 notes. Eventually work through the whole run with a concentration on the note that is the problem. I also like to put a line over the note that causes issues. This makes me always remember that when I play this passage, I need to always concentrate on this note. It's this added focus on single notes that helps to NOT skip it.

Another method to work on in conjunction with this is to play the run in tempo, but then stop on the offending note. Do it many times. Then play it again at tempo but stop on the following the offending note. In tempo you play past the culprit, but only one note past. When that is good add another note. Continue until the run is all the way up. I don't find that this technique on it's own will fix the problem. I need to do it with the first method. Together they work on the issues needed to clean up the passage.

When I have fixed this passage and it is going along beautifully, I find that I need to approach this run by looking at the note that has caused problems. It is not a place to psyche yourself out but a place to put your concentration. If I tell myself to aim for that note then I know that I'll get past it and to the finish fine. Eventually, depending on how much I play this piece, I won't have to think about this note. But I'm quite sure that the first time I perform this piece I will look at the note that has the line and aim for it.

One day you will play that passage and it will flow beautifully. It will be a wonderful surprise and only you will know the amount of work that went into fixing it.

Those are the three reasons that keep me from clean passages. When I work on these I can get every single note out cleanly in a fast passage. When I hear myself on a recording, and I hear that I hear every single note ripple up or down. It's a beautiful thing.

You too will love having clean and fast passages. Now go do the work!

Have Fun!

DoctorFlute

Watch me demonstrate this: The Reasons Why You Can't Play Fast Passages Cleanly FluteTips 106

The post How to Play Fast Flute Passages Cleanly appeared first on DoctorFlute.