James Galway's Morning Scale Class

Dear Flute-lovers,

This week on the Galway chat group (an email group that Sir James Galway emails to once a month or so), he announced a morning scale class that any flutist out there in internet-land may take part in.

Well I know some of my students would love to play along,but the challenge is really being aimed at more advanced flutists. The scale book chosen for the challenge is "Exercises Journaliers" by Marcel Moyse, which uses extended scales to high B3 and Low C or C# for all majors and minors.

These are high reaching scales and perhaps the world's most wonderfully interesting and modern arpeggios, but there's an easy way to "break them down" into learnable chunks.

So help yourself to the pdfs of the sheetmusic that I just created for those novice to intermediate players which translates this to a grade 5-8 RCM flute level.

Free Part 1 of scales & arpeggios from Moyse's EJ book from Jen

Go to part 2 of this blog post, to download pages 10-21.

Go to Part 3 for the third section, pg. 22-39 (major minor scales in thirds) of the E.J. book simplifed by Jen Cluff.

All you have to do is warmup well for 20 minutes, with low slow slurred tunes, and easy breathing, to get your best, most ringing tone first, and then, with the most beautiful and creative musicality, experiment with the scales. Of course, you're free to have self-chosen slow tempos and of course, heavenly, gorgeous tone, and play through some of the exercises. Add to your successes by repeating those you can do well a little faster and more richly nuanced, while always breaking down and learning a new exercise that needs to go much more slowly.

In my fluterly-teacherly way, of course I advise playing all slurred,before adding articulations. And take slow speeds, observing the most effortless finger motions by breaking the scales into little bites, and insuring fingers stay low and close to the keys, moving lightly without disrupting the flute.

You start with chromatic scales, and learn them a little higher each day.
Then go ahead, and go totally wild with Debussy-esque whole tone scales, and then, almost Star-Trek out on augmented fifth chords and such, before playing through your typical two octave major scales, and then spending a little time on walking up to high G, G#, A, Bb and at last, high B at the end.

Then take a break.

When you come back from your break; break apart new things into small "bites" and play them slowly as if they're gorgeous melodies, then start putting them into full scales and arpeggios again. But work intelligently, without fatigue; that's the whole trick of it.

ha ha. Yes, really creative, exploratory, and fun if you work up to it gradually and don't force anything.

To avoid tendonitis and tennis elbow (Ha ha, sad but true) you have to be in the same relaxed frame of mind that you are in when you're having fun.
If you've read The Inner Game of Tennis by T. Gallwey, (read the foreword and intro online.) and you'll see how fun can help everything you do.

If you need more, there are also free scale duets and Taffanel and Gaubert exercises from the T&G Daily Exercise book on this blog too. Just use the white search box at right to find more advice on scales if needed.

Happy September you with gentle fingers, relaxed arms and holistic breathing.

Best, Jen