Music, Cats, and Coffee

November Reflections Series: Humbling flute practice

2018-11-24T03:39:26Z

Instead 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.

( Read on )

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Flute: Tone development (C flute) Trevor Wye sample

2018-04-03T03:26:27Z

Tonight, I tried a tone exercise from one of the Trevor Wye books. My teacher had copied a few pages for me so I could try them out before buying.

I played from a middle B-natural down to a low C with a vibrant, resonant tone, full sound, IN TUNE. Took awhile to nail down the tone on the B, but from then on, I could really hear the quality and was able to match it as I descended the chromatic scale. For fun, I turned on my tuner app, and with some additional work, I actually kept the notes in tune!

This is huge. I honestly thought such a thing wasn't physically possible, or if it was, not for ME.

Now I kinda want to go back to school and study flute.

Which is a Bad Idea right now.

Next time I practice, I need to drill down into some measures in the flute choir repertoire that I keep flubbing up. Till then, bedtime for me!

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Quartet No. 13 in A minor Mvmt II Andante Schubert arr Brian Allred

2017-02-22T01:29:26Z

Tonight's brief practice was on an arrangement of the above for flute choir. I'm on alto flute, and this is very, very hard. I was struggling with some rhythms around measure 78, so I looked it up on YouTube and listened a few times, then played along.

I've got a long ways to go with building up the hand strength to support the weight of an alto flute while moving my fingers really, really fast!

No miracles will happen on this piece; I will have to drill diligently to develop muscle memory.

I do see where my part fits in the piece now, and I understand the "string style." It seems to me like flutes are always being pushed to mimic strings. I find this tedious. I hope as I am exposed to more repertoire I will find some pieces where a flute can be a flute instead of a violin.

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