learn to play flute

see title

[flutebook]

20. letter names vs. solfege revisited; duple meter

We discussed this briefly before, but I’d like to go into a bit more detail here about naming pitches. Different cultures have different ways about talking about the same music. They all have their pros and cons. I am presenting here one way of looking at things that I a) am comfortable with and b) have had success using with my students. 

In this system, we use letter names to talk about absolute pitch: G always sounds the same, for example. If you are having a hard time remembering where the notes are on the staff, you should practice saying the letter names of the notes. It is very tempting to print out the music and write in all the letter names of the notes with a fingering chart right beside you. In fact, you may have already done so.

I cannot not urge you enough to stop. I know you think it helps, but what is actually happening is that you are not reading the notation at all. You’re reading the letter names you wrote down. It would be like going through a book and having to draw a little picture for every word or making a little recording of what each word sounded like — Are you really reading anymore? Plus, doesn’t that take an incredible amount of extra time? Part of the reason we started with so few notes was to make reading the staff easier; you only have to remember three things! So if you are writing in letter names, try going back to the first songs we worked on with a fresh, letter-name-free copy and push yourself to memorize the picture, the fingering, and the sound. Say the letter names out loud first, then play, instead of writing them in.

Using solfege to describe melodies helps us hear and understand how melodies work. The solfege syllables are also a little nicer to sing than letter names. We use solfege (do, re, mi, etc.) to talk about how G functions: if G is the musical center of our universe or our musical resting place (which also has another name — the tonic), then G’s function is called do. If F is the musical center of our universe, then G’s function becomes re. The absolute pitch sounds the same, but in the context of a song, it has a different job. These are the kinds of things you instinctively understand from a lifetime (even if it’s a relatively short one!) of listening to music (of the Euro-Ameri-African diaspora — if we talk about music of India, for example, then we need a whole different way of looking at things, but I digress…) — you may have never named these things before and they are rather abstract, so I understand if you are a bit lost already. By naming these musical phenomena, we help ourselves hear them more clearly and deeply.

When we listen to music, we do not make sense of absolute pitches but instead the relationship between those pitches. Not all pitches are equally important and not all pitches will have the same jobs or function from song to song. So we don’t really hear and understand G as much as we are hearing and understanding G’s job in the context of the song. We’ve already discovered this phenomenon by playing the same song with different sets of pitches. “Merrily We Roll Along” still sounds like “Merrily We Roll Along” when we switch from use G-A-B to F-G-A, it’s just that the latter sounds a wee bit lower.

Practice all of your songs naming the pitches with the letter names and with solfege. This will help you read the staff and hear the relationships between the pitches.

In the following songs, we have a new time signature, 2|4, but it's nothing too complicated. We previously discussed how to read the time signature, those two numbers sitting on top of one another just after the clef. If you need a refresher, you can click here. Instead of our usual four beats per measure, we only have two. You might find as you play these songs that they feel very similar to the songs you've played that have four beats to a measure. What's the difference? Well, not much. So what's the point?

Not all beats are the same. Sure, they last the same amount of time, but they are not the same in terms of emphasis. In any group of beats, we have strong beats and weak beats. We automatically do this grouping in our brains and call it meter (similar to poetry). No matter how we group the beats, however, the first beat is always the strongest beat. Why? (Think about this for a moment before you read on. You can pretend we're in the same room talking to each other, instead of communicating via text on the internet. Ah...) The first beat is where the pattern begins again: ONE-two-three-four-ONE-two-three-four... Since we humans like things to be even, the next strongest beat in a group of four is beat three. Beats two and four are weak. So our pattern when we group beats into fours is STRONG-weak-LESS STRONG-weak. If we only have two beats, then it's just STRONG-weak-STRONG-weak, over and over. That said, chances are if you're listening to someone play a song, you won't really be able to tell whether it's two-four or four-four. Notation has been developing for the past 1500 years or so — obviously, many things have changed, but unfortunately, why other things stick around is less clear. Two-four is not a useless time signature and neither is four-four, but the aural result is basically the same: groups of two beats alternating strong-weak. This is called duple meter.

The most important part is the idea of grouping beats. This is one of those things you can (and should!) practice without the instrument: walking, marching, waving your arms, stomping, clapping — moving around somehow. Find ways you can make this feeling of strong and weak beats clear to your ears and body.

[flutebook]

19. practicing, part v: make something new (to you)

People often talk about creativity as a magical process, aided by unseen forces or spirits. Creativity is simply making something — to create is to bring something into existence.

We often associate creativity with originality: making something that has never existed before. This is the point where the magical thinking comes into play. Often, we do not have enough information about how this original thing came to be, so we make up (create!) stories.

These new, original creations, however, are built with existing materials, based on normal, common thought processes. In other words, there is a lot of unoriginal stuff that goes into the original. It might seem like this new thing comes out of nowhere, but it doesn’t: it comes from using pre-existing materials and ideas over and over and over again.

a) becoming very familiar with what is already out there.

b) working with that stuff on a regular basis.

c) playing around with ideas that may or may not work.

d) letting yourself find out what doesn’t work by actually doing what doesn’t work.

When we do our getting in shape exercises and engage in the process of finding hard parts and making them easy, we are doing steps a) and b). We have an instrument or voice and we are playing music and doing exercises that people have done in the past.

For steps c) and d) we have to start playing around and experimenting with the things we’ve learned from steps a) and b). When we experiment, we have to accept from the beginning that a lot of what we do might not work: it might not be interesting, it might not sound good, it might be impossible to do in the way you thought it would be.

What happens to most people is that they never start experimenting because they are afraid that it won’t be interesting or sound good or be possible. It’s not a good, amazing thing from the start, so they just give up.

Creativity is an action. You simply have to make stuff. If it’s no good, move on to something else. But do not stop creating, because you will never get to the good, interesting, fun parts if you never create anything for fear of it being bad.

Your job right now is to simply get in the habit of creating new-to-you music every time you practice. Do not worry about originality. Just make something up.

You have two ways to go about it and they are closely related: improvisation and composition. Two friends, Frederic Rzewski and Steve Lacy, were hanging out in Rome, when Fred asked Steve, “Steve, in 15 seconds, what is the difference between composition and improvisation?” Without hesitation he answered, “In 15 seconds, the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to think about what to say in 15 seconds, while in improvisation you have only 15 seconds.”

This installation of improv and comp is suspiciously similar to the last one, but that's okay. You need the work.

1. Compose two pieces of music, each eight measures long, using quarter notes, quarter rests, half notes, half rests, and the pitches C, D, E, or F, G, A, or G, A, B.

2. Compose two pieces of music, at least eight measures long, using quarter, half, and whole notes and rests and any of the pitches you know: C, D, E, F, G, A, B.

3. Improvise for 15 seconds using any of the three do-re-mi sets you know (C, D, E; F, G, A; G, A, B). Then try for 30 seconds. Create a convincing beginning, middle, and end.

4. Pick any three pitches. Improvise using only those pitches; don’t worry about the rhythms. Then pick any three new pitches.

5. Get together with a friend. Try the following: One person keeps the beat by repeating one note, the other improvises over this. Switch jobs.

6. Same as 5, but the person keeping the beat will make up a rhythmic pattern of two or more pitches, instead of just playing the same one.

[flutebook]

18. practicing, part iv: find the hard, make it easy.

The short of it:

1) Think about the mood of the music. Everything must be played in this mood.

2) Find the hard parts in the piece and mark the beginning and end of each hard part (with something erasable).

Once the hard parts become easy, erase the marks.

3) Figure out what is causing the problem and work on just that thing. Always play with a mood in mind.

Don’t wait for someone else to tell you whether it’s right or wrong. You must be able to hear these things for yourself:

• Are you playing the rhythm correctly?

• Are your fingers/arms/voice going to the right places to get the right pitches?

• Are you playing with your best possible sound?

• Are you expressing what the music needs to express?

4) Put it all together: rhythm, pitch, sound quality, & expression.

• Work on a section from slow to fast.

• Work one note at a time at tempo, then two notes, then three, etc.

• Play through the whole song without stopping, no matter what happens.

The Long of it:

When I ask students how they are going to fix a difficult part in the music, they usually answer, “I’m going to practice.” When I try to get more details — “What does it mean to practice? What exactly are you going to do?” — students usually shrug their shoulders. In this post, I’d like to give you some strategies on how to deal with difficult music.

The basic goal is to play the music “correctly”: all the rhythms must be correct and all the pitches must be correct. However, simply playing everything “correctly” is not music! It’s just a robot assembling a bunch of sounds. You have to think about expressing emotions, creating a mood, or telling a story — whatever the music requires. We will look at both learning to play correctly and learning to be expressive, so that when you practice, you are really making music and not just acting like a robot.

1) Think about the mood of the music. Everything must be played in this mood.

Is it happy? Is it sad? Is it confused? Is it confident? Is it gentle? Is it aggressive? Is it sweet? Is it sour? Is it light? Is it heavy? Is it something in between? Does it change at some point during the song or does it stay the same through the whole song?

What if you don’t know? You can try out several different moods as you practice the piece. So pick something and go with it. After you’ve tried for a bit, think about whether it was effective or appropriate. Change to a different mood as needed.

Think about how you could play those different moods. What would you change? Would you change the volume (dynamics)? Would you change how hard or gently you started each note (articulation)? Would you change the sound quality (timbre)?

You may not even know how to do any of these things on your instrument yet, and that’s fine. You’ll experiment to figure them out at first. Your teacher will also be able to help you.

Your goal in this step is to find out what the music needs to express, because any time you play anything from this piece of music, you want to make sure you are trying to express those emotions. Even if it’s only one note. You want the expression to happen as much as possible right from the beginning of practicing, instead of trying to add it at the end, after you know how to play everything “correctly.”

2) Find the hard parts in the piece and mark the beginning and end of each hard part (with something erasable).

You can do this by looking at the music or by playing through it and listening for where things sound less than fantastic.

It might be two notes, it might be four measures. It is NOT the whole thing, so if you feel like the whole song is really hard, do this step backwards: find the easy bits. Get excited that there are things in this piece you can do! Then look at what is left over.

Once you’ve figured out where the hard parts are, pick the hardest. Get that out of the way first and start working on it.

3) Figure out what is causing the problem and work on just that thing. Always play with a mood in mind.

Don’t wait for someone else to tell you whether it’s right or wrong. You must be able to hear these things for yourself:

• Are you playing the rhythm correctly?

• Are your fingers/arms/voice going to the right places to get the right pitches?

• Are you playing with your best possible sound?

• Are you expressing what the music needs to express?

3a) fixing rhythm

• Say the rhythm using the rhythm syllables, or use a counting and clapping system.

• Make sure your beat is steady: Say the rhythm while walking in place. Keep your walking steady.

• Play the rhythm using only one pitch.

• Compare: Is it the same when you play it as when you say it?

• Have someone else listen or record yourself and play it back.

3b) fixing pitches

• DO NOT WRITE IN THE LETTER NAMES. This will keep you from reading music, because you stop looking at the staff and only look at the letters you wrote.

• Name the letter names of each pitch out loud with a steady beat. How fast can you do this?

• Name then play the notes.

• Play the notes in order with a steady beat, instead of the printed rhythm. You can play as slowly as you need to, as long as it is steady.

• Find pairs of notes that are difficult (e.g., awkward fingering, large leaps), and alternate between them, going from slow to fast.

3c) fixing sound quality

• You need to know what you physically need to do in order to make your best possible sound. If you do not know, ask someone to explain it: What does it sound like? What does it look like? What does it feel like?

• “Mix your paints, then put them on the canvas”: Pick one or two notes that you know you can make your best possible sound with. Play them a few times, then play the part of the music you are working on, listening to make sure you are keeping that same good sound, even when you are also making sure you are playing the right rhythms, pitches, and expression. Keep repeating this until you can consistently play the music with your best possible sound.

3d) fixing expression

• Remember expression is about the music and not always what you want to express. You might prefer loud, aggressive music, but not all music is loud and aggressive. You need to find a way to play a quiet, gentle piece that makes sense for you.

• Experiment! Try different dynamics, articulations, tempos, and sound qualities.

• Go overboard. Make your teacher say, “That’s too much!” Usually people think they are being expressive, but it never makes it out of their head and through the instrument. It will feel unnatural at first.

4) Put it all together: rhythm, pitch, sound quality, & expression.

Use these three methods to put the music together:

4a) Work slow to fast on the whole difficult part.

• Figure out what your target speed is — imagine the song in your head being played perfectly at tempo.

• Start slowly enough so that you know you can get everything perfect. Every time you play it perfectly, increase the speed just a little. Slow playing can be very difficult at first. A metronome is a great tool for this, because you can increase the tempo 1bpm at a time.

• Try to go a little faster each day. If it’s really difficult, I will often start only 1-5bpm faster the next day. For example, in one session I might go from 60-90bpm; the next day I’ll go from 61-91bpm, and so on. This builds stamina.

4b) Work at the target speed, but in very small chunks.

• Figure out what your target speed is — imagine the song in your head being played perfectly at tempo.

• Start at the target speed, but only play the first note of the section, then rest. Repeat that 5-10 times, with rests (i.e., don’t play the rest of the measure) in between.

• Then add the next note and repeat that 5-10x.

• Keep going until you have the whole section.

• This also works backwards: start with the last note, then the last two notes, and so on.

• A metronome is also useful here.

4c) Play through the whole thing without stopping, no matter what happens.

• You will make mistakes in performance. Playing without stopping to fix prepares you to perform.

• Do this at the beginning before fixing and at the end after fixing. You will then have an idea of what else you need to work on next.

You have to find a balance between knowing what you can fix in one practice session and knowing what will take many practice sessions. Listen closely to what you are playing. Work hard. Trust in the process.

Make sure you balance this task with the other two: a) keep your muscles in shape, and b) create something new to you.

[flutebook]

17. practicing, part iii: get in shape, stay in shape.

Much like push-ups or pull-ups, certain techniques on your instrument are never totally easy and you have to keep doing them on a regular basis in order to be able to do them whenever you need them.

These things are like the first kind of exercise — techniques that require my muscles to be in shape. But sometimes you want to separate your exercises from the music you play. It’s similar to a team sport: you warm up, you drill certain patterns or plays separate from a game, then you play the game and apply the things you did in the warm up and drill. By combining muscles exercises with scales or other musical patterns away from the actual music you need to learn, you are doing the same kinds of things athletes do on a team, which make you a better player.

Different instruments will have different exercises because they use their muscles in different ways, so they have different needs. For example, wind instruments need to practice sustaining a sound, making it clear and powerful. Pianists do not need to practice that because their instrument doesn’t work that way; it can’t sustain a sound in the same way.

Playing music involves muscles and anything that involves muscles involves warm-ups. True, you’ll most likely never strain a lip or bust your tongue from playing flute (“I caah taah tahdah. I ‘ulled ‘y li’ ‘raah too ‘uch ‘racticing...”), but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to warm up. Warm ups improve your sound, enable you to be flexible (which you’ll need soon enough!), and help you play for longer periods of time (stamina). One of the best warm-ups is playing long tones. Warm-ups can also be warm-downs — you don't always have to do this first. It's good to rotate the three tasks of practicing.

Long tones do tend to make people cringe. People often think they are boring. Let’s face it: you will be playing one note for 10 seconds or longer, then playing a new note for the same amount of time. It’s not exciting as playing or listening to your favorite music. But you’ll have enough to pay attention to — your embouchure, your breathing, and your sound — to keep you occupied.

We talked about your embouchure here, and breathing and sound here. All of these things need to be happening every time you play. Because we’ve spent a lot of time learning to read music, we stopped talking about these things, but you still need to make sure that your embouchure, breathing, and sound quality are just as good as your fingering, rhythm, and reading are. Warm-ups enable you to concentrate on the physical aspects of playing and instrument and how they affect your basic sound, without having to worry about reading, fingering, or rhythm. All of this is part of making music, but it’s important to isolate these aspects and make sure everything is as it should be. 

Long tone exercise 1: Take a deep breath (keep you shoulders down, fill your lungs from the bottom on up, let your front, sides, and back expand). Play B for as long as you can. Make sure that the sound is steady and does not shake or waver in pitch or volume. As you run out of air, close your lips by bringing your bottom lip up towards your top lip. Listen to find out if the pitch gets lower as you run out of air. If so, bring your lower lip forward as you bring it up. Try to make the note get quieter as gradually as possible, almost so you can’t tell when it stops. Time it so that you are at your quietest just before you are desperate for the next inhale. Inhale quietly, keeping the inside of your mouth and throat as open as possible. Repeat the whole process with A, then G, and so on down to C. If your mind wanders (and it will!), gently remind yourself (not out loud — keep playing) to check your embouchure, your posture, your fingers (over the keys or sticking out in weird ways?), and your sound. Always be sure to enjoy the sound.

This will take some time. If you get unbearably antsy, just do B for this part of practicing for a week. Then do B and A. It’s okay to take small steps. Sometimes you have to practice paying attention and working slowly, too. Getting quiet gradually will probably not happen smoothly for the first week or so. Keep working at it. Even though it might sound like you’re not making any progress, you are. Your muscles learn quietly. Once that’s comfortable, try number 2.

Long tone exercise 2: Same techniques as above, but this time you’ll play B for 10 seconds, going from normal volume to super-quiet in that time. Then you’ll play for 9 seconds, going from normal to super-quiet. Then 8 seconds, and so on down to one second. Repeat with each pitch, going down.

Warm ups are good to do when you first play for the day, but really can be done at any point in your practice sessions. It’s perfectly fine to spend 10 minutes warming up, then do something else for a while, then continuing your practicing several hours later. When you continue, do one or two long tones — you don’t have to go through the whole cycle again — just to stretch your embouchure again.

It’s also good to put down your flute and stretch your body during practice sessions. You don’t have to stand stiff like a soldier the whole time you practice.

*****

When you’re ready (this week, next week, next month...), you can extend your warm-up upwards to include these three new notes:

Start from G and move upwards.

Moving from C to D or C to E is tricky both for the fingers and for your embouchure. Long tones will help you match the sound quality of your D and E to the notes C and below. Notice also that the fingering for this new, high D is really similar to the low D you already know, except the first finger in the left hand is up. The high E has the exact same fingering as the low E. Way, way back when we were working with just our head joints, I mentioned that you could get different pitches just by moving your lips forward. Try going back and forth between low E and high E, just by moving your lips slightly forward. You can do the same with low D: that is, you can get a high D with the normal low D fingering. Compare the high D with the correct fingering and the high D with the low D fingering. The low D fingering makes it a little fuzzy; lifting that first key clears up the sound. Be sure to always lift that key for high D. As you do the long tones from G upwards, you’ll gradually bring your lips forward; as you move down, they’ll come back a little. All of these movements are very, very small.

Lastly, try playing all the do-re-mi songs we’ve done with your three new notes.

[flutebook]

16. practicing, part ii.

You practice to prepare to perform.

There are three tasks to do during practice time, every time:

1) Find the hard parts, make them easy.

2) Create something new to you — make something up!

3) Keep your muscles in shape — play long notes, short notes, loud notes, quiet notes, fast notes — whatever makes your muscles tired.

You don’t have to do them in this order, but you do have to do them.

If you only or mostly played through the things you were already good at, how much progress would you make? Let’s give an example. Let’s say you have learned to play the riff from “Smoke on the Water.” It’s fun, it feels good — you are really rockin’ out! You’ve played it for everyone you know, including the cats (I know, I know… the cats weren’t very impressed, sadly).

You get a new song and you can’t play it yet. It’s totally frustrating. So you go back to your old friend, the riff from “Smoke on the Water.” Everything feels good again and you forget about that new song. Who needs that song anyway? You’ve got “Smoke on the Water.”

Do you really only need one song for the rest of your life? Will you never get bored with that one song? Of course! Then you’ll do what most people do: you’ll stop playing the instrument, because you can only play one thing, and you don’t get any enjoyment out of it anymore. As B. B. King once sang, “The thrill is gone, baby.”

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Schedule in time for both practicing and just playing. Yes, spend some time playing your favorites, but let that be a small part of your practice time. Let a few minutes of “Smoke on the Water” remind you that you can learn a song — it was a new song for you at one point, too. Then get back to work on the new song and the hard stuff.

When you practice, you are preparing to perform. When you play through things that you’ve practiced and can play well, you are performing — even when there’s no audience. Do not confuse performing with practicing. It’s okay to perform. The point of practicing is performing! Please perform often, for yourself, for your parents, for your friends, and even for the cats. But if you find that you are performing to avoid practicing something that is difficult because you do not want to hear yourself sound “bad,” that is when performing is a problem. Remind yourself that you’ve mastered something new before and you can do it again. It might take longer than you thought, but that’s normal.

Over future posts, we will look at each task more closely. For now, get started and do your best!

[flutebook]

15. where to breathe.

We've talked about not breathing after every note, but we haven't talked about where we should breathe. Sorry to burst your bubble, but no, we can't breathe whenever we like when playing flute. It has to make sense musically. The musical symbol to take a breath is a comma, floating just above the staff. When you read printed text out loud, the comma is also an indicator to breathe, to show the end of a phrase; that's why we use it in music, too. But there won't always be commas in your music to show every breath. Composers will write them in if they want a breath in a place that might be unusual or unclear unless otherwise marked. For the most part, however, you are left on your own to figure out where the best places to breathe are. You can pencil in your own commas as reminders. There are a few general guidelines we can follow:

• Rests are good spots to breathe.

• After long notes. If you breathe after short notes, the music can sound choppy. Long notes can afford to be a teensy bit shorter so you can fit in that breath.

• Every four measures. Now this is NOT a hard and fast rule. There's a lot of music for which the four measure rule will not work. But, there's a lot for which it will work, especially folk songs.

Breathing should not take extra time. We've talked about beats being like a ruler: the first inch (or beat) ends where the second one begins. When you hold a half note that starts on beat one for its full length, for example, it will end when you play a note on beat three. When you have to breathe, you'll have to stop playing a little before beat three and breathe in order to start the next note that falls on beat three. You don't want to play to beat three, breathe, and then start beat three again. That adds extra time.

In the three songs below, one has breath marks to help you out. Notice when the marks  follow our guidelines and when they do not. Two of the songs have lyrics and one does not. Use the guidelines and your own musical sense to figure out where to breathe.

  Don't forget to learn each song in C = do, F = do, and G = do. It's challenging, but good for you!

[flutebook]

14. low notes.

Folks, we are going down. We're learning some of the lowest pitches on the flute. These may be a little tricky, but I'll give you some tips and you'll be good to go.

What are the names of these notes? You know where G is; use the technique we learned earlier — as you go down from line to space to line to space, you move one letter backwards in the alphabet.

I've written them in order from lowest to highest, but you'll find it easier to work from highest to lowest. Let's start with a note you already know, G. Play a whole note G, then play a whole note F, making sure they have the same quality of sound. For example, if G sounds clear but F sounds airy, that won't do; make them both clear. Once F sounds good, go from F to E, E to D, then D to C, always working in slow pairs. Playing long notes helps your embouchure know what to do. It's training for your lips. If you find it boring, make sure you're really listening to what you are doing. Then work on enjoying what you sound like. You don't have to spend all day on long tones, but definitely spend some of your practice time doing it. If you are really crunched for practice time, long tones are a good thing to prioritize. When you have more time to do other things, your embouchure will be ready to do its job.

As you move lower in pitch, the space between your lips will open more. Remember that the space between your lips is very, very small to begin with. There won't be a huge difference, but it is noticeable. Here are some pictures for comparison. The first picture is the space between my lips when I'm playing G; the second picture is the space between my lips when I'm playing C.

You should also notice that the right hand pinky is not used for D but it is for E. When we learned F through B, I mentioned that the right hand pinky was used more for balance, but did affect some pitches. E is one of those pitches. If you play E and wiggle your right hand pinky rapidly to open and close that key, you'll get a lovely little warble (which doesn't happen for G or A — give it a try). The pitch is better when you leave your pinky down on that key. I'm only mentioning this, because you'll soon discover that going from D to E requires a somewhat tiresome switcheroo between your ring finger coming up and your pinky going down and I know you'll want to just leave the pinky up for E. How do I know this? Everyone has this problem. The pinky and the ring fingers prefer to move together, but with a little patience and work, you'll get them to be independent. Make sure your right pinky is down for E.

Once your new pitches start feeling comfortable and sounding good, you can work on the following two songs. The first is a traditional song and the second is a (non-traditional!) song I wrote.

[flutebook]

13. pitch: do, re, mi; rhythm: whole notes & rests

Before we add more pitches to our arsenal, let's get a little more practice on the ones we know by playing some more songs. Last lesson we discovered that if we group our small collection of four pitches into two groups — G, A, B and F, G, A — we could play the same song with either set of pitches and it would turn out okay. There's a somewhat complex reasoning behind this, but for now we're going to simplify it by saying this. The two groups have the same relationship and that relationship is do re mi. You might be familiar with do re mi from the movie The Sound of Music, but do re mi is much, much older than that movie. A man named Guido d'Arezzo made it up in the early 1000's. Yup, a thousand years ago. Julie Andrews had nothing to do with it (but we like her, anyway). Things have changed a little in 1000 years, and people use do re mi in different ways for various ways of remembering pitches. For example, if you are from any French, Italian, or Spanish speaking country, you don't use letters to name your pitches; you only use do re mi. In the US, since we use letter names for our pitches, it's common to use do re mi to remember the relationships between pitches (which is how Guido used it, too). That's how I'll use it here as well. Do re mi are called solfege syllables — or syllables, for short — and we'll be adding the rest of them as we go along.

Your challenge is to learn the following two songs in both G = do and F = do, but I've only written them in one version. You have to figure out the other version by ear ( = by playing, messing up, hearing that you've messed up, and trying it again until you know it sounds right). Remember you're only working with three pitches at a time.

Sadly, there are very few songs that use only quarter, half, and

whole notes and only do re mi. So I made some up. Feel free to do the same; and give them titles and lyrics, too, if you like.

We have a new note duration in these songs: the whole note and rest. Whole notes and rests last 4 beats, when the quarter note gets one beat. The whole note has no stem; it's just an open notehead. The rest version of the note looks suspiciously like the half rest. But the half rest, being shorter in duration, sits on the third line like a hat on the head (half - hat). The whole rest, being longer in duration, is heavy and hangs from the fourth line, like a hole in the ground (whole - hole). Hopefully, you'll remember: half looks like a hat, whole looks like a hole. Scan through both songs and identify the whole notes and rests ahead of time. Four long beats!

[flutebook]

12. rhythm: the time signature.

Last lesson we learned how to group notes into beat groups with bar lines. Several lessons before that we mentioned that any kind of note can get the beat. For now and for a while to come, we're going to say that the quarter note lasts one beat, but that won't always be the case. For example, we could say the half note lasts one beat. If the half note is one beat, how long is the quarter note? The relationship between the half note and the quarter note will always be the same, that is, the half will always be twice as long as the quarter note, no matter how we are counting.

The top number is pretty self-explanatory. It's a 4, so that means you have four beats in a measure. Everything in the measure – rests and notes – has to add up to four beats.

The bottom number requires a little extra thought. The time signature is not a fraction!  But, the bottom number is the denominator of a fraction with one as the numerator. Let me walk you through this some more. The bottom number is 4. Make a fraction, putting 4 on the bottom and 1 on the top. You now have one-fourth (1/4), right?  What else do we call one-fourth? A quarter! A quarter note lasts one beat. We've been doing this all along. (God knows how commonwealth folks explain the time signature when they call it a crotchet...)

Let's say our time signature looked like this:

How many beats are there in each measure? (Hint:  the top number!) 

What kind of note lasts one beat?  (Take the 2, make it the bottom of a fraction, put a 1 on top, and you have...)

And as I asked above, if the half note lasts one beat, how long does the quarter note last?

Don't worry about this too much for now; we're just stretching our brains a little bit.  These are things that happen in music, but we will tackle them later.

The most important part is understanding how the time signature works.

Let's look at some songs, so you can see where the time signature is and remind yourself how it works. Yes, I really did say songs! Some of the songs you may know and others you may not. Sometimes you might know a different version of the song than what is written, so make sure you read carefully! Play what is written and then compare it to the version you know.

Things to listen for and think about while you are playing:

• Are you counting?

• How's your sound?

• How about your posture?

Lots to think about!

We can also play both of these songs with our new note, F.

Compare the two versions of each song. What is the same? What is different?

[flutebook]

11. rhythm: half notes & rests; pitch: F.

In the example above are half notes and half rests. Two things to notice:

 • They look similar to quarter notes, but the noteheads are open. What we already learned about stem placement is still true.

• Half rests – a little black rectangle – sit on top of the third line.

Half notes and rests are twice as long as quarters. If the quarter is one beat long, how long is a half note?

I knew you could figure that out.

The thin bar followed by the thick bar at the end is called a double bar.  The double bar indicates the end of the piece of music.

Not too complicated, right?

Take a whirl at playing the following examples:

By this point, you've developed a deep love for the pitches G, A, and B, I'm sure. What? You're aching for a new pitch? Okay, then. Use your staff reading skills to figure out the name of this new pitch (the fingering is below):

Here are two examples with your new note, F:

What's different between these exercises and the previous two? What's similar?

How many beats are there in each measure? (Remember, that's not necessarily the same as the number of notes in the measure!) Not only do bar lines help make music easier to read, but they also help to group beats into a regular pattern. Groups of four beats is very common, but we'll look at other groups, too. Try to make the first note in each measure "important." You can play it a little louder, you can tongue it a little harder. Be ridiculous about it, at first, but make sure that your beat is still steady and that you're not making notes longer or shorter than they are supposed to be. You can also just count out loud – repeat "one, two, three, four" – and find different ways to emphasize "one." Once you've got the feeling, you can tone down your act a little bit. Still emphasize the note that falls on the first beat, but don't be ridiculous, keep it well-behaved.

Write your own exercises using F, G, A, and B and quarter and half notes and rests. Try the following:

• Experiment with different beat groups. How does the feeling of your song change when you use 3 beats per measure, or 5, or whatever? How does the feeling of your song change when you use a different grouping every measure versus the same grouping for every measure?

• Experiment using only F, G, and A and then only G, A, and B. Try using all four. Try using only two.

[flutebook]

10. improvisation & composition.

Improvising and composing are two ways to make music that are very closely related, but involve fairly different skills. Both involve creating new music. Composed music is generally written down so that another person can reproduce the music without having to hear someone else play it first. Improvising involves playing on the spot, instantaneously; instead of writing it down first, you have to organize your ideas in real-time. Many people start composing through improvising. They’ll play a little first and if they like it, they’ll write it down on paper or record it. Some people compose directly to paper because they hear the music clearly enough in their heads. In the same way you can visualize a house and then draw it, you can “auralize” music and play it on your instrument or write it directly to paper. We will be doing some exercises to develop all of these skills. 

Keep in mind that when you are just starting out with improvisation and composition, the sounds you produce may not be anything like what you are used to hearing. It might not make sense to you and you may feel disappointed. You can avoid the negative feelings by listening very intently to those sounds and accepting them for what they are: sounds. Eventually you will get to the point where you can produce at will – on an instrument or on paper – the exact sounds that you imagine. Always keep your mind, ears, and options open.

You are always welcome to explore freely and with abandon, but I will give you some exercises, too, to help challenge you and hone your skills.

Exercises:

1.  Compose two lines of music using quarter notes, quarter rests, and the pitches G, A, and B.

2.  Improvise for 15 seconds using the same materials (quarter notes & rests; G, A, and B) as above. Then try for 30 seconds. How long can you keep going? Your goal is to stay interested in the sounds you are making. Alternately, if you start to feel bored, keep playing, but focus on why you are bored. Can you be even more boring?

3.  Improvise using the pitches G, A, and B, but don’t worry about the rhythms.

4.  Get together with a friend*. Try the following:

• One person keeps the beat by repeating one note (G, A, or B), the other improvises over this. Switch jobs.

• Same as above, but the person keeping the beat will make up a rhythmic pattern of two or more pitches, instead of just playing the same one.

* This 'friend' can be pretty much anybody with any level of experience at this point! If you have a non-musician friend, persuade them to take up an instrument or sing...

or

if you're handy with Garage Band (or something similar), you can be your own friend: record yourself playing one part, then play it back and improvise with it.

[flutebook]

9. rhythm: quarter notes and rests.

Let's add a little something new to our noteheads:

You'll notice that the little lines emerging from the noteheads are called stems. Stems and noteheads indicate how long a note should last in relation to the beat you've set up in your head. We'll get to new noteheads soon; we're just adding one thing at a time. You'll notice that some of the stems stick up and some stick down. The direction of the stem means absolutely nothing. It's just to help keep everything near the staff so that when we have more than one staff, items from one don't stick into the other. Since you'll also be writing your own music for you to play on your flute, here's a few pointers to keep in mind when writing notes down:

• If the notehead is above the 3rd line, the stem is on the left side of the notehead and points down.

• If the note is on the 3rd line, then the stem can go either way.

We will add on to these rules as we go along. Don't let these conventions scare you; they're just there for consistency and clarity.

A black notehead plus a stem is called a quarter note.

Before we continue, I'd like to clarify one more thing. We often use certain words in music (and in life) to refer to completely different things. For example, "note" can refer to the pitch (for example, G, A, B, etc.) and it can refer to the duration (for example, whole note, half note, quarter note, etc.). Usually when people want to talk about the pitch, they'll say, "What note is that?" When they want to talk about the duration, they might say, "What note is that?" or somewhat more clearly, "What kind of note is that?" Confusing! For the purpose of this blog, I'll do my best to refer to pitch as "pitch" and to duration as "note." So, if I were to ask, "What note is that?" You'd answer with quarter note, half note, whole note, or something similar (yes, there's all sorts of notes!). If I were to ask, "What is the name of that pitch?" or "What's that pitch?" You'd answer "G," "A," "B" or something similar. Keep in mind that outside this blog, things may be a little different.

So, as I was saying, a black notehead plus a stem is called a quarter note. A quarter of what? you might ask. A quarter of a whole note, of course. Well, why aren't we learning about whole notes first? This is one of those times where you'll just have to trust me.

Below is the same exercise from the previous reading lesson, but now all the noteheads have been converted to quarter notes. Amazing what a little line can do.

You can go back and add stems to the exercises you wrote or simply make up new ones.

  Back in that previous reading lesson, I suggested that you try to play your noteheads with all the same duration. Then last lesson, we talked about keeping a beat. Technically, we can assign any duration to any note. A quarter note could last half a beat or it could last two beats. While that does actually happen on occasion, it most commonly lasts for one beat. If you are tapping your foot, every time your foot hits the floor you play a note. If you are using a handy-dandy metronome, you will play a note for every click.

Last lesson, we had many exercises to learn about using a beat to keep track of how long each note is, but let's revisit that one more time:

A quarter note will start when your foot hits the floor and stop when it your foot hits the floor again.

“Wait,” you say, “isn’t that two beats?”

Think of beat as being like a ruler.  If something is one inch long, it starts at the beginning of the ruler and goes all the way to the one inch mark, where the next inch begins.

Beat measures time, like a ruler measures space.

You don't have to worry about ending your first note; just tongue and finger the second note when your foot hits the floor again and the first note automatically ends. The only time you have to think about ending a note (other than the end of a song, of course) is when you breathe. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that you should not be breathing after every note. If you think I'm being overly picky, here's an exercise for comparison. Read this paragraph out loud, making sure you breathe after every word. Try to maintain a normal speaking pace. How does that sound? How are you feeling? When you breathe after every note in music, it sounds just as crazy as when you breathe after every word in speaking.

For now, try to breathe after every four notes; then go for every eight notes. When you breathe, you'll end the note a little before your foot comes back down, breathe, and then start the next note. Be aware of what your foot or the metronome is doing; keep your foot tapping consistent.

Let's give you more reasons to breathe. The lovely little squiggle below is a quarter rest. (Not the clef, dear – the funny-looking thing to the right of the clef. That's it...) It is a moment of silence lasting as long as a quarter note, which in our case is one beat.

Keep in mind that by "rest," we simply mean don't make a sound. You don't have time to put your flute down and relax. Here's an exercise for you that uses quarter notes and rests. Feel free to make your own!

One last thing to keep in mind: You can practice all of these exercises as fast or as slow as you need to. If you're having hard time playing through these exercises or the ones you wrote, slow your beat down. This will give you plenty of time to think about what you are doing. Obviously, if your beat is slower everything will have a longer duration. Adjust your breathing accordingly. Playing fast is a good goal, but playing things correctly and consistently is a better goal.

[flutebook]

8. rhythm: beat.

Up until now, we've played our headjoint and our three notes any way we please: long, short, fast, slow, loud, soft (if you haven't tried it yet, give it a whirl). I'm not asking you to discontinue, of course, but we're going to add on to that. When we want to give notes a specific duration, we use a beat to help us.

• make a repetitive motion: clap your hands, snap your fingers, tap your foot, walk, march, sway, rock, jump, nod... make something up and try it out (feel free to be silly or wild).

• make a repetitive sound: some of our motions already do this (clap, snap, tap, etc.); think of some other ways and try them out.

Try making beats of different speeds. Think of some ways you can create an audible beat while you are playing. What are some ways you can keep track of a beat without making a sound? What are some ways you can keep track of a beat without making a sound and without moving? This might seem like a weird question, but you won't always be able to move around and make lots of noise while you're playing the flute and trying to read music.  Eventually, you want to be able to imagine a beat in your head without having to move or to hear it out loud, but for now, we can use any sort of method you've thought of that doesn't interfere with actually playing the flute.

A convenient way to create a beat is to tap your foot.  Every time your foot hits the floor, a new beat begins. Get your foot going nice and steady and try tonguing G every time your foot hits the floor. Make sure you are aware of both what your foot is doing (is it steady? is it touching the floor?) and what your tongue is doing. If it's too hard with the flute, put it down and just say "ta" or "foot" or "down" or "beat" or any one syllable word every time your foot hits the floor. Don't be afraid to do things very slowly, just make sure it's steady.

Once you've got your tongue and foot coordinated, check one more thing: are you breathing after every note? Don't. See how long you can go. Then try to breathe on a regular basis, after every eight or four or thirteen beats. Make sure your beat is still steady and that you're not adding extra time to breathe. Now try using different pitches instead of just one. Make up a pattern. Try it with randomly choosing notes as you go along. You can even make up new fingerings or weird sounds, just stay with the beat that your foot is making.

Go back to the exercises you made up and every time your foot hits the floor, play the next notehead. When it gets easy, challenge yourself. How slowly can you play? (Doesn't sound hard, but...) How fast can you play?

When you get sick of tapping your foot, try a different motion, just as long as you're still getting a good sound. Sway, bob, rock, march... Get somebody to clap for you and play along with them.

Turn on the radio, see if you can find the beat, and play along with that – make sure you're playing a steady pulse and not the rhythms (which are really just sounds of different durations) of the melody or drums or other parts. For an extra challenge, see if you can switch back and forth from playing the beat to imitating the rhythms you hear in the song.

A metronome is a device for creating an audible beat. I like this one, but you need a browser that likes Java. There are many web-based metronomes and metronome apps. You can also buy battery powered ones.

Train yourself to play along with audible and inaudible beats. See if you can imagine a pulse and play along with that.

Try holding notes for longer than one beat. Try playing two notes (or more) per beat. Experiment, but always make sure you are aware of the beat.

[flutebook]

7. reading the staff.

Reading music is a great skill to have because it allows you to play music composed over the last 1500 years or so from all over without having to hear it first and play it over and over and over again and essentially memorize it in order to play it. Let's be clear – learning by ear and memorizing are also great skills to have and we will be working on developing those, too. There are and have been many, many fine musicians out there who do not know how to read and notate music, just as there are those who are great readers and bad memorizers, and so on. Having all three skills – reading, playing by ear, memorizing – will enable you to do more with music.

Music is written on a set of five lines called a staff (you can double click and save the graphics in order to view them larger or print them out):

We place dots on the lines or in the spaces to indicate pitches, like the G, A, and B we learned last lesson. As you've already learned, we use letters to name the pitches. To be more exact, we use the first 7 letters of the alphabet to name pitches:  A B C D E F G. This series repeats, so that the next note higher than G is A, and the note lower than A is G. We will learn later why this is so. (It's a big mathy-sciencey thing, which I'm happy to explain in full detail, but it'll just slow us down at this point – in the same way that you don't have to know how a light bulb works in order to turn on the lights... There's also a big long explanation for why we learned G first, instead of A, but really, I don't want to bore you. I'm going to ask you to go on faith a lot in this blog. Bear with me.)

A clef is a symbol that tells what letters go with what lines and spaces. In other words, it tells you how to read the staff. There are three different clefs to cover the different ranges (the highs and lows and middles) of the instruments or voices. They are all moveable, that is they can be placed on different lines of the staff, but that feature isn't used much anymore. The flute only uses one clef, so that's what we are learning for now. Eventually, you may want to learn the other clefs, because they are useful for many things.

This clef is a G clef, meaning whatever line the curly-cue is looped around is the note G. The big crude arrow up there is to point out the line that the G clef is looped around. Remember that we count lines and spaces from the bottom up, so we would say that the G clef is on the second line. When the G clef is on the second line, it is also called the treble clef. (Again, you'll never be using it as a flutist, but we could, for example put the G clef on the third line and it would be a soprano clef).

As you go from line to space or space to line, you go to the next letter in our shortened alphabet. If you go up the staff, you go forward in the alphabet. If you go down the staff, you go backward. So if the second line is G, the space above it (space 2) is what (the next letter in our alphabet, and remember that it wraps around, so it's not H...)? The space below G (space 1) is what (what the letter comes before G?)? This may be a little tricky for you and that's fine. Sometimes it helps to put your finger on the line or space you are talking about. You can also use your hand (a.k.a., the magic cephalopod):

You now have all the information you need to find your way around a staff. Let's summarize:

1. You only use 7 letters to name pitches: A B C D E F G.

2. As you go forward in the alphabet, you move higher in pitch and move upward on the staff (one letter is going from a space to a line or a line to a space); as you go backward in the alphabet, you move lower in pitch and lower on the staff.

3. The letters wrap around, so the note above G is A and the note below A is G. (Remember last lesson how we could get a high G and a low G out of the same fingering? We have a way of showing that on the staff.)

So now that you know all of this, print out this page (or save just the graphic and print that), take a pencil, and label the lines and spaces with their letter names. You've got a nice big reminder where G is:

Now that you've labeled the lines and spaces (or if you were lazy and just read ahead...), you can see that the spaces spell FACE from the bottom up. As you've also discovered, the lines are labeled EGBDF, which doesn't spell anything, but people over the years have come up with clever ways to remember the lines:

• Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

• Every Girl Bites Dead Frogs (10 year old boys are especially fond of this one)

• Empty Garbage Before Dad Flips

• Evil Gorillas Buy Dried Fruit

• Ed's Greasy Burgers Deliver Flavor!

Make up your own!

You may find memorizing these sorts of things easier than the first method I showed you, and that's fine. But keep that first method in mind, because it does work for any kind of clef (yes, there's F clefs which show where F is and C clefs which show where C is...).

Instead of putting letters on the staff to represent pitches like we did in the exercise, we use little oval dots, called noteheads:

So what pitches do we have here? Hopefully, even though they're vertical, you'll recognize the fingerings as our friends G, A, and B from the last lesson. Plus, with your new ability to read the lines and spaces on a staff, you should be able to figure it out without the fingerings. Fingerings tend to be printed vertically, because it saves space on the staff. If it throws you, print it out and turn the sheet on its side so you can read it as before.

Notice that when the dot (notehead) is on a line, the line goes through the middle of the notehead. When the notehead is on a space, it fits perfectly between the lines. Try playing the following exercises, making each notehead the same duration (you pick: long or short, fast or slow), and tonguing (that's right!) each note.

Here's a link to a page of staff paper: paper with lots of groups of five lines on it. You can print it up as needed, or you can buy staff paper notebooks: example 1, example 2. You can use the staff paper to write your own exercises. Pepper the paper with lots of Gs, As, and Bs! Get a friend and see what it sounds like when you play two different lines at once. Read it backwards. (Upside down will have to come later...) Resist the temptation to write the letter names above or below the noteheads, because then you'll be reading your letters and not the symbols on the staff. By writing and playing your own exercises, you'll be able to memorize what those dots and lines mean with less effort and more fun.

[flutebook]

6. your first three notes.

Finally! We're getting to some actual music, here. Now that all these posts are up, may I suggest that you combine this lesson with your work on the previous ones. Jumping around is allowed (both figuratively and actually).

Now, you might not have holes on your keys. That's okay. It's easier to start without them, but they basically do two things: they ensure proper hand position by making sure the fleshy part of your finger is on the key, and you can do all sorts of crazy alternate fingerings with them. We'll save the latter for later. You also might have only three keys on the foot joint; that's normal, too. Notice that there's quite a few keys that you don't actually put your fingers on and the fingering chart only shows the keys that you do put your fingers on.

The way the fingering chart works is that when the key is colored in that means to press the key down. When it's blank, that means leave it up. So here's your first note, G:

Got it? Excellent. If you don't got it, keep referring to the pictures. I know the flute in the picture is facing you and the key drawing is oriented as if you were holding the flute. Get help. Keep working on it. It'll all be fine...

Your G should sound like this:

// <![CDATA[ // ]]>

It might sound like this:

// <![CDATA[ // ]]>

If so, your lips are covering too much of the blowhole, which means you're sticking your lips out too far, or, more likely, you've got the head joint rolled in towards you too much. Now, this high note isn't bad or anything. It's a high G, but for now we're going for the low G. Remember back when we were working with our head joints and we tried to get different sounds just by moving our lips? This is that technique. If you can't get the high note yet, that's great. If you can only get the high note, that's great, too. But keep working until you can get the low note every time. Don't forget all that good stuff about posture and embouchure and all...

Next note: A. Again, we can get high and low versions of this with this fingering, but aim for the low A. Lift your ring finger and you should have this:

Notice you should also have your right pinky down. To be honest, it really doesn't affect the sound so much on these notes that we're learning today, but it does help with balance and holding the flute. That's not so bad, right?

For fun and giggles, wiggle your ring finger so that you go rapidly from G to A (or A to G). This is called a trill (and it can be a verb, to trill — you're trilled to know that, I'm sure. yuk yuk). Flutes are trill specialists. We won't see them in our music for a little while, but you can trill to your heart's delight any time you like.

Our third note is B. Lift your middle finger...

...and you guessed it, we can get low and high versions of B, too. This crazy flute! Yes, work on the low one for now.

We'll be learning some songs and learning to read these three notes in our next lesson. For now, make up songs with your three notes. Tongue sometimes, don't tongue sometimes, find out how fast you can trill, find out how long you can play each note... even feel free to put down and lift up some other fingers, but don't forget G, A, and B.

[flutebook]

5. how to practice, part i

That’s right, you are going to have to practice. Flute playing isn’t going to magically happen on its own without some work on your part. You don’t have to set aside a huge hunk of time for practicing, unless you plan on playing professionally. If you’re just starting out, you don’t want flute to become this evil obligation in your life, and you’re certainly not at a point where you need to think about it professionally. Start with dedicating at least 15 minutes a day, at least five days per week to flute playing.

Everybody has different talents, so everybody is going to learn at a different pace. You might find that some things come very easy to you, while others are painfully difficult. Often your mind will understand a concept, but your fingers just won’t do what you want them to do. Learning music is just like learning anything: you have to spend a lot of time on it, consistently.

Accept that you will sometimes sound bad when you’re learning and that you’re still a cool kid, no matter what. I’m serious about this! Remind yourself often! By “sometimes,” I mean that you could actually sound bad every time you practice for a week or a whole month! Keep at it; things will get better. You are making progress even though it might not sound like it. Know, too, that once you’ve mastered something, there will be new things to learn at which you’ll sound bad, until you don’t anymore. Be patient.

You need to schedule at least 15 minutes every day to practice.

You need to practice at least 5 days a week.

It does not have to be 15 consecutive minutes. For example, you can do three sets of five minutes at three different times in a single day.

You may take two days off per week. You still need to schedule 7 days. That way you have flexibility with your days off. You will need that.

Figure out what works best for you: When do you have the best focus? When are you the most tired? Are there quiet hours in your building?

Do not cram your practice time together in one giant chunk. For example, do not schedule an hour on Sunday, thinking that takes care of four days of practice. It doesn’t. Be realistic: You can’t focus that long. And you’ll start to hate Sundays. And that’s not fair to Sunday.

This is different, however, from practicing 15 minutes most days and having one long practice session on one particular day. The difference is daily practice. In the previous example, you would practice a long time on one day and then take 3 days off. That is an exercise in frustration.

You also need a place to practice where you feel safe to practice and no one will complain.

Make your schedule now and try to stick to it for a month. If it's not working, change it. If you are having difficulties making time to practice, think about how much you like playing flute — maybe you don’t! Maybe somebody’s making you do this. If so, have a little talk. If you find that the thought of not playing music ever again bothers you, then get someone to help monitor your practicing. They don’t have to listen in, they just have to gently remind you to practice and help keep you on track. Don’t forget: five minutes is better than no minutes! Get someone you feel comfortable talking to about things that are going well and not going well; someone who’ll just listen.

[flutebook]

4. how to put the flute together and hold it and yourself with proper posture.

Gently put the headjoint and bodyjoint (the longest part with the most keys) together; again, you should not have to use force. If it's a little resistant, rub the tenon with the palm of your hand; the oils from your hand should be enough to get it going (don't forget to wipe the tenons clean after playing). You will probably make small adjustments to how you put your flute together as you gain more experience. Everybody’s body is a little different and you should adjust your flute to fit you. Here are some guidelines to get you started: If you look down the flute from the cap towards the foot, line up the right edge of the blowhole with the right edge of the first little key on top (not the pair of teeny keys on the back). Now, when you actually go to play, this might be too far out or too far in, so feel free to adjust. You want the keys to be parallel to the floor and the headjoint to be turned to the position you had it when you were just using the headjoint by itself and successfully getting a sound. Once you've found this spot, how are you going to remember it the next time you put your flute togther? Eventually, you'll probably remember it by sight and feel, but for now, feel free to use masking tape, scotch tape, or even a pencil to make two marks – one on the headjoint and one on the body – that you can line up.

The foot joint is going to require even more personalized adjustments, and if you’re still growing, the positioning should be changed as you do. While holding the flute with your left hand at the top of the body where there are no keys (we'll call this 'the joint' from now on), place your right hand on the last three keys on the body, keeping your hand relaxed – that is your ring finger will be on the last key on the body, your middle on the next-to-last key, and your index on the third-to-last key. Your thumb can rest under the flute near your first finger (we'll get more specific about that thumb soon). See where your pinky naturally is, when it's just resting next to your ring finger. Then use your right hand to move the footjoint so that you can reach the first key on the footjoint easily with your pinky.

Posture

Standing and sitting with proper posture is the most boring and the most important part of playing music. Nobody likes to be told to sit up, don’t slouch, put your shoulders down, blah, blah, blah. What difference does it make? Lots. Over time, bad posture will have a negative effect on your muscles and bones. Sure, it doesn’t hurt now, but you don’t want to have constant back pain – ever. Do the work of proper posture now, make it a habit, and you’ll be in shape to be able to make music your whole life.

Stand in front of a full length mirror, facing it, with your flute somewhere handy. Put your feet about shoulder-width apart. Tuck your tail-bone in towards your front, so that your butt doesn’t stick out (hee hee!) and your back isn’t arched backwards. Keep your stomach and abdominal muscles relaxed. Your shoulder blades should be on your back, not slumped forward. Your shoulders are relaxed and down, far away from your ears. Your head should balance nicely on top. A good way to practice all of this is to first do all of the "don'ts," so you know what it looks and feels like. For example, stick your butt out as far as it goes and be silly about it, then bring it to where it should be. Scrunch up your shoulders to your ears, then let them down. Slump your shoulders forward then bring them onto your back. Your spine might feel a little longer and that’s a good thing. If you know anyone who studies dance or yoga, observe their posture and talk to them about it – they are the pros when it comes to good posture.

Hold the flute in your left hand with your first finger on the second key on top (you'll see it controls the first key which is too far away from the third key for your fingers to reach, hence the second 'fake' key), your thumb on the long key on the back (keep your thumb straight and use the joint, not the tip), your middle finger on the fourth key on top (yes, skip that third key on top), your ring finger on the fifth key on top, and let your pinky rest on the funny key that sticks out but don't push it down (not the end of the world if you do, but you're not going to use that key for a little while). Confused? How about some pictures:

When you sit, your upper body should be exactly the same as when you stand. Place your feet just as you would when you stand: shoulder width apart and with the left slightly in front of the right. Avoid wearing clothing that keeps you from doing this, i.e., teeny skirts. If you absolutely must wear a teeny skirt when you play, obviously, keep your legs together, but stay relaxed and keep your upper body posture.

I have seen students come up with some crazy postures because they don’t want to hold the flute up. Behold:

• the elbows being supported by the hips 

• the stomach sticking out to hold the elbows

• the arm on the back of the chair

• the elbow on the crossed leg 

• elbows on both legs

• slouch-o-rama (a seated variation of elbows on hips) 

• and my all-time favorite, the chin or flute resting on the left shoulder (can also be done standing up!)

Really. Does that look comfortable? Normal?

It’s not that flute is heavy; it’s that it is tiring to hold your arms up, even if you’re not holding or carrying anything. I think the real problem is that your brain and your muscles get bored. Your muscles want to move or be totally at rest. Holding a flute to your face satisfies neither of those requirements. When practicing, feel free to take small breaks to stretch and move around. Eventually, you will get used to holding up the flute and your brain and muscles will stop caring. Proper posture will help with this.

I recommend standing while practicing because your lungs will be freer to do their thing than while sitting. But since so many performance situations will require you to sit, you should do some sitting practice.

While you practice your posture, do play a few notes, twiddle the fingers, see what happens – and make sure you maintain proper posture. Then put the flute down, stretch, twirl, whatever, and go through the steps again.

Holding the Flute

Once your posture is feeling natural and you don’t have to look in the mirror to make sure you’re doing it correctly, you can stand next to your bed to practice holding the flute. You shouldn’t drop it, but you might, so stand right up next to the bed, with your knees against the side, facing the center.

The flute is held at three points: your chin, on your left hand just where your index finger meets your palm, and your right thumb. You should be able to hold the flute in this manner and wiggle all of your fingers, except the right thumb, without any fear of dropping the flute. Holding the flute this way frees your fingers to move. Your fingers can’t have both jobs, holding the instrument and pushing keys. Let the three points do their work, so the fingers can do theirs.

We're almost ready to start learning how to play and read music. In the meantime, improvise and explore, while you check your posture and embouchure in the mirror.