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 | May 4, 2019 | Daily Routine, FluteTips, Practice, Practice with Me, Technique
Have you started practicing your triplet scales yet? If you haven’t, you absolutely must add this technical scale exercise to your regular practice session. When I practice triplet scales I play through all of them. I begin with C, and travel the circle of 5ths....
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Mar 28, 2019 | Daily Routine, FluteTips, Practice, Technique, Tone, Trills
We all want faster trills! I always felt that I needed to work on making my trills go faster because my fingers were not naturally fast. But how can we learn to trill faster when some of our fingers move faster than others? Train All of Your Fingers to Move Faster You...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Jan 17, 2019 | FluteTips, Practice, Technique
What do you do when you’ve been practicing a difficult passage – using all the methods that you know of to get that passage down, to get it in your fingers, but you still can’t get it? Sometimes working on it backwards and forwards is the answer to nailing it. If...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Dec 18, 2018 | Daily Routine, Finger Placements, FluteTips, Practice, Technique
Do you like to play flute fast? Who doesn’t? It is one of the joys of playing flute. We get to have fast fingers and it’s a lot of fun. Not all instruments get to have this kind of fun. Our brass counterparts can try. But alas their instruments are not...
by Dr. Angela McBrearty | Sep 25, 2018 | Etudes, Practice, Technique
That’s no joke. When my teacher had finally and fully impressed upon me the importance of etudes in my development as a flutist, I decided to treat them like solos. I worked hard and quickly began to learn much more about music, including concentration, phrasing,...
