We used to have a general flute thread, but it hasn't been used for a while. The oboists, bassoonists and sax players all have a live thread of their own, and there's always a lot of clari talk. I thought we needed a general flute thread to kick off a bit more flutey chat.

So what is everyone up to at the moment? I'm in a bit of a rut as far as playing goes, although the teaching is still pretty time-consuming. I'm looking at a couple of works which are fairly new to me with my advanced pupils: Gaubert's Third Sonata and Arnold Cooke's Sonatina. I love teaching at this level, where we look more at the reasons why the composer chose a particular articulation or dynamic than at the notes and rhythms.

What are the other flautists doing at the moment?

Sadly, my flute has been very neglected of late. Since I've been ill over the past 18 months or so, I've struggled to keep it held up to play for any length of time. I do so want to get back to it, but I know that I really need to do a lot of back-tracking and have some decent lessons again. I get dispirited too easily! There are so many things I'd like to be able to play again, but I've got so rusty! It was a great pity that I got all enthusiastic and bought the new flute just before I got ill.

At one time I could play bits of the William Mathias Sonatina and I'd like to be able to play all of it. In some ways, in the past I've been a bit unlucky in having teachers who've been firmly locked into the 'traditional standard repertoire' - obviously in some ways that was good, but I wanted to break out

That said, I did get it out today to record a couple of things for YouTube, and I did clean it

At the moment, the flute piece I'm concentrating on is the 2nd flute part of the duet Clavicembalo wrote. I'll be playing this with Gedall40 and Andante-in-C at Stalybridge.

I have looked in a vague way at some of the grade 7 repertoire, but not to the point of a proper try-out. And the scales look like a lot of work.....

I'm doing picc in Carmen and Copeland's 'Rodeo', and Poulenc's Sonatine for flute solo, but my current fave is the Taffanel Allegro on the grade 7 syllabus. I love it! I did it for my GCSE performence piece last week, and got an A* I'm also working on my double and flutter tounging...rolling my rrrrrrs doesn't come naturaly to me! x

Also...does anybody know if there's a Grade 8 yellow book with 3 flute pieces from each list, like there are for the earlier grades? I can't find it anywhere! x

No, I'm afraid the yellow books only go up to 7.

Katyjay's right, you have to get grade 8 pieces separately : but a CD with selected grade 8 pieces on it does exist.

Many thanks to andante_in_c for opening this thread.

First I went to a masterclass from 6th to 11th of june. The tutor was Carin Levine and her specialty is modern music and new techniques. With me she worked a lot on my abdominals and where each single note has to come from during the week. Beside that I had to prepare a very modern Trio with two others during the week and she taught some of the modern techniques to all of us.
I now have to practice the flageolets from the Trio, wich I couldn't manage within one week. And a piece with many new techniques.
And I am working with No 1 and No 10 from "Big daily finger exercises for flute" by Taffanel/Gaubert. No 1 to improve my fingering No 10 to improve my tone support.
Beside that, my flute teacher and me decieded to start preparing for grade 7 last week. Now I havn't got a single piece to work on but have to go through many pieces to pick the three once I will prepare for the exam. And I practice scales and arpeggios.


I am a bit jealous on playing in an orchestra.
Is it the flutter tounging in your throat? I guess.
For that I find it a good help to imaging purring like a cat. And I learned that it has to be a pretty slow movement.
Maybe I will play the Allegro from Taffanel for the exam, I have not decided yet.

I could do with some repertoire suggestions. I've been doing some significant dusting off if my flute over the last few months and my neighbours are sick of tone exercises! I can reliably play up to G in the 3rd octave G# and A are there but very thin tone and often split. I'm looking for inspiration - tuneful rather than studies. Unnacompanied would be great but not essential. I'd prefer not baroque as I'm not keen on the tone of the modern flute in early music (and don't want any temptations towards baroque flutes!).

Any suggestions?

I hesitate to post, because I'm really not a flautist - but do have a flute-specific question, and wondered if I might also ask for ideas here? At some point in the next year, I hope my recorder-builder (how grand that sounds! it's actually only the first order I've placed with her, but from what I've experienced thus far, I suspect there may be more in due course..) - is going to produce me a voice flute. This is a recorder in D, of about tenor size, but more like a treble in timbre, and what recorder players use to steal baroque flute repertoire. Any ideas for what I might look to play on it please? In general they seem to be well suited to French baroque, I understand, but if anyone has played something charming from that era, I'd be most grateful for tips .

Meantime - good to see a flute thread, and I hope the proper flautists won't see this as hijacking...

How about the Kohler op 33 studies (which are definitely tuneful!). Books 1 (Grades 5-6) and 2 (Grades 7-8) would do the trick. Or you might prefer the Kohler Romantic Studies which are even more piece-like with titles. Lovely nineteenth-century Romantic repertoire.




The Leclair sonatas come to mind if you want French baroque. They are a bit frilly for my taste, though. Other non-French suggestions would be anything by Quantz, or perhaps some of the sonatas by C P E Bach. Or, of course, the J S Bach sonatas and the Handel sonatas that the flutists haven't first nicked from the recorder repertoire.

It's nice to have a Flute thread

I thought Flute would be no more after this term. Until someone met the college Flute teacher and they decided between them that lessons would be continuing. I've just got to pick up the bill as usual

Im concentrating on band repertoire at the moment, and they are working on scales too, adding a major and minor each session. So we are up to 2 flats and 2 sharps at the moment, it's good, it's making me do them. I can't afford lessons, so get tips from band members to keep me improving.

I need to get some serious practice done, I need to work on both picc and flute...I still find it hard to swap between the 2. After playing nothing but piccolo for weeks (it's marching season) I had to play the flute in a garden party(!!) and it was not a good experience goig in cold.....

I'm going to have to work on marches over the weekend as I've got 5 new ones for a parade on Tues!! And I can't read and march, the music swings around too much!! We're doing fancy marching too, "bomb bursts" and things so takes so much processing power.

At some point I would love to actually learn a repertoire piece....I'm sure it'll happen eventually. But I have to share my limited time between the 4 instruments....and I just got 13 new pieces to work on over the summer from my singing teacher today!!

Ooh, thank you - Leclair's music I've heard in the form of orchestral works, and will happily try out frills - as it happens, my teacher is a French music specialist, and it'd help me with ornamentation practice.
CPE Bach has always daunted me - but I think I may just have to bite that bullet and see if I can perhaps manage after all.

for the flautist-borrowed Handels - there's a thought, I could learn them all over again

I've just taken my own advice from the new repertoire thread and have been browsing the JustFlutes Editor's Choice list, and I notice that there are now two volumes of Quantz sonatas in a 'definitive' edition by Rachel Brown. May well be worth a look.

Having just acquired a beautiful Quantz duet, I am very tempted to go and look at more of his music, thank you for that

I have just been told that there exists a newish flute of shorter length for children beginning to play but who find holding a full length flute too difficult. This seems a bit odd to me but these days one never knows !I have been told that it doesn't have a curved head joint. I can't find anything like this on either the Just flutes or All Flutes web sites so I wondered if anyone knows anything about it?

Edit; I have just found it - it's called an Apprentice Flute" and it does have a curved head joint. But there aren't many details about it. Please has anyone any experience of using this with children? I have a descant recorder player - just passed Grade 1 with distinction, aged nine but small for her age and tires easily - poor health - but has been asking for two years now if she could swap to flute.
.

I haven't used the Apprentice, nor the Jupiter Prodigy on which it is based, but I know several teachers who have and who seem to like it.

The non-curved head flute might be this one, but as far as I know it isn't available yet (at least in the UK).

I've been really enjoying flute recently and have improved massively

Quick question - I have massive problems with embourchure when coming straight off clarinet and onto flute - any ideas how to make this transistion easier? Or is it just a case of practising them at different time of the day?

Many thanks andante in c. These look very interesting but are , I'm afraid out of our price range - 850 plus euros whereas the Apoprentice is only around 130. I expect it's a question of you pay your money and you take your choice but I can't ask parents to go that far. I'll have a look at the Jupiter version if I can find it; Thanks again.

Sorry to hear this, Seer Green. Perhaps having the new flute will help give you more motivation to get going again.

Like andante in c, I'm in something of a rut too. It seems to have been a really gruelling term (partly because of surgery and a longish recovery time afterwards, which is still ongoing) and that has sapped my energy, which impacts on the energy I have left over for practice.

I have very good intentions for the summer!......(But it's said that the road to Heaven is paved with good intentions!)

So I'm progressing slowly with the G6 music. For list B, I'm stepping outside the yellow book (probably) to do Gaubert's Sicilienne, which is a lovely piece. Can't decided between two of the A list pieces, and will probably go for the Drouet Study in C# minor for list C.

And vibrato is still a sticking-point.

The best solution is always to practise flute before clarinet, or any other instrument for that matter. I've even had problems moving straight from recorder to flute, and the pupil I teach both to in a double lesson always has a flute lesson followed by a recorder lesson for that reason.

I've started practicing my flute again in the last couple of months (after a slight diversion for 20 years to play brass!).

Currently working on tone exercises a lot, and I'm finally making a serious effort to learn proper vibrato (which is coming on really well).

I bought book 2 of 76 graded studies for flute and I'm working my way through that (just on to the 3rd one in the book so far!). I still can't play the triplets reliably up to speed in the first one yet, though (that's the Stamitz Rondeau).

I'm also learning alto sax (which is coming on nicely), and finding it difficult to fit in a decent amount of practice on both, particularly during the week.

Well fluting went out the window completely during the last semester of university (funny that) and then I went home for 2 months and didn't take it with me. So I'm now reunited with my flute and have some time on my hands... sounds like it should be a recipe for doing some more playing, no?

Rather looking forward to moving house (fingers crossed I'll get more tolerant neighbours than we presently have), and starting work (then I might be able to afford some lessons again - which might then provide some motivation and impetus to practise)!

Whoops! Looks like I had better break out of my "post Grade 7 relaxation" and start practising . The Grade 7 scales are not too intimidating, Katyjay - just about 87 variations on each of three articulations. Not being a good memorist of music, I found these the hardest part of my exam, but I think my teacher has a solution. It is called the "let's do a few scales at every lesson" routine .

Nice thread Andante-in-C

My teacher (who thinks I have passed Grade 7) asked me this week what I wanted to do now and I have suggested

• the first movement of the Poulenc Sonata (to add to the 2nd which will be played at Stalybridge)
• the first movement of the Mozart Concerto (to add to the 2nd which I played in Birmingham last year)
• The Goddard Allegretto (I have a request from another forum member to learn this!)
• the Waltz from the Rutter Suite Antique (I just love it, although I think it will take some time to master the fast quasi-improvisation bits)
• a couple of pieces from the Claude Bolling Jazz Suite for flute, piano, bass and drums, in particular Sentimentale, Baroque and Blue, and Irlandaise (can do that one all but for a glissando from middle G to top G )

I don't think I will do all these at once though!

Well, I sadly said goodbye to my flute teacher of the last two years. She's completed her music pedagogy degree and is moving back to her home state. She's been an inspiration; not least for the quality of her teaching but also because having suffered horrific injuries in a car crash in her early twenties, which wrecked many things in her life, she has rebuilt her musical and private life. despite battling with constant movement difficulties and pain. I will miss her. She will be replaced by a teacher who's currently doing the same degree who is a jazz specialist and also plays sax. She plays in an ensemble that interprets Finnish folk music in a jazz style, so it'll be interesting to see what that'll bring to her teaching!

I haven't played a massive amount of flute this year - I've got my grade 8 sax in a few weeks (AHHHH!) and stepped violin up a notch too - but I performed the Carmen Fantasy a few months back and I'll be performing "selected movements" of the Franck Sonata in August. When I say selected movements, what I actually mean is the movements I've had time to learn I'm also going to play a few lighter pieces like Faure Sicilienne for a charity garden party but I'll definitely be sneaking some Bach or something in
I need some new repertoire for next year though - any thoughts?

gedall40 -
I love the Fugace movement from the Bolling suite! And for the glissando, a very fast arpeggio works pretty well too

Unfortunately my lesson this week has been cancelled. That keeps me in the situation of more tooteling around than work on special pieces.
But I am working on tone-support, tone-developement and fingering.
Yesterday I recorded myself playing Andante from Sonata in e minor by J. S. Bach. I thought my tone is too harsh right now, but I was suprised, when listening to it, the tone was really nice.

I'm no expert but we have found that the room really effects how you hear the sound.

I usually practice in the same room, maybe there is still a difference in the sound depending on weather conditions, but it shouldn't count very much. I was just happy that the recording sounded so much better, than I expected.

You have to also remember that the sound you hear isn't the same as the sound your audience hears. Higher frequencies don't propagate as well as lower ones so the balance of the harmonics in your sound can change with distance. You also hear some of your own sound through bone conduction which again favours higher frequencies.

Thank you for this nice explanation.
It seems to be part of a process I went through several times in the past three years. Once a while I discover, that my tone is going to get a lot "bigger" and each time I feel like it is too harsh if this happens. It seems to have been a good idea to record myself this time it happend, to find out, that there is such a big difference in what I hear and what is to be heard in a distance of about 1.5 meters. It'll help to let the change go and not try to get it back again.

I would like to lift up this thread again.

Yesterday I was told, that Michael Debost once mentioned that scales are part of the hardest things to learn for flutists. I sympathize with this.

Still nearly three more weeks until my next lesson, but loads to work on until then.

How are you doing?

I'm glad you have revived this thread.

Scales are one of the hardest thing for flautists. There is no logic when you reach the higher realms of the instrument. So I am struggling this summer with B minor, Bb minor and A chromatic. I also find the dominant 7th in E particularly troublesome.

What I notice most about the difference between Grade 5 and Grade 6 standard is the complexity of the fingering, and that really matters when it comes to scales.

However, one thing I am really pleased about is that I now "default" to violin fingering much less than I used to do. Violin is the only instrument I learned in childhood, so it seemed to be almost automatic - especially when sight-reading - to revert back to it. These days, I think the fingering is generally more secure. But tone development is, of course, always a prime consideration.

How are other flautists faring these days?

High notes on flute become more logical (although not very ) when you trace their origins through the harmonic series below them. The best way to get used to them is i) buy some earplugs ii) go back to whichever tutor book you have handy and play the first few pieces two octaves higher than written. Actually, the first step should be 'relax' - it makes all the difference.

My flute is in semi-retirement for the summer months. I have run out of pieces to work on, and don't have any particular targets in mind. I'm thinking of doing a couple of small gigs in the autumn, one at school where I play a favourite piece from each grade and possibly a fundraiser of audience-pleasers. If those get off the ground it will give me more incentive to play - I hate hearing just the melody line so it would be good to get together with a pianist.

Have packed MatthewD off to his grandparents on the D side with a laptop and his flute and instructions to keep practising.

Recently there have been some really lovely sounds coming out of the music room. Warm tone, in tune playing. Clearly work in progress in other areas, but my role is not to interfere just to compliment.

Thank you to the flute players who have made him feel so welcome.

We're planning a shopping trip to look at new flutes in the middle of the summer hols. That way he can try the instruments out.

Seer_Green, I hope that this opportunity to get your flute out is the first of many. It is miserable being parted from a trusty friend due to ill health.

Hello everyone, have been reading here for a while but only just signed up. Am in my early 30s and recently started playing my flute again after an, erm, 12 year break.. a few regrets there (I did an HND in music at Uni but decided I didn't want/ wasn't good enough for it as a career and just stopped playing) but very inspired by the stories of people on here who've gone back to it after some years off. After messing around for a couple of months, I decided I wanted to have lessons again, so have got my first one on Thursday - slightly nervous!

Welcome to the Forums and welcome back to the flute.

I hope the lesson goes well on Thursday; it would be great to hear how you got on.

I... er... actually played my flute for a bit today. Its funny though, despite the total lack of practise over the last few years, the playing seems to have stablised out. My bottom two octaves never sound too dreadful, and the top octave is okayish once I've warmed up.

What I am having issues with is how much my pitching shifts with dynamics...

Welcome to the forums allegretto.
You just started a journey I started three years ago. I was not only slightly nervous when I went to my first flute lesson after 23 years without flute lessons. Are you having a trial lesson? Looking forward to read about how it was.



That is normal and it takes time to sort this out.

Thanks for the welcome Yes I'm having a trial lesson, but already feel very positive about the teacher from speaking to her. I'm really looking forward to having some direction to my practising again, at the moment I'm not quite sure what I'm aiming at. But also increasingly nervous as tomorrow gets nearer! Practising last night wasn't great.. fingers slipping off with the heat, tone sounded awful

Tamsin - I'm finding the Trevor Wye Practice Books section on Intonation really helpful, it's something I've always had problems with (although weirdly it seems to be better than it used to be since I started playing again! )

I'll keep a look out for the Trevor Wye intonation book next time I'm anywhere near a music shop.

What is frustrating, is that it has never ever been an issue previously. I imagine its because my embouchure isn't as strong as it was when I was playing regularly, and if I ever bothered to practise rather than just play now and again, perhaps it would go away. In the meantime, I shall just have to put up with wincing when I hit a forte and go sharp...

(Alternative possibility: maybe I had a less acute sense of pitch when I took my G8, 7 years ago... !)

I've begun to get mine out more recently, but I just loathe playing with no accompaniment! It's such a fiddle to record them and then play along to them!

Have you tried smartmusic? It does that job beautifully and flute is well catered for. You'd have to be a seriously good pianist to record some more advanced flutey things (Chaminade, Faure Fantasie etc.)

At least you've got that option! Not playing the piano, I have to make do with a CD, or nothing. Occasionally I can rope in a piano-playing friend, but not having a piano around this means they periodically have the frustration of running out of (keyboard) keys...

This website is also a good source of accompaniments, and practice speed tracks are included for faster movements/pieces.

I've had a couple of goes with SmartMusic but I've never really used it enough to justify the fee.

Thank you, andante_in_c, for this link. It looks very good.

Tried SmartMusic before, but thought the repertoire was limited and it was quite expensive.

Will look at this later as we need some backing for advance sax music. Luckily our wonderful piano teacher is always happy to oblige with live accompaniment but recordings would also be useful.