Welcome to the ultimate flute player's guide - a treasure trove of wisdom wrapped up in ten must-watch videos! 🌟 Get ready for a rewarding experience as you engage in professional guidance and masterclasses designed to enhance your flute skills. Whether you are facing difficulties with articulation or striving for the ideal tone, these videos serve as dependable companions on your journey to mastering the flute.
Finding Perfect Balance: Alexa Still on efficiently holding the flute to maximise mobility and minimise pain.
2. Breathing: Emily Beynon- principal flute of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam since 1995. In this highly educational video, Emily delineates the difference between regular breathing and the breathing technique essential for flute playing. She explains the mechanics of the diaphragm, offering visual aids to enhance your understanding and practice. Additionally, Emily presents three structured breathing exercises for integration into your daily regimen, culminating with three valuable tips at the video's conclusion.
3. Tone -A flute player’s tone is the essence of their musical expression. Tone is such a vast and crucial topic that it could easily fill an entire blog post on its own. While this video offers valuable insights, there's much more to explore when it comes to refining and mastering tone on the flute. In future posts, we can dive deeper into different aspects of tone production, and look at some useful tone exercise materials. In this video, Sir James Galway speaks to the importance of embouchure and flexibility! He talks about positioning the head joint, keeping your lips on the bottom lip plate rather than taking it away, and how, by using just the head joint, you can gain the flexibility needed for making, not just smooth interval leaps, but ones that are in tune too!
4. As flute players we need to articulate efficiently, with clarity and speed. To facilitate a solid tonguing technique we need to know where to place the tongue and be mindful of its potential to impede the tone and speed if incorrectly positioned or utilised.
5. Now we know the mechanics of tonguing we'll look at double & triple tonguing techniques. To produce double and triple tonguing we combine either 't' or 'd' syllables with 'k' or 'g' syllables (others are used too but best to focus on these for now!). As these additional syllables are introduced much later than 't' and 'd', they tend to be weaker. In order to have even articulation we need to strengthen these secondary syllables.
6. It's said that Mozart wasn't a fan of the flute but it's hard to believe considering the beauty of both the D and G major Concertos. Although he was originally commissioned to compose three short and simple concertos for the amateur flautist Ferdinand de Jean, Mozart's compositions require incredible virtuosity, especially with regard to articulation. It's a particular style of articulation that needs to be clean, playful in character, with a crystal clear tone, and requires great diaphragmatic support. Here are some relevant time stamps in the video; from the start to 7.58 mins-D Major Concerto & 7.58 mins to end- G Major Concerto.
7. Tips from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Principal Flautist, Denis Bouriakov on how to structure your practice and get the most out your time spent in the practice room. Here are some relevant time stamps from the video: 5.36 mins Denis Bouriakov, 7.29 mins-how many hours should I practice, 11.12 mins-Exercises, 17.25 mins-Scales & 23.45 mins-practising trills.
8. The Secret to Developing Fast Technique with Alberto Almarza. In this interesting video Alberto introduces the connection between neuroscience and motor control. When practising notes purely for speed, the concept is that we store different speeds in different locations of our brains. If you play a passage at one speed the brain logs that speed and so the notion that you work up from slow to faster speeds means it will take a long time as the brain makes the connection between your motor movements and each new speed. He recommends instead, segmentation, where you take small segments of passages and play them at the desired speed.
9. In her masterclass in the New York Flute Center, Jasmine Choi shares some fascinating insights into some well known pieces in the flute repertoire; Bernhard Romberg, Flute Concerto in B minor, Op. 33 (at 5.00 mins), Francis Poulenc, Flute Sonata (at 29.54 mins) Sergei Prokofiev, Flute Sonata in D Major (at 01.05.28 mins), and George Enescu, Cantabile et Presto (at 01.33.05).
10. Finally, Bill Kanengiser discusses the issue of performance anxiety. It's an issue that will be the subject of another blog post as it is incredibly complex and nuanced, but very important, as it relates to wellness and the psychological well-being of the performer. For now, Kanengiser discusses the strange situation that is stepping out on stage to perform, 'fight-or-flight' response, self-actualisation, and perspective.
Having explored these videos, you now have a comprehensive toolkit at your fingertips. From tips on how to improve your articulation and refine your tone, to managing performance anxiety and perfecting posture, these curated videos provide targeted guidance to help you advance your skills.
Whether you’re working through specific challenges or aiming to deepen your knowledge of the flute repertoire, this post is a handy resource you can revisit whenever you need. Keep practising, stay motivated, and turn to these videos whenever you need a quick boost or some fresh inspiration!
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Coming next is 'Flute Gadgets'.
Until then,
Susan x
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