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subtlegreyInstead of NaNoWriMo, I'm going to aim for a short essay every day on a topic I feel like yammering about.
During this evening's flute practice session, I got a double-serving of Humble Pie. I get a high opinion of my playing ever so often, and not too long thereafter, I'm reminded of how much I have to learn.
I have this thing where I chastise myself that I can't move on to the next exercise until I've perfected the first one. Tone development is always the first exercise in any flute method book I've come across. No one ever masters tone. That's a forever-goal. Even the most renowned flutists (or flautists, for those with Romance language fluencies) work every day to master a beautiful tone. I'm not going to get that figured out in my lifetime, let alone a few weeks.
Flute Choir's Christmas repertoire has 3 marches from The Nutcracker, all of which feature alto flute in the low register with scads of staccato notes. That would be difficult on C flute. On alto, it's a serious technique challenge. Tonight, I went ahead and moved past the Tone exercises to some Tonguing exercises, specifically for difficult notes and low notes on alto flute! GO ME!
And whoa, talk about eating Humble Pie. The exercises always looks so damned easy. They are NOT. I spent about 25-30% of my practice time on them. I got a feel for how the exercises go and explored some of the nuances/suggestions in the text. Didn't master anything, barely succeeded, but I started! Something different! That's huge for me. I have issues.
I worked on a couple of the KCFC pieces on alto, then switched to C flute for a little while. There's some high-register fingerwork in Rudolph that whipped my ass. I can play one measure ok, and the next measure ok, but I can't play the two measures in sequence together. UGH. I will need to practice chromatic scales and those specific measures A LOT over the next few weeks.
I finished out on alto, working on one of the Marches ("March" to be precise!). This arrangement has repeats, and the 1st-repeat-2nd-ending is printed in such a way my eyeballs just do. not. want. I'm flailing around for ideas - might end up highlighting the jump. It's just inexplicably difficult for me to make my eyes go where I need to. What makes it worse is the 2nd repeat is only 1 measure, then it's ZOOM into the next section. If I skip that measure, I have no problem jumping right in to the next section. Why, brain?
And I need to sit down and devote a good 30min to practicing the 16th note runs with a metronome. I need to do that tedious, mind-numbing repetition of playing the same 8 notes over and over and over while incrementally upping the metronome. The problem isn't that I can't play them, or play them quickly. The problem is I'm playing them unevenly. Will anyone else notice? No. The section goes too fast. But it matters to me. I want to improve my technique, and this is a great (obvious) place to put in some hard work.
I wasn't planning to talk about flute stuff tonight, just kind of happened. Tomorrow evening, I practice with the non-KFC group. The trio music I ordered arrived today HOORAY!!!!! I'm SUPER EXCITED to try it out! 2 C flutes + 1 alto and I'mm'a be dat alto! SQUEE!
During this evening's flute practice session, I got a double-serving of Humble Pie. I get a high opinion of my playing ever so often, and not too long thereafter, I'm reminded of how much I have to learn.
I have this thing where I chastise myself that I can't move on to the next exercise until I've perfected the first one. Tone development is always the first exercise in any flute method book I've come across. No one ever masters tone. That's a forever-goal. Even the most renowned flutists (or flautists, for those with Romance language fluencies) work every day to master a beautiful tone. I'm not going to get that figured out in my lifetime, let alone a few weeks.
Flute Choir's Christmas repertoire has 3 marches from The Nutcracker, all of which feature alto flute in the low register with scads of staccato notes. That would be difficult on C flute. On alto, it's a serious technique challenge. Tonight, I went ahead and moved past the Tone exercises to some Tonguing exercises, specifically for difficult notes and low notes on alto flute! GO ME!
And whoa, talk about eating Humble Pie. The exercises always looks so damned easy. They are NOT. I spent about 25-30% of my practice time on them. I got a feel for how the exercises go and explored some of the nuances/suggestions in the text. Didn't master anything, barely succeeded, but I started! Something different! That's huge for me. I have issues.
I worked on a couple of the KCFC pieces on alto, then switched to C flute for a little while. There's some high-register fingerwork in Rudolph that whipped my ass. I can play one measure ok, and the next measure ok, but I can't play the two measures in sequence together. UGH. I will need to practice chromatic scales and those specific measures A LOT over the next few weeks.
I finished out on alto, working on one of the Marches ("March" to be precise!). This arrangement has repeats, and the 1st-repeat-2nd-ending is printed in such a way my eyeballs just do. not. want. I'm flailing around for ideas - might end up highlighting the jump. It's just inexplicably difficult for me to make my eyes go where I need to. What makes it worse is the 2nd repeat is only 1 measure, then it's ZOOM into the next section. If I skip that measure, I have no problem jumping right in to the next section. Why, brain?
And I need to sit down and devote a good 30min to practicing the 16th note runs with a metronome. I need to do that tedious, mind-numbing repetition of playing the same 8 notes over and over and over while incrementally upping the metronome. The problem isn't that I can't play them, or play them quickly. The problem is I'm playing them unevenly. Will anyone else notice? No. The section goes too fast. But it matters to me. I want to improve my technique, and this is a great (obvious) place to put in some hard work.
I wasn't planning to talk about flute stuff tonight, just kind of happened. Tomorrow evening, I practice with the non-KFC group. The trio music I ordered arrived today HOORAY!!!!! I'm SUPER EXCITED to try it out! 2 C flutes + 1 alto and I'mm'a be dat alto! SQUEE!
