A good friend of mine who was an extremely successful drummer & instructor, Bill Roth (billrothondrums from Akron, OH), used to start his students in an unusual way, but seemed to work very well. He would have them put a black dot dead center of their drum, then they’d try to hit the mark, alternating sticks, 30 seconds apart. Kinda maybe a zen-like thing,
grasshopper?
His students thought he was nuts, but they learned a lot faster, & became better percussionists.
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had ever used a similar technique with flute (no, I’m not suggesting tapping your flute on your monitor) but it could be adaptable, I’d think.
creating and controlling an airstream so as to produce a fine tone is of the essence in starting out on the flute. “hitting the mark” could be simply blowing long tones, having the airstream hit the embouchure hole just right; learning to focus and purify the tone; shooting for a strong, full, rich tone or any other shadings in tone; controlling the airstream, maximizing the airflow.
one can do it on any note, probably better to start with the easiest note for you to blow, say maybe C#, (no covered toneholes). blow and sustain a long C# note, slightly rolling the flute in and out so that the angle of the embouchure hole (in relation to your mouth) changes slightly; in an effort to get the best angle so that the note can come into focus cleanly, with a long tone. and then after that, try the same thing with the note B (first tonehole covered) and work your way down to all toneholes being coverd. blow with long sustained breaths on each note, as long as possible and really hone in on the note, eliminate excess noise from the formation of the note or tone before moving on to the next. this is just an example of one of many exercises. oh yeah, avoid getting dizzy or winded.
another exercise is to blow a note in the first octave and have it break into the second octave note, again with long sustained breaths. perform it for each note : lower octave → second octave…purify and elongate the notes.
the aperture of the lips can be changed to produces different shadings in the tone. the slightest change in the opening in the lips can alter the tone so play around with that, again with the idea of focus and clarity of tone.
there are many other exercises to do for other things like for fingering passages of notes, exercises for steady rhythm, for phrasing (breathing),
ornamention etc.
check out scoiltrad tutorial, grey larsen’s tutor, fintan vallely’s tutor etc. etc.
brad hurley’s website is a good link to have too. have fun and good luck…
“Pulsing” a note with your breath is also kind of hypnotic … it sort of becomes an ohm thing. Anyhoo, play a long tone for four or eight beats, then pulse half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, triplets (the last two are pretty tough) … no tonguing, just pushing with your diapraghm
Just a thought, but a couple of my former teachers made us warm up this way, and it really helped! (In fact, perhaps dhigbee can help my memory, but as I recall didn’t the IU marching band do this, too?)
A koan:
When the flute is sounding, who is there to play it?
Seriously, I just pick out challenging little bits -ornament approaches, phrases, long notes, what have you- and go over them until I’m satisfied enough for the moment, or until I find a way to cheat and call it a variation.
Cathy, I don’t know about the IU marching band (never played in that ensemble). Harry Houseshel, one of the flute teachers there did recommend breath pulsing. He called it “bell tones”.
Go Hoosiers!
Thank you for supplying Mr. Hodeschel’s first name – you solved a mystery that’s been dogging my addled brain. I could not remember it for the life of me, because I always called him “Mr.” – although I did only take lessons from him for a semester, and it has been ! Just about 20 years …
Anyway, thanks again! And as a survivor of said marching ensemble, I’m pretty sure we did “bell tones” there, too – yet I never made the connection at the time. DUH!
