Inspiration may come from anywhere, anything, and can strike at anytime. In the
Process vs. Goal posting, I vaguely mention some of the processes that one must go through to progress without developing too many bad habits. It also mentions that some (OK, most) of these processes are less than fun. So, after discussing these processes with a couple of students, they inspired me to try to put down a prescription for playing baroque flute. Or at least a loosely connected set of guidelines.
Start with
The 20-minute Workout. One of the foundations, or fundamental truths, of playing a woodwind instrument, is the practicing of long tones. That's why it is part of the workout. Of all the things that my teachers asked me to do that I didn't, the long tone practice was the one thing I did do, on clarinet, recorder, and flute. Good tone should never be sacrificed for good technique. Choose substance over style, every time. Styles change. Substance is constant.
In addition to the 20-minute workout, another significant source of information for playing baroque flute is being aware of when you create tension in any part of your body while playing. Use "soft" fingers, "hard" wind, and take things one note at a time. For beginning flute students, you need an awareness for the difference between tonguing and spitting for articulation (former = good, latter = bad).
I now look at flute practice as a combination of martial arts training (which I studied for about 10 years), and basketball practice (3 years of high school, 1 year of college). In both activities, most of my workouts were spent practicing fundamentals: stances, kicking, punching, blocking, avoiding attacks, studying forms, doing them as a group; passing, dribbling, rebounding, defensive stances and postures, group precision drills, and, occasionally, shooting practice.
And just when you thought you would be doing drills forever, my teachers/coaches would introduce situational practice, that is, sparring or scrimmaging.
The purpose of that method, which was very successful, was to get us to stop thinking about the techniques/fundamentals and focus on the situations. But we reached that stage only from slogging it out on the kung fu and basketball equivalents of long tones, trill practice, and using the metronome.
That last clause leads me to . . .
The Metronome Will Set You Free (or, it is hard to get lost when you only have to count to one).
Originally posted here. Used and adapted, of course, with the author's permission.
Several of my students record their lessons. They say it helps them immensely in their practice between lessons. I've adapted my teaching style to help them on the post-lesson tape listening. One of the tape recording students, Student XYZ, sat down not long ago and said that after listening to the previous lesson, s/he was reminded of something I said a few years earlier: "Practice with the metronome every time you practice. It will set you free."
This, apparently, was a baffling statement. How could something so rigid make your playing more free and expressive? But somewhere between a few years ago and the recent lesson XYZ had an epiphany and finally understood what it meant.
When I give students the task of using the metronome, it is with specific instructions.
For example, the first thing I ask is that students play everything very slowly. I mean REALLY slow. My metronome only goes as slow as 40. I'd like it to at least go down to 25, if not 20.
We do this because playing things slowly gives you the opportunity to really program your body to put every note in its proper place, and gives one the chance to play a piece without missing any notes. That is the cosmetic reason. There is an internal component. Having a slow beat in your ear will help you internalize a slow beat when we start counting things on the half and, ultimately, the whole note. One or two slow beats per bar.
Counting to one or two gives the player, and the listener, a completely different feel (vibe, aura, whatever you want to call it). It takes a lot of physical tension to consciously count the small notes.
Musical Math example: One half-note at 40 beats per minute (bpm) is two quarter notes at 80 bpm. One half-note at 80 bpm is two quarter notes at 160 bpm. Counting on the quarter-note can lead to some fast and frantic toe-tapping (not allowed in my studio except when playing traditional music). Counting larger values forces you to think of groups of notes, and, ultimately, groups of bars, and not get hung up, bogged down, distracted, and so on, by a bunch of small note values. They are just notes. The big beat helps you turn those small notes into music. [Remember: the notation is not the music.]
Playing on the big beat gives you more freedom and reduces your responsibility to the time keeping. First, it is much more difficult to get lost if you only have to count to one (OK, sometimes two). Second, your responsibility when counting the breve, or the whole note/whole bar, is limited to getting from beat one to beat one on time. What you do in between, even when playing with others, is your own business and responsibility.
[Side bar: My limited experience playing traditional music leads me to believe that while there may be toe tapping, foot stomping, other percussive effects with various body parts, they are not used to keep people in time or to keep from losing their place (I seriously doubt that people who have been playing a particular traditional repertoire for years need help keeping time to the music). To me it seems they are another instrumental part of the music. Toe tapping in classical music, however, is yet another insecure bad habit brought on by a neurotic perception of what passes for a good performance. It helps you set the bar pretty low. "If I just don't get lost, then it will be a good performance." Right. Of course. That's all you need to be a successful classical performer, the ability to not get lost in a concert. Were that the case, I'd have run back to my accounting studies decades ago.]
For me, the goal of counting large note values (big beats) and recalibrating your internal metronome, is to expand it to cover 4, 8, or 16 bars or one large phrase as one enormous beat. At any tempo. That is your freedom.
An excellent example of an 18th century piece where you can use this in both slow and fast tempos (WITH your metronome in practice) is the Sonata in D, Op. 1, by Johann-Joachim Quantz. The first movement, Grave e sostenuto, and the second movement, a Presto in 3/4, are the slowest and fastest tempos from the Baroque. Grave e sostenuto according to Quantz (my memory may be faulty here) comes out to around 38-40 for the eighth-note (that's pretty slow). The Presto comes in at 168 for the quarter-note (that's pretty fast). With both movements, it would be easy to get bogged down on the small note values (38 for the eighth-note? We'll be here for weeks! 168 for the quarter? How will be play those 16th-notes???) and forget about the phrases.
But, if you've practiced counting breves and whole-notes, you'll see the phrases more clearly in the ultra slow movement, and be able to look at a couple of lines of music in the fast movement as one enormous beat. If you think slow, you'll be able to play fast. Don't worry, panic, or fret about this. You won't get it immediately. It is, as are so many of the things I ask of people, another concept that needs to gestate before it may be realized.
To sum up Pineda's Prescribed Method for Learning Baroque Flute (PPMLBF):
- Use the 20-minute workout as your base.
- Use the metronome during your 20-minute workout on both the long tones and the music practice (or longer; longer is allowed and actively encouraged).
- Practice in front of a mirror. This will help, especially with the next item:
- Become aware of tension in your body and begin to try to play without creating any tension. Tension in parts of your body not actively touching the flute will create problems for those parts that are in contact.
- Keep your fingers relaxed, not squeezed or stiff, and make a conscious effort to keep them close to the tone holes.
- Use your tongue and not your lips to make articulations (don't spit into the flute).
- Remember: less sound equals more music (that means be sure to articulate very clearly), and while you are working up to tempo, play your pieces one note at a time.
I hope this is helpful.
