AboutHolly Expertise I can answer questions about learning to play the flute, reading music, problems encountered when playing, flute repertoire, practicing tips, and performing, as well as information about classical composers and their works. Please note that I am no longer accepting any questions about what kind of flute to buy, upgrading, flute brands, reselling, what a flute is worth, etc. I have answered many of these questions in the past, so please either view my answers in the the previously asked questions section or visit my website, which has a page about buying flutes: silentgalaxy.com/buyingflutes.html. Thanks!
Experience I've played the flute since fourth grade, graduating with my master's degree in flute performance. I have taught at local music schools, given flute lessons for over ten years, have played in and soloed with several orchestras, chamber groups, and various other ensembles. For more information about me, visit my website at silentgalaxy.com. I love the flute, and I love helping people, so I welcome your questions!
Education/Credentials Bachelor's and master's degrees in flute performance from Carnegie Mellon University.
Question About 35 years ago I started playing the flute and took lessons throughout my university years, studied some music theory ( solfege, hindemith etc..) and found that even after 10 years of playing classical music, if I was in a group of people and they pulled out guitars, mandolins, penny whistles etc... and started playing songs, I could never contribute anything unless it was a song I happened to have memorized, or had sheet music to read. Eventually I quit playing.
So now, 20 years later I am heading off toward my retirement home, have bought a new flute, have the time to spend several hours a day practicing and don't want to repeat the same mistake I made last time of getting somewhat skilled at reading music and playing, but being unable to even play Mary had a Little Lamb without the music to read.
Do you have a systematic approach to practicing for developing the ability to hear and play music while we also practice to develop tone, sight reading, learn scales etc...
Thank you for your time.
Answer Hey Richard,
The approach I use varies upon the student. Since you have years of musical experience (even if you don't think you do, you do), the approach I would recommend for you is to listen to a lot of the music you want to play. One of my former teachers used to talk about the knowledge automatically absorbed from listening to music as a sort of "musical accent", which comes across in your playing as someone who knows what the music is saying and how to relay that to the listener.
For scales and sight-reading.... doing them a lot is key to getting better at those techniques. For sightreading, the trick is to always keep the eye looking several notes ahead so you know what's coming ahead of time, and focus on maintaining a steady overall rhythm even though individual notes will necessarily fall to the wayside. Sightread anything you can get your hands on.... free sheet music online, music that belongs to friends, etc.
For scales, I reccomend the Taffanel-Gaubert book of daily exercises... the flutist's bible. These studies can be practiced in innumerable ways, and thus can be used to focus on any kind of finger technique you want. Here's a link so you can see the title and authors (but I'm sure you can get it cheaper elsewhere): http://www.musicroom.com/se/ID_No/0256101/details.html
For tone, long tones are your best friend. You will get an infinite amount of good out of these, more than most of my young students, because you can fully appreciate exactly what you're working on and what your goals are. Thoughtful, knowing the cause and effect (e.g. "I did this, and that happened") focused practice on tone alone, without finger technique or vibrato in the way, will seriously up your tonal development.
For learning to play along with groups of your friends, and be able to play songs you know by ear without seeing notes, singing is good training for that. (No worries, I'm not talking about public singing!) When I was in university, we all had solfege training, where we sang things to develop our ear for musical tones. The more aware you are of being able to distinguish between two notes that are three steps apart and two notes that are five steps apart, the better you will be able to translate that knowledge into knowing what notes to play.
Hopefully this will help you - if you have any more questions, let me know!
