Höskuldsson plays J.S. Bach in Weggis Recital

Dear Flutists,

This is the J.S. Bach A minor, unaccompanied Sonata, or Partita as played by Stefan Höskuldsson, principal flute of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Video - Showcase Recital Series, Galway at Weggis 2009

Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson
Principal Flute, Metropolitan Opera, New York USA

For those readers who don't yet know this Partita by heart, the sheetmusic is free online here.
Very good footage! Do watch.

Best,
Jen

Chaminade too challenging for Honor Band audition?

As a flute teacher, I have a novice flute student who wants to audition for Honour Band (ie: "All state", "All-city", regional best high school band) and the required piece is the first page of Chaminade's Concertino. How should I proceed?

The above question came up on one of the flute discussion groups this week, and several people questioned why the audition piece would be so difficult. See below for my personal take on it.
Also, having fun with coloured pens I created a quick (2.3MB pdf) overview of the first page of the Chaminade, showing the flute skills required, so that the teacher can show the student/parent/band-director how to lay the foundation for the skills that will eventually allow Chaminade to be played well.

See skill sheet for Chaminade Concertino first page HERE.

And here is my take on it:

Dear Band Audition discussers,

By choosing a difficult piece of music the audition committee can quickly eliminate 90% of the auditioners (and speed up the process of auditioning what could be hundreds of high school players) while still keeping the auditions open to all who wish to try out.

The difficult piece of music will also aid self-elimination among the weaker participants prior to the audition.
The challenge is then passed on to the private flute teacher, who must struggle to prepare those students who will NOT be able to functionally play Chaminade.

It would be easier, perhaps, for the flute teacher to tell the students:
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"This Chaminade piece is a level 7 on a scale of 1 to 10, and you're at a level 2. Do you want to work seriously, and take a year to work to get to a level 4 or 5, and then just do the audition just for the experience; using it as a goal?
Or would you prefer to work steadily and easily and maybe do the audition in future years when you *really* are at a level 7?"
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Personally, I find that the idea of asking a level 2 high school player to play one page of a level 7 piece causes physical tension and much frustration in the student. It is wasted practise time.

But perhaps this is the only local competition that engages the committment of the local students? If so, why not design a two year prep. course that prepares more beginner level students for NEXT year's auditions?

Perhaps the reality check (above) followed by a discussion on "how to get to level 7 of flute playing" might be of benefit.

The first page of the Chaminade could be written out with notes that explain what each skill is, for clarification of the skills required.

That would be a good way to show the student what to work on in their level 2 pieces. (dynamics, phrasing, high register, counting unusual rhythms etc.)

Best,
Jen

How to learn Etudes

See also etudes for flute that are free online.

How to work on Flute Etudes: by Jennifer Cluff

METHOD FOR APPROACHING A NEW ETUDE:

1.PLAY THE SCALES IN THE KEY OF THE ETUDE FLUIDLY: Decide which key or keys your etude is in. Then aquaint yourself with these keys by playing their scale first in the low octave, and then slowly, using longtones in the high octave to improve tone quality. Play with full, rich, free and ringing tone always, even when playing very slowly. You may breathe as you need to, adding pauses wherever required at first. (see Breathing in Etudes below**).

2. ELIMINATE FINGERING BLIPS: Correct any fingering difficulties by listening carefully for "blips" or lazy finger changes. Lower the flute down in front of your eyes and WATCH the fingers if necessary, and smooth the blip area. Which fingers are exchanging places? Which are moving together during a change from one note to the next? Finally practice the scale, all slurred, two octaves, remembering to add breath support (crescendo going up and down too!). This clears up any inherent difficulty you may have with the scale before the problem then bungles your etude up.

3.AQUAINT YOURSELF WITH THE MUSICAL MATERIAL & STYLE: Play the first few bars of your study to establish the musical style & materials that are in it. Have a look at the tempo marking (Allegretto, Presto, Moderato) to ascertain the character of the music. Let the first theme sound truly attractive and musical as it begins to emerge. Play it very musically with terrific phrasing. Look into the thematic material for great phrasing ideas. Experiment with your interpretations. Get a feel for the challenges and the composer's ideas.

4.USE OUTLINING TO GRASP THE HARMONIC MOTION OF THE ETUDE.
Example: Drouet Etude no. 9 from 25 Famous Etudes can be simplified to two half-notes per bar during outlining stages (click on jpeg to enlarge):

Allow yourself to play through a basic outline of the etude, pausing on downbeats of any bar where you feel you're beginning to run low on air.

[See breathing notes** below on how to breathe when learning a study at slower tempos].

Don't bother getting all breathless and tight as you're first discovering the outline and harmonic motion of an etude. Instead, play tiny little sections beautifully and perfectly in half-notes or whole-notes. During outlining of the main tones in each bar, play especially MUSICALLY, even when holding whole notes, for example. Outlining is very good as a sight-reading exercise, and also begins imprinting the musical direction of the etude even before you've even fully learned the additional notes, which saves time and creates a deeper interpretation. (For more on outlining see: Interview with author James Boyk on Outlining in practice. )

5.TONE: Play with your ears focused on your tone at all times. If a leap to a high note suddenly creates poor tone quality on that high note, simply stop and do slow and careful longtones up to the highnote, memorizing the sensation of wind-speed and embouchure that you have when that particular high note sounds well, and when approached by step.

Next, with the sensations memorized, leap to that same high note and assume the same airspeed and embouchure position. If you do this the first or second time you ever approach this passage of music in the study, you'll be already training yourself to land each note of the work with fabulous tone. That will put you much farther ahead than "splatting" your tone on certain notes, and then having to discover later that you've taught yourself to "splat!" on those notes.

6.CIRCLE THE DIFFICULT PARTS FOR SPECIAL ATTENTION: As you work through an etude, gradually circle the toughest sections in that etude, so that you're well aware of which sections of the etude will require more careful work. Come back to the etude after a rest and make longtones out of the tough parts, first playing only two notes in a row, then a different two notes, and linking them together into groups of three, four, five and six notes. Create many new ways to work over the tricky bits, recombining smaller groups, creating new rhythms, and adding subdivisions and simplifications until the skill level improves. Return to erase the circles when those difficult sections are now easy.

7.FULLY EXPLORE DYNAMICS: Always play with full, rich, dynamic range, and experiment with their parameters in your etudes and studies. Can your fortes be richer and more ringing? Can your pianissimos have more core to the sound, and carry out into a large hall eventually? What can you do to improve your dynamic range?

If your production of dynamics has not yet been practiced that day, take a break at this point to do some of Fiona Wilkinson's vowel-dynamics as outlined in “The Physical Flute” or use Walfrid Kujala's method (see Jennifer Cluff's website for the terms “FULP” and “PLOT” for more info.). Then, return to the study and ease the dynamics into it working to make them beautiful in tone colour.

8.LISTEN FOR NEAT & PRECISE TONGUING: Pay special attention in one or more of your study-practice sessions on clear and concise articulations. If your tonguing has not yet had a clarity-searching session on a given day, spend some time tonguing repeated patterns on a single note, that relate to the articulation patterns in the particular study you're working on.

For example, if the study has a staccato high E3 that seems difficult to articulate clearly, try a whole note on E3 until the tone is clear and ringing. Then tongue four times on that whole note, keeping the tone equally rich and the air speed correct for a long, ringing tone quality. Then tongue twice on the pitch, then once, or as written.

Alternately, starting on B2 and tonguing four or more times per pitch, you can play chromatically ascending to high E3 and above, then return to the E3 and insure its quality of sound. If you take 4 minutes to do this, and then return to the staccato high E in your study, your body will have already perfected the correct embouchure, tongue strike and air-speed to assure you of a good E3 tone with crisp, clean articulations.

9.RETURN TO CIRCLED AREAS EACH SESSION: Each practice session you'll need to return to the etude and work on the circled (difficult) bits first. Starting with playing slowed down longtones, and then proceeding to speed them up slightly is a common method, but there are other interesting ways to create improvements as well.

When difficult sections are easy and fluid, play into them from the bars before. Also practice playing smoothly both in and out of these sections as well. Remember that at this stage you're able to speed up the tempo gradually, and can still pause on downbeats, gather your breath and faculties, and soar into the next section. Keep all sections musical, even though there are still pauses between larger sections.

10. ADD SPEED USING THE METRONOME:As the etude begins to be familiar and easy, click the metronome up one notch each time you run through it, and study the rise and fall of the phrases. Do not allow yourself to speed through at tempos that are simply too fast for accuracy (you'll only teach yourself how to repeat bad tone or mistakes, and that's not a good idea.) Sometimes you'll have to stay at a metronome speed for a few days until your body adjusts to the new techniques. Don't worry. You'll soon experience a quantum leap as your body learns and adjusts. It may take 3-6 days depending on the challenge the etude is offering you.

11. CREATE A FINISHED AND POLISHED ETUDE: Finally, as you approach the tempo you feel is most musical for the etude, start erasing any unecessary markings or breaths, so that you're left with the true number of breaths and "temporary pauses" that you can manage.
Eventually the goal is to eliminate almost all the added pauses, but in the meantime you can remind yourself to take deeper breaths at certain points by marking those places with a double-breath sign if you like. Go over extra-long phrases several times to see just how much breath you should have taken in to make it all the way through the phrase. If you need to reduce the out-going air, or reduce the dynamics from ffff to mf in order to conserve breath, mark this also.

The goal, remember, is to make real music out of the study.

Audio-record your final version and listen back to it, pretending it's a magnificent concerto, and you were to make the most gorgeous presentation out of it.

Find out if you can dance to the rhythm. Dancing around to recordings of your own pieces and etudes really helps you find out about hiccups that may exist in your rhythm and metre.

Find out if there are any weak areas in your etude from listening back to your recording. Circle them, and tackle them with metronome and subdivisions the next time you practice.

12.If you've done a recorded performance to the best of your ability on an etude, move to another etude that presents a similar or a varied challenge. Graded etude lists help. You can proceed through any etude book in any order and mix and match the etude composers for variety; ask your teacher for titles to hunt up.

Begin the new etude by determining the key, and by playing the arpeggios and scales of the new etude's key center, and perfecting the tone and fingering of that scale (ie: recommence at no. 1 above and repeat this list.)

And if you're proceeding by key, and you need an etude to go with your scales/arpeggios in Bmajor, for example, but cannot find one, go ahead and use one in B-flat major, and simply mentally transpose the key signature. This is particularly fun using Bach, Quantz, Frederick the Great and Galli exercises.
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**BREATHING in ETUDES

Since many studies have seemingly impossible expectations concerning breath marks and ease of breathing, here are some ideas about “easy breathing” for etudes:

The study of an etude can begin with super-slowed-down renderings of the etude, or a simple outline of the etude. The flutist needs to give themselves full permission to stop and pause on the downbeat of any bar or literally, on any note, at first. Yes have permission to pause on any downbeat WELL before running out of air completely. This way you can always play with impeccable tone.

I especially recommend that you stop and pause as soon as you feel like you’re running out of air.

This method of breathing naturally works brilliantlyl especially when you’re doing the slowest practice of the etude with the metronome.

The pause-note is then replayed as the beginning of the next section, bar or phrase, so as not to lose melodic and harmonic continuity.

The frequency of these "temporary" pauses relies on just how slowly the study is being played and allows the student to begin to comprehend how much air to take in, and how to conserve it through repetition and
experimentation.

This means that the flutist can continue to play in a slow tempo without becoming tight lipped, breathless or tense, and can find ways of working the study as accurately as possible EXCEPT for the final breath planning. The tone will always be full and rich, and the body free to relax.

As the metronome climbs in speed, these pauses are naturally eliminated since the air use is gradually improved and the "temporary" pauses tend to appear every four or eight bars, as opposed to every
one or two.

As the tempo increases further, over several days work, and the etude becomes closer to perfect in terms of dynamics, finger agility, articulation (tonguing) and phrasing, the final planning of the breaths is then worked on, using pencil markings to add to those breath marks already present in the edition.

This method eliminates the student's frustration with long and difficult etudes that seem to ask the flutist to breathe only every four or five lines, which we all know is impossible except at breakneck speeds; speeds that may never be reached in the earlier years of study.
It also allows the full attention to be given to producing a gorgeous, brilliant and rich tone; using your best possible flute tone is something that should never be sacrificed when learning new music.

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Just one flute lesson?

Dear Flutists,

What happens when you try and comply with a visiting adult flutist who wants "just one lesson"? I know that many flute teachers don't feel they can do much at all in one lesson (for zillions of reasons I'd be happy to share), but every now and then you get a terrifically motivated adult student who's been working away by themselves for year, who wants to get the most information is an hour as they possibly can.
Well, needless to say it's a HUGE challenge for sure for the teacher, especially if there's only an hour and no follow up, to:
a) assess what the student needs now
b) explain clearly how to accomplish practicing on the most needed areas
c) be relaxed and yet focused enough to teach alot and yet have an enjoyable hour with a student who's en route and may be tired, and a little scared of criticism
d) impart enough information that the lesson can truly make a difference when the student gets home to practise.

For those of our readers who are not yet teachers, it is indeed a TALL ORDER, which is why relying on one hour lessons spread over a year is not usually advisable. :>)

So, for your comment/perusal, here's a sample of the follow-up notes I sent to an adult intermediate student after a one hour, one-time-only lesson, where I tried to help as much as I could in sixty-minutes. Enjoy. Jen

Dear Student.....

Thankyou so much for a wonderful flute lesson today.
I thought it would be helpful if I summarised the points made while they are still fresh in my mind.

1. Low register tone work is the foundation of any new embouchure.
Why? Because you can hear the changes and improvements much more quickly and because the muscles and poise that you improve during low register are the foundation of the muscles/poise that you will use in the middle and high registers. So always spend a good warmup period on low longtones starting on middle-of-the-staff B1. *(Moyse's De La Sonorite or Trevor Wye's "Tone-Bk.1 Practice Book for Flute".)

2. During low register longtones, use the softest possible finger motion to close each key. Sense exactly the split second when the key's pad closes the tone hole of each note. Play with this deliberately, don't rush through. Sense each key's spring action and even smear into each note to discover a tactile sense of when the pad is closing exactly (like a clarinetist feels their finger pad close a hole in the clarinet.) This allows you to do two things at once; finger low and close to the keys (no thumping from a height) and work on low longtones at the same time.

3. Once you have found a good low register note (the first B can be played many times with many minute changes made until it sounds full, rich and fabulously colourful before moving on to other notes.) that exact air-speed and embouchure will likely work for many low longtones in a row. See if you can put your embouchure "on pause" and not move it at all, and then glide your fingers down chromatically to see just how many notes in a row can use that same embouchure. This allows you to simplify the embouchure for the whole range of notes, and not work it too hard.

4. Go to a piece that has lots of low register in it to play with your new and improved tone (Faure Pavane). You will find that low, soft fingers and a rich, full low register tone will have paid off, plus you will get a break and be playing something lovely.

5. Move on to working on your middle register once low register is secure.
To go up an octave from B1 to B2 there are two thing that must happen:
a) the air speed will go from approx. 40 mph to 80 mph. (numbers are made up by the flutist as they discover air-speed perceptions)
This is a crescendo-like air speed increase.
b) the lip corners can come forward like a "half-kiss".
Play with both these parameters one at a time, and then put them together so that you crescendo on the low B (adding air-speed) first, and then slowly and gently moving the lip corners forward to rise an octave. You can also do it the other way around: move the lip corners forward to hear just when the upper octave suddenly smears upward by itself, and then crescendo. Finding a perfect balance between these two actions will give you a one-ledger line B that has a full, rich ringing, colourful tone. Take the time to do this many times before proceeding. Release excess embouchure tension always.

6. Once you have that rich tone on the upper B2, memorize the feel of it exactly and put the mouth "on pause" while you glide down each chromatic note. Find out just how many notes in a row use that exact mouth and air speed. You will find that once you have one ringing note, that all the neighbouring notes sound good for the same reason the first one does. If you lose the tone, just find the low B1 again, and then repeat #5 above to find the high B2 again. I do this everyday for several minutes. You can always find it again if you always take time to find it each day. Don't skip this step in a rush to do something else...this *is* the most important foundational exercise to embouchure and tone.

7. Proceed with chromatics down from B2 all the way to the original B1 you started with. Experiment, and take time. When you have a rich, full, clear tone in the middle register, for variety, go to a piece you're working on and take just two notes from it, and then gradually add one note from either side, keeping the rich colourful tone while you slowly re-expand the piece from just those few notes.

8. Changing your embouchure from too tight, to too lose, to "just right."
One of the main things to watch out for is jaw pain, jaw tension, or jaw tightness of any kind. The jaw hinges work best if they are doing what comes naturally: talking or eating.
Eating is too much open and closing the teeth, and we want the back molars apart like you have a finger or a carrot stick between your back molars. The jaw should just loosely hang open in this position.
Now, take talking as our example of easy jaw use. You can talk forever without jaw tension or tiring your face or mouth, so find your natural talking position for the jaw as follows:

a) place the flute on your chin in normal playing position and talk "Abcdefg" or any sentence you like. Feel how the jaw is in a natural position, and lightely open at the hinges.
b) Then say "ooop" to pull your upper lip down onto your lower lip. (previously you might have been pushing the flute upward vertically on your face, instead of pulling down on the skin between the nose and the upper lip to lengthen it. "ooops" said with an embarrased lowering and pulling of the upper lip downward might just be the right word to use to learn to lengthen the distance from nose to lip).
c) Say "peu" to allow a small aperture to appear in the lip center.
d) say "peu" to start a flute low note.

Five minutes a day spent repeating the above steps may just work to find an easy, untiring natural placement of the embouchure that directs the air effortlessly at a 45 degree angle downward. Experiment with this every time you pick up the flute. The time is not wasted, it is invaluable at creating a clear tone with minimal extraneous face motion.

9. Spend more time in the low and middle register with this new easy embouchure, using the mirror to distinguish whether the air is flapping the lips or the cheeks too much. If it is, you can lightly place your fingers where the flapping is in order to locate the muscles you may need to have more poised and still.

10. Finally, for future work on high register (I would stay on the low and middle for at least three weeks or so, until you have a really great focused sound with your new embouchure) you will be bringing the lip corners slightly more forward and increasing the air-speed slightly more (70 mph to 120 mph.)
This is done the same way you began leaping from B1 to B2 by using both crescendo and "half-kiss". So always start high register by "walking up" from B2 after first blowing up the octave to find a good basic starting point.

We can work on this the next time I see you.

Other minor points from the lesson:

i) Thin lipped people may need more air-space between upper lip and teeth because they need a longer "run-way" for the air to travel before leaving the lips. Thick lipped people may actually have to spread their lips sideways to reduce their inner lip's already very long lip 'run-way". Lip thickness can play a role in teaching methods, so be sure that the teacher understands the two extremes before quoting their method as the "only method".

ii) Bb played with one-and-one is the first Bb fingering learned because it is the "default fingering"; the one that will have to be used when no other easier Bb is possible, so it's good to be very handy with it. However if the whole piece/study is in a key with Bbs throughout, thumb Bb is easy, available, simpler, and smoother. Usually flutists mark their music for thumb-off or thumb-on using "o" or "+" for when to change from Bb thumb to Bb-1&1. Good notes to change thumb position are notes that have no thumb like C or C# or high G.
Bb thumb makes it impossible to get a good high F# or good high B-natural. Thumb must not be on Bb thumb for these notes.
Side-key Bb (side lever above F key) is great for a variety of uses, but more rarely used. I use it for longtones because it stabilizes the balance of the flute during left-hand-only notes and can stay down for A, Ab and G. Very useful in some pieces too for super-smooth note changes (less clunky and better tone because less keys go down.)

iii) To tune a flute while playing, you need to be able to point your "half-kiss" shaped lips up and down. From 45 degree angle downward to 45 degree angle upward. (for very soft 'pppppp' for example.) If you used your wrists to roll in and roll out, you'd have these problems:
a) wrists get sore from overuse
b) flute tone quality different on every note you bent with the wrists because lower lip covering and uncovering various amounts will make tone colour different, and our first goal is an EVEN tone colour throughout the range of the flute (read the text of Moyse's Sonorite)
c) can't use wrist motion in fast music; so when COULD you use it???? Only in slow music? It's too unstable; the motions are too large.

Instead, use the much faster and easier methods of playing in tune:

Use these methods first:
1. Increased air-speed (add 10-20% faster air than you think you need is a good rule of thumb, especially for flat low notes, or fuzzy high notes.)
2. Aim upward or downward using lips only (the kissy shape gives you more lip "run-way" to aim the air specifically with. Don't overdo it though. Find the easiest way to aim up and down, and do it very very slowly at first.
3. Sing the note (throat-singing) while playing, to increase resonance and to tune the note with the body.

Hope this helps, and sorry the mini-disc ran out of batteries, or there would be an mp3 sent along so you can hear the changes you made during the lesson.
It was a great lesson and you're a terrifically musical player.
So great to meet you.

Have fun on your holiday.

Best,
Jen Cluff

The Adult Beginner - Is it all about Talent?

Last night I did some fascinating reading about teaching older students. I had been questioning my views on teaching older adult novice flutists. Below are some quotes and some interesting avenues of discovery.
Comments are welcome!

Quote: from Unleashing Talent by Ricardo Iznaola

The Myth of Innate Talent

TRADITIONAL musical pedagogy is still tainted by the conventional wisdom which teaches us that musical talent is an innate ‘gift’ with which a few privileged people are blessed, and that its presence or absence is not necessarily related to a vocational calling, which may exist in the ‘untalented’ individual. This deleterious viewpoint shuts the door to the riches of musical training to untold numbers of people who never give themselves a chance to pursue their musical dreams, in the belief that they were born without a talent for music.

The belief in ‘innate talent’ is also a convenient expedient to excuse pedagogical failure; indeed, how can we blame a method or a teacher for the difficulties encountered by this or that ‘not very talented’ individual, poor soul, full of desire and enthusiasm but ‘not gifted’? This pedagogy of predestination has to be counteracted energetically and without compromise.
Traditional musical pedagogy must follow the lead of the great early childhood training methods (like those of Orff or Suzuki) and ground itself on the premise that everyone who shows a strong desire to ‘do’ music has a talent for it. This is the only truly disinterested pedagogical posture because it places the burden of responsibility where it properly belongs – with the teacher, instead of the learner.
We, as pedagogues, must come to believe in talent as a function of method.

The Adult Beginner
The success of early childhood musical pedagogies lies in their assumption of a universal musical capacity in children not dissimilar to that which allows them to learn their mother tongue by rote, through imitation, playfulness, trial and error, etc. This success gives credence to modern 'generative’ theories of music which assume similar mental structures for music as Chomskian linguistics speculate may exist for language.

Be that as it may, these pedagogies deal with a stage in the development of human beings when the spiritual ‘slate’ is cleaner, less burdened, than in older individuals, who carry a heavier emotional and intellectual load. Our main interest, pedagogically, lies with the musical training of the latter.

Post-adolescent musical pedagogy is notoriously deficient in handling the challenge presented by the ‘passionate adult beginner’: what to do for those students intensely in love with music but possessing little or no training, who usually bring with them deeply ingrained convictions about their lack of talent, their being too old, too physically badly coordinated, their lack of aural ability and other such negative self-concepts. Where to begin? What goals can we realistically expect to achieve? How far can they go?

There is no denying that the passing of time does have a deteriorating effect on the human body, with joints becoming more stiff, reflexes slower, stamina and endurance lessened. These effects of ageing, however, are not strong enough to produce noticeable malfunctions usually until well past middle-age and are practically irrelevant in most normal adults until the sixth or seventh decade of life. Even more, some radical medical thinkers are now disputing the unavoidability of old age’s dereliction and are beginning to offer alternative viewpoints of far-reaching implications.

Of even less consequence is the effect of age on mental/spiritual capacities, except in cases which are pathological in nature. We can keep fully functional intellectual and emotional capabilities for most of our life. We must then conclude that much more important than the obstacles imposed on us by physiology or the passing of time are those created by our psyche, by our self-concept, by our relationship with authority figures, etc. In short, by the world surrounding us, and our interpretations of it.

The sad fact is that, in most cases, the students of whom we speak will never experience the full realization of their true potential because their real needs will never be addressed or even recognized. Their own self-concepts (and our implicit assumptions as their teachers), will deny them that right. The negative expectations about their lack of success will become self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating and, in our faculty lounges, we will look at each other with a knowing wink as if saying, ‘See? I told you so.’

For those of us involved in academia, this scenario is a familiar one (and who among us can claim innocence?): the distinguished master, talking about his ‘star pupil’, with glittering eyes, hushed enthusiasm in the voice, pride in the accomplishment of the pedagogical mission...or talking about ‘that other student’, eyebrows raised in disgusted surprise, a sneer, and a dismissive shrug.

How commonplace and how terribly unfair! Surely ‘that other student’ is more a victim of who knows what complex circumstances than of a cruel fate that has deprived this pupil of ‘talent’.
If only the illustrious and no doubt well-intentioned master would take the time to educate (bring out) rather than instruct (pile upon). If only the teacher could empathise rather than criticise and could become an ally instead of a judge…

Seen in this light it becomes evident that a primordial pedagogical responsibility remains in the discovery or, more precisely, uncovering of hidden talent. For diverse reasons, many people have their talents buried under layers and layers of emotional debris. These are the people we consider untalented (as they themselves do). The talented are those who have managed to maintain unimpeded access to their talent: those souls who are relatively free from the burdens that scourge the human spirit.

In particular this pedagogy avoids:

•the overbearing authority of historical traditions, which may easily lead to dogma and rigidity. This is the greatest enemy of intellectual freedom.

•critical statements which express, explicitly or implicitly, moralising value judgements. This is the greatest enemy of emotional freedom.

•standardised or formulaic procedural approaches to technique which constrain the playing mechanism by their narrow and unimaginative perspectives on the issues of technical control and security. This is the greatest enemy of physical freedom.

Instead this pedagogy searches for:
•tangible evidence demonstrating the existence of connecting, integrative principles whose applicability is based on contextual interpretation rather than pseudo-apodictic certainty.

•ways to stimulate the student’s discovery and identification of problem areas that are viewed as opportunities for learning and progress rather than as reasons for condemnation or derision.

•the fitting application of functional movement, and its related sensory feedback, to each individual circumstance presented by the ever-changing technical procedures contained in the work under study.

Read the full articles at these links:

The Adult Beginner - Is it all about Talent?
http://www.egta.co.uk/content/sloboda
http://www.egta.co.uk/content/unleashing_talent
http://www.egta.co.uk/content/unleashing_talent2

Jen continues:I wonder if some of the physical tensions that adult novice flutists can present with would be helped by The Feldenkrais method? So I spent a little time researching that as well. Here are some interesting avenues of thought:

Unlearning tension and increasing "feel" article by Feldenkrais

Working with an older musician (brief article about uses of Feldenkrais with a 70 yr. old composer/pianist with neck and back pain from posture habits).

Book excerpt from: Awareness Through Movement by Feldenkrais

Video of Moshe Feldenkrais working with stiff necked person (from whiplash).

ATM Feldenkrais floor work on video

And all levels of musicians may want to read about:

Quote from Feldenkrais use in the performing arts.

This refers to accomplished musicians who may find that they currently play with emotional/physical stress:

Working with a Berklee Saxophonist:
A saxophone player once came to me suffering through arm, shoulder and back pain. He was familiar with the Feldenkrais Method because he had taken the group classes, called Awareness Through Movement, during his college music training. His practices were becoming more and more troublesome and he found he needed to inhibit certain movements in order to make it through a performance. Technically, he had mastered his instrument. His level of virtuosity was quite apparent. Yet, he was physically uncomfortable. This same virtuosity, as well as his livelihood, was being threatened by his current condition.

In the beginning of one of our first lessons, I asked him (an accomplished saxophonist) to play a few musical passages that were: a.) easy and comfortable, b.) difficult and required significant effort, and c.) poignant and full of emotion. Observing him play, I noticed a great attention to the music, but considerably less attention to himself. The musical notes were the foreground, and his body a distant background. I noticed there was little acknowledgment of the ground through his feet. His difficulty manifested itself in back and shoulder pain. His eyes were strongly tensed and his head position forward, as if he were trying to reach the musical notes on an imaginary music stand. His habitual tensions were forming the quality of tone, effort and expression in his playing. Read more....

I hope to explore more of this topic in the future, and try out Feldenkrais for myself and report back. As a flute teacher, I find that the ease and balance of the physique is critical to the freeing of the emotion and learning of an instrument in a student. Who knows? It could increase the perception of "talent".

Please do comment if you have interesting ideas on the above cornucopia of information about freeing talent, freeing the body and freeing the musician.
Best,
Jen

Klickstein's book about practicing

Dear Flutists,
Take a look at this new book out on the basics of practicing and performing music.
You can read most of it here: The Musician's Way (google books preview)

And the author, Klickstein, also has an interactive and informative blog as well as a very useful set of musician's links to peruse.

Performance links

Musician Wellness

Musician Creativity

Very informative and thorough. I've ordered a copy from Amazon.ca in paperback.
Other similar titles welcomed (although I've read a TON on this topic---I'm still actively seeking handy and pithy resources such as this for my University level music students.)
Great stuff. Very to the point.

Best,
Jen

Teachers playing along with students?

Dear Flutists, A terrific conversation on Flutenet today.
What a wonder that there are two different points of view on this topic. I would have always thought that playing along with beginner and novice students was part of every lesson. Interesting read!

I was at a masterclass with a couple of my students given by Petri Alanko. It brought up a question...maybe controversial enough to get all the flute teachers talking? Not sure. We flute teachers noticed that Petri did quite a bit of playing along with the students. We brought this up later, one of my colleges said she did the same, the rest of us didn't (and couldn't remember seeing other teachers doing it).

Petri's explaination - and my college's, was that it's easier in early stages to 'explain things' by playing along. Petri also admitted to thinking there was some kind of 'resonance learning' going on - playing so close to the student so that they feel as well as hear (and see) the example.

Do any of you play along with students? Petri did say he does this with younger students, or in the beginning stages of learning a piece, once the student is looking for their 'own' expression he stays out of the way.
I'd love to hear comments from you all!

K.W.
------------------
Dean Stallard writes:

I do it all the time K. I warm-up together with the student, I play along in pieces ( in addition to hearing them solo), I play duets and probably spend about 50% of lesson time actually playing myself. Like Petri I do it less as the student matures.

The reasons for this are several; for one young students learn better by example and trying to copy than by getting lots of instructions. Of course they will get some directions from me, but I will often play with them as they try to do what I said.

That brings us to the second reason; a modern flute is designed to play in tune (relatively;-)) and with good tone. A student wildly stabbing at the first sound they find is learning nothing. They need the stability of stable intonation so that they can find out where to place the flute, how to play it in tune and of course the consequences of not paying attention to this.

Most kids' ears are developed enough to hear when something isn't in tune, although they may not hear which way they need to adjust. Playing along it is much easier to help them find out and get the "feel" for homogenity. Any young beginner that can hear what is in tune without some outside reference is to put it mildly in the
minority;-)

Which brings us to the 3rd reason; as the flute is designed to play in tune and with good tone, I am giving them an idea of what that good tone might be once they are in tune. The dual aims of playing in tune with good tone teach them to blow the flute properly much better than any long lectures from me that go in one ear and out the other. They need good examples to aim for when practicing at home. We need to build musicality and aptitude before any amount of theory has anything to cling to.

And lastly, musical intelligence is developed and assimilated from a vast array of references and not something that can be taught. Unless my young students are using I-Tunes to listen to top flautists on a regular basis, their lessons with me are the best opportunity there is to help them assimilate the references they will need to play the flute musically and with personal inflection. There is a vast difference between this and some teacher that has remote-control monkeys where "musical meaning" has been decided on by the teacher and rehearsed to the Nth degree.

Even if they are listening to top flautists on a regular basis, it is not sure that this will help them play musically in the short term. What they hear will be impressive and motivating for them, but it will be so far removed from what they are actually working on that it will be an abstract experience as far as their own playing goes.

In short, I play along regularly with my young students because I want my students to be independent musical beings from an early age and that they play the flute in such a way that it gives me, the student, their family, their peers and anyone else in earshot, pride and pleasure to listen to them.
Dean Stallard
-------------------
Jen writes:

Dear Flutenetters,
This is a *great* conversation!
I agree with all those who've given opinions so far.
In fact, I'm stunned by the thought that there are private teacher who think they should *not* play along with their beginner and novice students.

Of *course* this is the fastest way to teach! Read "The Inner Game of Tennis" and "The Inner Game of Music" to understand why, if this is news to you at all. :>)

As Dean points out, analytical, descriptive, physical instructions are not well absorbed, (in one ear and out the other) whereas sound imitation is the most obvious way to learn music.

What possible argument could there be, except in the case where some doofus private teacher plays on top of the student so much, the student never plays by themselves, nor can hear themselves well.

And yes, as the student progresses, the teacher gradually stops playing along on every other piece, and this leads to the intermediate student playing solo for most of the lesson.

At either end of a one hour lesson, playing duets helps continue more subtle musicality.
All duet playing and the opportunity to be in mixed teacher-student flute trios, large ensembles and eventually, full student quartets are full of opportunities for
imitating style, blend, balance, nuance, articulation and intonation-teaching,

Without youth orchestras or mixed-instrument chamber group enrollment, flute duets/trios/quartets, imho, should always make up a large part of the intermediate flutist's course of learning.

Yes, one can clearly hear that the basic band flutist has only ever imitated the (dreadful?) doubtful sounds he/she has heard in band. I hear that all the time too.
The "flute tone quality" bar in big noisy bands can be set so low that even students with "good ears" have minutely copied the untutored, nay horrific blasty tones they've heard around them in band.

The private flute teacher may well be, as P. says, the best flutist the student has heard all week.

I wonder why the heck that is, but it's often true.

And, obviously, those students with good ears and a feeling for music will need "playalong" for alot less time then those who never listen to good music.

Thanks for this topic.
Genius topic!

Jen Cluff
----------------
B. wrote:
The only drawback with doing this 'all the time' would be that since students generally have an extraordinary ability 'on-the-fly' at:
A)Knowledge assimilation through imitation.
and
B)Protecting their lack of knowledge and related insecurities from
others in their responses.
I'd mention that we also need have them display their own understanding of rhythm and meter through performing on their own without any form of cues from others.
--------------
Dean writes:

Of course B., but that understanding needs to be built first.
Remember that notation is simply an abstract representation of a musical pattern. Unless the visual recognition of such patterns is closely linked to how they should actually sound musically, one is left with the note-by-note static performance that so many fall foul of.

There needs to be a strong link if the student is to learn to instinctively react to
what they see and/or hear in a musically intelligent way. Intelligence has nothing to do with knowing lots of facts, it has to do with being able to apply knowledge assimilated and adapt it instinctively to different circumstances without the need to go back to basics. For this reason, a student will show their true level of knowledge and understanding when sight-reading, playing by ear or improvising, rather
than when they perform a well rehearsed piece. Their instinctive responses to the material they are presented with are the true test of their skill and understanding.

Note also that I used "all the time" in a broad sense;
re: >>I warm-up together with the student, I play
>>along in pieces ( in addition to hearing them solo), I play duets and probably spend about 50% of lesson time actually playing myself. Like Petri I do it less as the student matures.

Dean Stallard http://www.fluteped.com/

Thankyou for this conversation. Most helpful to all of us.
Best,
Jen

The frowning piccoloist

Dear Jen,
I've actually never seen anyone play with a smile embouchure before...very curious. It is something I'll watch out for in future students though. However, I was wondering what your take on playing with a pretty severe frown was. I saw a great piccoloist for a professional orchestra play like this and it must work for her, but I'm wondering how good of a thing it is to do in general? It seems like extra muscle work whenever piccolo can be taxing enough as it is. C.

Dear C.,
I don't know for sure how severe a frown must be for it to be "too much".
If a player has a protruding lower tooth, or a very individual jaw alignment, an unusually short distance between nose and upper lip, one lip thicker than the other, or a receding chin or buck teeth, virtually anything is possible.:>)

Perhaps the flutist with the severe frown is accidentally over-working their face muscles in an attempt to control the lip aperture; in which case the face and embouchure will tire more easily over several hours of playing; but on the other hand, maybe they MUST create this particular "face" in order to get their lips to form the best embouchure for tone.

Everyone is very different. There are so many variables among faces, lips and embouchures. Even the length of the teeth, cheeks and openness of the jaw hinge would create additional variables.

If a flutist had a very thick upper lip, frowning might help pull the embouchure into better balance, who knows? If you place your finger on the center of the upper lip, and then on the center of the lower lip, you fill find out for yourself how facial muscles affect the lip opening.

If you are teaching a flutist with too much facial tension, in the future, I would suggest working with the embouchure experiments of Roger Mather in volume two of "The Art of Playing the flute" which is entitled EMBOUCHURE.

You can also look at a variety of photos of flute embouchures online. Do you see any that are close to what you're describing with the "frowning piccoloist"?

You can also watch the "frown" muscles at work in this embouchure exercise advocated by James Galway:



An older flute teaching "how to manual" by Charles Delaney shows the muscle use of the face, and indicates that the muscles directly around the lips are the most useful, but this information may be out of date.

Delaney has a list of muscle-use conditions, but everyone has to figure out how to balance each muscle group. Here is what Delaney writes on the topic (click on jpeg to enlarge it).



Using an online face-and-emotion illustration (the movement demos don't work on my computer for some reason) you may be able to make your own understanding of the face muscles more clear:





Here is the frown muscle; it pulls the corners of the lips down but does little to help the lip aperture in the very center of the lips. However, maybe it helps stretch the upper lip downward in some players:




Here is the orbicularis obis muscle tissue that surrounds the lips. If you frown, and pull down the triangularis, you may affect these pursing and shaping muscles, but it is simpler and more direct to use the orbicularis obis muscles that are closest to the lips. The orbis alone can allow fine control of the lip aperture, especially in more advanced players:




And finally, although I'm no expert in these matters, here are the smile muscles, which as many of us have discovered, pull the lips away from the embouchure hole of the flute, which can be a very typical problem in student beginners who are told to smile to play the flute:




Hope this helps.

In general I don't know if we can simply look at a face and decide that the embouchure is too much, unless we are working one on one with a student, looking for tell-tale signs that they are overworking their muscles unecessarily.

After all, there are a zillion face types, muscle usages, dental formations and embouchure attempts, as well as the question of quality of tone.
If a player plays with good tone, in tune, and doesn't tire easily, then their embouchure is right for them, I guess.
Best,
Jen