Legato and Staccato Blowing

Tags

articulation, embouchure, flute pedagogy, phrasing and inflection

Somewhere in the five years of practicing between completing my master’s degree and beginning my doctorate, it dawned on me that there are two basic kinds of blowing, legato and staccato. Each type of blowing has a distinct function and infinite variability. For intermediate to advanced players, each type of blowing really should be cultivated separately, with attention to detail to make both styles readily available in a player’s palette of expressive tools.

Legato blowing – Probably the most basic type of blowing for wind players, but also an exacting discipline to master at any level of playing. It is important to understand the necessity of learning to blow between the notes and not just on them. For beginner to intermediate flute players, there is no better tool for teaching legato than playing basic Octaves. Upper intermediate to advanced players should do Moyse Long tones and use short excerpts from lyrical melodies in multiple keys to further hone their ability to play through a line rather than just on the notes.

Staccato blowing – This type of blowing, while it usually involves tonguing, is air based rather than tongue based. Most intermediate players are ready to start studying this as a distinct playing skill. There are many existing exercises that can be adapted to practicing staccato blowing. I especially like the Reichert Daily Exercises #2 because it’s not long and you can rest and evaluate between takes and keys. Here are some useful variations for practicing this type of blowing/articulation:

• Breath articulation only – ha, ha, ha. Use abdominal kicks. Compels you to be really precise in shaping the aperture to maintain good tone. You absolutely must focus on the middle of your lips and how you are gripping the air stream, otherwise the tone will be fuzzy and/or crack
• Staccato tonguing – ta, ta, ta. This is still more breath based than tongue based as with the breath articulation. The tongue merely adds some extra clarity to the ictus
• Dotted rhythms, reverse dotted rhythms and double dotted, reverse double dotted rhythms. Really challenging to maintain the 3 to 1 or 7 to 8 ratio while maintaining a clear ictus for each note.

In the context of normal playing, it is often the case that one needs to switch instantaneously between legato and staccato blowing, depending on the context of the phrase, style of articulation and interpretation of piece. These exercises can help your students get off to a good start mastering these two distinct and complementary skills.

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

A Plea for Musical Phrasing from the Start

Tags

phrasing and inflection, rehearsal technique

Though I’m not a “music educator” per se, I have worked daily with flute (and sometimes band) students of all ages and abilities for a very long time. What I can predict with a great deal of accuracy for you is where students are going to breathe, especially if their only musical experience has been in band. Where would you guess? They are going to breathe on the bar line, whether it fits the phrase or not. This is true for beginners and frequently for fairly advanced high school students. It’s been my observation over all the years I’ve spent teaching lessons in schools, that the vast majority of times, the kids are rehearsed and taught to practice measure to measure, single beat to single beat from practically the day they start playing their instrument. I genuinely would like to know why this is. As a consequence, I hear kids play everything from beat to beat and measure to measure, regardless of phrase structure. In fact, the kids seem to be completely oblivious to the idea that a musical phrase is a thing. 

We all know the melodies shown here because we use them all the time with beginners. In the first two tunes, the phrases are clearly straight two bar phrases with the correct breathing on the bar line. The implied harmony shows us this, as does the poetry of these well known songs. Where I guarantee we run into trouble is when  we start to introduce tunes that have a pick-up of some sort and/or phrases that end after the bar line. The commas show the correct breaths. The red check marks show where I predict for you that kids will breathe unless you have taken the time to explain otherwise. (Kids who sing tend to have a much better understanding of breathing and phrasing.) If you know the words to this song, it becomes immediately apparent why the red check marks are so very incorrect. Who takes a breath before the very last……word? “O give me a….home where the buffalo…..roam” Nobody talks like this nor do they sing like this. Why do we let kids play their instruments like this? Why don’t we have kids sing more? (A topic for another time.) They would develop a more intuitive sense for good phrasing.

It does take a few extra minutes to explain phrasing and correct breathing to your students in the context of whatever piece you are preparing for the next concert. I am certain that there is more phrasing that starts and ends in the middle of a measure than ends squarely on the bar line at virtually every level of playing and in every style/period of composition. We want our students to love music. I really believe it is essential to not only teach them to form an embouchure, blow with an energized air column and develop sound technique, but to teach them the language of music, i.e., phrasing and inflection. When one learns to respect and observe the phrasing, developing an emotional connection the music comes as a natural consequence.

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.