Fake-arando is Not a Thing

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Contest preparation, flute balance, flute fingering, flute pedagogy, flute technique

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).

As always, if you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances, click here.

Preparing Your Students for Solo Contest

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Contest preparation

Now that we are past the winter holidays, everyone is gearing up for contest season, both large ensemble contests and individual solo & ensemble contests. There is nothing like having your students standup in front of a judge to perform a solo that shows the individual strengths and weaknesses of our students as clearly. Here are some pointers to keep in mind so your students can have the best experience ever with their solo contests this year.

1. Make sure your students are well grounded in the fundamentals of playing the flute at every level. This means embouchure skills, breath management and control, articulation, scales and arpeggios, rhythm and note reading, and effective practice skills.
2. Pick repertoire that is appropriate for the student’s skill level rather than a hypothetical ability based on the student’s age or years of playing. There is nothing more discouraging for students than being asked to practice and perform a piece that is beyond their ability.
3. Monitor the student’s progress with their solo as much as possible.
4. Have them practice their solo with SmartMusic at different tempos, especially slower tempos
5. Help students find recordings of their pieces by advanced players for the student to listen to
6. Review practice strategy including how to learn passages correctly by chunking it down, practicing slowly, using a metronome, planning correct breathing, etc.

In general, most students don’t do nearly enough slow practice on their own, whether it is in passage work or in more expressive music. You model out good practicing habits every day by how you run your rehearsals, though I am sure there is never enough time for as much slow work, detail work as you would like. There is just too much material to cover. It is really important that you stress the importance of slow practice when your students are preparing for solo contest.

There are lots of collections of solos at the beginner and intermediate levels. The main criteria for picking appropriate solos is that it is within the range of the flute the student already knows and that they understand all the rhythms. Some of the well known ones include the Rubank Book of Flute Solos – Easy and Intermediate, Standard of Excellence Festival Solos books 1 and 2, Rubank Concert & Contest Collection, Solos for Flute ed. Donald Peck, 24 Short Concert Pieces, Selected Flute Solos (Everybody’s Favorite Series) and many others. Beyond these, there is the whole range of the flute literature including Bach Sonatas, Handel Sonatas, Mozart Concerti, French Conservatory pieces, modern sonatas and unaccompanied works.

Finally, I would like to say one of the nicest experiences I have when I judge solo & ensemble contests is when the student plays well for their level of ability and their piece challenges them without overwhelming them. The benefits for the kids are enormous, especially their feeling of accomplishment. I feel terrible for the students when they have obviously been pushed into doing a piece beyond their ability or desire to practice. And I feel exasperated with their teachers that they are putting their students onto pieces the kids clearly haven’t got the skills for, especially tonal and technical skills, yet. It is better to play an easier piece with good tone, technique, rhythm and articulation than to play the Chaminade Concertino because “you should be able to play that piece when you are 14 or 15 years old”. I think you can do some real damage to kid’s self-esteem and desire to continue playing by pushing them into repertoire for which they are not ready yet.

If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.