Sometime last school year, one of my private students was learning the Poulenc Sonata for flute and piano. If you are familiar with the piece, you know that there are at least five 32nd note runs that the flute does together with the piano in the first movement. When she got to the first run, she played the first couple notes, did some kind of faking in the middle of the run and played the last couple of notes. Inside, I was flipping out. What’s this? I never told her she could or should fake this run. It’s not that hard to play correctly, etc.
So I asked her about what she did in the most neutral way I could summon, why she wasn’t playing all the notes in this run, but in fact, faking it. Her answer elicited an even stronger reaction from me than just the fact that she was faking to begin with. She told me that her middle school band director had told her that was how to handle runs as a general rule! She had been told not to worry about the notes in the middle of the scale, just hit the bottom and top and you’re good. And this is a student who, herself wants to be a music educator.
A few thoughts about teaching kids good technique:
- It impacts the quality of the entire ensemble when you let your woodwinds fake fast runs and scale rips.
- It does kids a huge disservice to let them or even encourage them to fake their technique, both in their ensemble playing and when they begin working on solo repertoire.
- If you only ever test kids on playing scales in eighth notes at mm=80, they will never develop the ability to play rip scales that are so much a part of woodwind writing in concert band music
- Include technical work for your students both as a section and individually into your curriculum.
- There are vast resources available through traditional band methods, band technique books and online resources you can use with your students with very little effort on your part
Technique resources that I like from the band world include the huge library of scales, arpeggios and wiggles in SmartMusic. Foundations for Superior Performance and Habits of a Successful Musician both have excellent technical exercises. Then, of course in the flute realm, there are a wealth of great technique books including Trevor Wye’s Practice Books Omibus edition and Complete Daily Exercises, Patricia George’s The Flute Scale Book, and of course the venerable Taffanel and Gaubert 17 Big Daily Exercises
Personally, I’m not a fan of scales that have an 8th note followed by seven 16th notes. I don’t really think this type of scale teaches technical fluency. What I do like are five note scale patterns in every key including sharp keys, scale rips starting on each note of a scale, scales that cover the full range of the instrument (for more advanced players).
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There are a number of seemingly insignificant habits your flute students can get into that make a bigger difference than you might imagine to intonation, tone quality and technique. Some of these are more visibly obvious than others. All of them can negatively impact your flute players, both individually and as a section. Keep an eye and ear out for these things in your flute students for a better sounding section.
Balance the flute in your hands. Turn the headjoint slightly back to align between the key cups and the rods, rather than directly with the key cups. This puts the relatively heavy rods more on top so the flute can rest in your hands. No bracing needed even with all the fingers off the keys (like with C#-Db). 
We have spent a great deal of virtual ink on this blog exploring flute embouchure, articulation, intonation, technique, dynamics and vibrato. While all of these things are essential to good flute playing, we’re overlooking the elephant in the room, namely blowing. Indeed, if you don’t have good mastery of blowing, you aren’t going to be able to articulate well, play in tune, control dynamics or play with vibrato. All the blah, blah about embouchure is meaningless if you are not moving air through the embouchure into the flute. Technique is worthless without the air behind the fingers.
What is the home scale of the flute? Has this changed as the flute evolved into its modern form? How does this relate to traditional band keys? What effect does learning band keys first on flute have on understanding the sequential nature of flute fingerings?
We all know scale and arpeggio exercises are essential. In my own studio, I introduce scales and arpeggios as soon as the student knows Bb and can play all the naturals from low F to middle F. Depending on what flute method I’m using, the first scale students learn is either F or Bb major. I prefer to use method books that introduce flats and sharps equally. (My favorites for working with band kids are the Gekeler Flute Method and the Flute Student books by Fred Weber and Douglas Steensland. There are also really good flute specific methods available now, notably by Kathy Blocki, inventor of the PneumoPro, and Patricia George/Phyllis Louke). So the order of learning scales becomes F, C, G, Bb, D, Eb, A, Ab, E, Db, B, Gb/F#. As students learn the scales, we always review them in circle of fifths/fourths order so kids get functional harmony in their ear, even if they haven’t got a clue about music theory. So, for example, if we are learning Bb, we will play G, C, F and Bb so our ear is grounded in Bb for all the melodies we will play at the lesson in Bb. Likewise, if we are working on the key of D, we will review scales starting on Bb, F, C, G and then D, which nicely sets us up for the D major tunes we are studying.