OK, my embouchure is slowly improving,
but I hear people playing the D flute
faster than seems physically
possible. I can play low whistle
quite fast, but my fingering of
the flute is still pretty ponderous.
How does one develop more speed?
Are there exercises? Does one just
go on playing and speed develops?
Advice welcome!
To play fast, practice slow.
Playing at rapid tempos requires absolute precision of all aspects of playing: note, time, tempo, breathing, phrasing, ornamentation–all must be exact.
The best way I’ve found to develop this is practice slowly. Speed comes with time.
You’ll know when it’s coming together for you because you’ll be able to play fast without it sounding fast, because you’ll still be relaxed.
And that’s the other ingredient for speed: the more relaxed you are, the faster you can go.
Best wishes,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
Thanks, much encouraged.
Well said, James.
There are an awful lot of newer players who go for speed first, and the usual results are rushed tempos, lost feel and sloppy playing in general. Played slow(er), most tunes hold up well, and you can really give them a statelier feel. The ornaments and where to place them, too, become more apparent and – as you said – more relaxed and that makes the music relax as well. Sped up, all this should remain.
I was amazed how, in time, tunes I once thought were amazingly fast were not, once my own chops were there.
There is a flip side to the fast-but-relaxed thing, also.
I love Matt Molloy’s playing of the Home Ruler with the Cheiftains. So I learned it from his playing.
It sounds like he plays a moderate tempo. Just lays back and relaxes and cooks.
Until you try to play with him. 
I couldn’t keep up!
He is going much faster than it sounds, because he is relaxed and playing very musically.
Best wishes,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
Another idea, in addition to the good advice given above, is to aim for economy of motion. One of the reasons it’s always been hard for me to play fast (not that fast playing has ever been a goal for me) is that I lift my fingers much too high. I’ve watched videos of myself playing, and it’s comical: my fingers are flapping all over the place. I’ve seen several great players whose fingers move so slightly that it’s hard to tell they are even moving. They have no trouble playing fast.
[ This Message was edited by: bradhurley on 2002-12-30 07:24 ]
Finger lifting height is interesting. I was watching a novice whistler on Saturday. He lifted his fingers very high. I wanted to say something to him but the situation was inappropriate. When I got home, I started wondering about my own fingers so I watched them. I was surprised to see that I lifted them higher than I thought. That needs to be corrected. On the other hand Loretto Reid lifts her fingers quite high, at least on whistle and can play very fast.
Steve
There are actually reasons you might want to lift your fingers as high as you can on a given tune.
The main one is venting: keeping your fingers too close to a flute or whistle can result in the tone quality and intonation being affected.
The tradeoff for most is speed and accuracy.
However, as you point out, there are woodwind players who lift their fingers high and yet play with great speed and accuracy. These are musicians who have a great deal of energy in their hands and fingers and who are expert in its controlled release.
I try to keep my fingers a “medium” distance up–it’s something I’m getting better at. I think of the motion of an old-timey sewing machine needle: lifting a finger with speed but no force is coiling the spring, then the finger releases downwards at speed and with enough force to close the hole is the spring releasing.
Of course if you lift your fingers too high you can get a very audible “pop” when they come crashing down–common sense must rule.
Best wishes,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
On 2002-12-29 22:37, peeplj wrote:
There is a flip side to the fast-but-relaxed thing, also.I love Matt Molloy’s playing of the Home Ruler with the Cheiftains. So I learned it from his playing.
It sounds like he plays a moderate tempo. Just lays back and relaxes and cooks.
Until you try to play with him. >
I couldn’t keep up!
He is going much faster than it sounds, because he is relaxed and playing very musically.
Best wishes,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
James-
I agree. I recently saw Michael Flatley “Gold” (Which, despite being a paean to his ego-ness, is pretty good), and they show a segment from “The Late Show”(Late night show?) (Ireland version), where he plays a duet with Matt Molloy. I don’t know the tune, but they both just rock on the flute! And, neither one looks like they are expending any effort at all.
Aodhan
I don’t know that this adds too much to the discussion, but coupled with the “playing slower in the beginning” issue is the issue of practicing correctly, b/c mistakes are tough to unlearn. The main reason that my teachers would slow me down is that I would sacrifice accuracy and tone for speed and then it would take a long time to come back to the accuracy (after slaughtering the same passage 200 times it was hard to learn the right way).
I still have this tendancy, by the way, but now at least I know the problem so that I can ignore it more accurately 
Erik
Jim, just remember how long it took your fingers to limber up enough on the whistle. I’ve been practicing rolls on the whistle daily for a year, and I’m just now not embarrassed by them. I’m only dabbling with the flute now, but I’m back to dah-blah-blah all over again, and it seems entirely different on the flute.
I’m of two minds on the speed vs. accuracy thing. I agree absolutely that a piece must be practiced primarily for accuracy. But I think going through it a few times at a faster pace doesn’t hurt, and limbers up the fingers a bit. I look at it kind of like speed vs endurance in running. If you run the 1500 or 10k, you still benefit from running 100’s, but 100’s aren’t all you should run.
Charlie,
I agree with you to a point, re speed, but first the tune(s) must be under your belt, both in terms of rhythm and feel, ornaments, etc. Then, by all means, try to play it a bit faster – especially in a session or band situation. But if you don’t have all the rest down, it becomes a sloppy mess and, as someone said earlier, messes are hard to unlearn.
Oh, and when I say by all means play faster, I mean to appropriate speed, and then maybe a bit over, if the enthusiasm overwhelms everyone. Some players simply ruin tunes by racing through them at the outset, and that does no one any good.
On the lifting fingers bit that Brad brought up, I agree. I played pretty fast with my fingers fairly high (this is my right hand I’m thinking of – the left is in standard positioning, and the fingers are where they have to be), but I found, when I listened to recordings back, there was much less cleanliness to right hand note changes and cuts, etc. – lowering them (a bit) helps this, assuming (as James mentioned) the intonation doesn’t go off.