Flute Practice Epiphany 1

I think one of the benefits of getting older is that I have had the opportunity to hear many different ideas and perspectives on flute practice. Every once in awhile one of these ideas will spark an epiphany, a little bolt of intellectual lightning that lights up my brain. The solution to a problem suddenly becomes clear, the reason for doing something finally makes sense, or an idea that seemed unrelated to anything in my personal life hits home. I had one of those epiphanies last week.

I was rehearsing with a flute quartet and I realized that I was leaning more forward than I needed to be. I don’t play this way when I stand so it confounds me that I do it when I sit. Consequently, I am very uncomfortable when I have to play sitting and my sound isn’t as full. But I wasn’t just leaning forward from my seated position, EVERYTHING about my playing position was forward, my embouchure, my head, my neck, on down. I seemed to reaching out for something with every part of me.

When the little alarm bells went off a light went on and something that flutist Diane Boyd Schultz said in a presentation on playing posture popped into my head. She is a very engaging and entertaining speaker and I was struck by the theatricality with which presented the following concept. She described the flutist’s head as the queen and the arms as her servants. The servants always come to the queen, the queen never goes to the servants. At the time I recognized that this was good advice for better tone production, but I didn’t think I needed it. In my rehearsal I realized that I had gotten into the habit of making my queen go to the servants as much as possible, distorting not just my posture, but my embouchure, too!

After that I sat in a more neutral position, supporting my torso on my sit bones so I could breath easily and fully, unkinking my spine and neck so my head was properly supported and free to float, and bringing my flute to my face and lips rather than the other way around. My sound automatically opened up, my playing was more musical, and best of all, my neck didn’t hurt after rehearsal!

As a student, you never know when something a teacher says will strike a chord with you, so try to gather as much as you can. And as a teacher, you have to accept that you will not see most of the effects that you have on your students, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t give them as much as you can. Who knows when that light bulb will go off!

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