hi all i have noticed that i cant seem to play any faster and want to improve and play quicker when needed. i spoke to my teacher who noticed i do tend to waggle my fingers abit too much and lift them too high i am trying to play looking in the mirror to get out of the habit has any one else found themselves doing this and how did they stop my worst thing is taking my thumb off to play c and holding it too far away from my flute.


thanks monkey flute

If you have a closed hole flute then try keeping your fingers in contact with the keys, so that your fingers are on the keys even when you aren't pressing the key (but make sure that you aren't actually pressing the keys when you don't want to!).

The above may not work with an open hole flute because keeping your fingers on the keys can affect ressonance and tuning (or at least it makes a difference on mine...). If you have an open hole flute then think about your fingers being just above the keys but not up in the air. You only need the tiniest bit of space between your fingers and the keys - just enough for the air to get out.

If you have the Trevor Wye scale exercises these might be good to practice on as they require good finger control but you don't need to worry about moving too many fingers at once.

I used to keep my fingers too high (clarinet), but I did get out of the habit eventually - I think it took about 2 weeks.

I'm trying to change my thumb position at the moment but finding this a much more difficult habit to get out of

I also do this, and it does affect speed - one way to start correcting it is to look at the finger transitions which present particular problems. For me that turned out to be moving an index finger - its better mobility meant I was lifting it too high, delaying the time it took for me to return it to the instrument. What I then did was play pairs of notes using that finger motion - in my case, on a recorder, E-F and E-D, fairly slowly, and with dotted rhythms in both directions, so sometimes making the E the long note, sometimes the other one of the pair (this is on treble recorder: it'd be B and its neighbours on a C instrument). Thinking about the two halves of the process of making a note - lifting a finger, and dropping it down, as separate entities in this way will help you to focus on limiting your motion for a problem finger - and if they're all problematic, work on the worst ones first . Looking at a couple of videos of my playing, I still do it, but can suppress the habit where I need to go fast, so although I've not fixed the problem completely, it can be improved this way.

You may need someone to help with this suggestion: put a tissue over your hand(s) while you play. If your fingers come up too far it will float off! See how long you can keep it on for.