Just wondering how others cope when they really can't play, and what you do to keep yourself with it.

At the moment I have a really foul cold and breathing is enough effort never mind playing the flute!

Not on purpose as a way of practising, but I have been listening to some of my many versions of Syrinx and deciding what I did or did not like about them, which has been a reeeeeeeeally interesting exercise which I hope I'll be able to build on when I next try and play it.

The other obvious option is practising fingerings.

Any other ideas? What kind of things stop you playing & what do you do about it?

Life tends to stop me playing....if I have to cook, I'll listen to music, ditto being a taxi service. At work one of my colleagues hates having music on in the background if she's doing paperwork, so I just have to think music then. If I'm on here, I'll run either a CD or sometimes the various recordings I've footled around with - one of my sprogs hates that, she'd rather I actually did some playing than re-listen to old stuff. Driving to work I'll listen and practise double and triple-tonguing to whatever is on if an exam is coming up or if I've got a bit of a tongue-numbing piece on the boil. Sitting around waiting for sprogs to come out of whatever it is I've taxi'd them to, I'll sometimes take a whistle with me and practise fingerings, again if there's some event coming up, but I do this sparingly because I look a complete idiot doing it. When I'm asleep I must still be dreaming music sometimes, because I'll often wake up with the tune of whatever I was practising the night before still going round .

Must be crazy .

You say that like it's a bad thing..........

I was banned from playing for 5 months. It was a complete nightmare, and I was in a complete state by the end of it.
I tried "virtual practise" - sitting and imagining playing, as instructed by a physio, but just found it frustrating.
One thing you could do, though, is study scores - it's a good thing to do anyway. Listen to recordings, and learn your piano parts!

The biggest problem with not playing the flute for a while is the lip muscles lose their tone. Whistling can help but mostly I like to play wine glasses.

For anyone who hasn't tried this, or might be considereing taking up the flute, take one thin edged wine glass and put both hands over it leaving only an inch and a half on the far side from you. Then cover the rest of the top with your chin and blow across the far edge as you would a flute. It's possible to change the note by adjusting your hand position.

Sounds interesting, but muscle fatigue is usually when you should stop. I would think you would do yourself more harm by overworking the muscles with other exercises than just stopping and letting the body recover.

Indeed.

If I can't practice, I think music, dream music... I've been known to randomly carry several pieces around school with me and study the scores - it is a very useful excersize. Oh, and the random bits of manuscript paper with the odd phrase dotted here and there..

I could only confess all that on a music forum, let's face it!

Practice rhythm exercises. Beat time with your feet, or use a metronome and find the rhythmically most demanding piece you can - lots of off-beats, syncopated rhythms, quintuplets etc, you know the sort of thing, and practice clapping the rhythms maing sure you're getting them completely accurate. When you next come to play the piece it will be much easier, it helps to improve sight-reading as well as you start to recognise written rhythms and quickly recall how they should sound.

I have to say I'm amused not ONE person has gone "practising when you can't practise? What? Are you mad??" and all have understood what I mean.

Oooh good idea, TSax, I know that reading complex rhythms is something I don't so much have difficulty with as have zero confidence with

At the moment the bloomin mechanism is out my piano getting some minor touch-ups and it's driving me up the wall! It makes me realise how much I value playing!

Anyway in the mean time the bass guitar and acoustic have been serving me as almost adequate substitutes

I hadn't heard of that, though I don't play flute. My usual method with a wine glass is to pour some wine into the glass, raise it to my lips and tip it; take some wine in your mouth, sip, savour and swallow!! good for the embouchure and the spirits

seriously (more or less!) there is a lot you can do reading and singing through pieces you are learning, checking rhythms, checking fingerings, THINKING where to breathe, phrase etc.