Music has influenced a lot of my life already--I work with a group of musicians outside of school, and what they can do for the community and families is amazing....

What a wonderful thread! All sorts of interesting reflections about the art of flute playing.

Hm, so how does one get more patience with once development as a flute player? I started as an adult, and because of that it did not really take that long for me to start reflecting about all those issues about the purpose of flute playing, and about what to strive for, that you discuss in the posts. At the beginning stages, I was simply amazed by the experience of learning an instrument at all. I had no expectations of myself, and was content and facinated with every new discovery I was making. The problem now (at a somewhat intermediate stage) is that I am starting to get experiences to compare to, and many more opinions about what things should sound like, and more expectations on myself. This is a great thing of course. It's part of the learning experience, and I certainly become a better musician if I care about what I do, and hear more aspects of the music compared to before.

The issue is that I find it hard to be patient with myself. I have a little hard time of letting pieces I learn go, because I see things I still want to improve. I get slightly frustrated when I know I have played something in a better way before, and have a hard time recreating it. Or if I know how something should sound but, cannot really achieve it for technical reasons. Also annoying is when I don't have any idea or opinion about how to play something.

My teacher is terrific, and I want her to meet the regular eager, excited, relaxed, and competent student that has fun learning new things, not someone who frets over things not perfect. She has an amazing ability to help me build up new skills, and to put thing together. So if she helps me to tackle several issues with a piece, I don't want to complain about the one single thing that did not really become great.

There will always be a lot of things I can do on flute, and a lot of things I cannot do, so how do I strive to improve while at the same time accepting my current level?

I am soon going to select pieces for the Christmas recital at the music school. I am not sure how to relax and make it a good experiece for the audience and myself, even though I know that losts of people could play the same thing more interestingly, more musically, and more technically correct. Selecting a piece that I find interesting, and that is well within my ability is the first step, but what more?

CessiMarie, we all have this problem! The way that I deal with it is that I never look at a piece as really "finished" because I'll inevitably pull it out several weeks, months, or even years down the line and work on it some more.

Take the first movement of the Bach Partita in A minor. I played it for the first time as a senior in high school. However, as a junior in college, I pulled it out and decided to play it completely differently and shudder at how "incorrectly" I was playing it in high school. Inevitably, I'll work on it again in a few months or years, and maybe decide to play it in yet another way. Right now I think I have the interpretation down pretty solidly, but I thought the same in high school, too.

I'll also play some music that I learned years ago, and play the tricky parts that gave me so many headaches with ease. It's nice to be able to grasp exactly how much progress you've made since you first learned the music.

Since I realize that I'm never done "learning" a piece of music, it's easier to move on to something new when I realize that I've done all that I can with it at this point in my musical studies. If you have a good teacher and a good work ethic, you'll progress faster and farther than you ever thought was possible.

Thanks, TBFlute! You sound just like my teacher. I guess it comes down to having a good balance. It's not very efficient learning to stay at pieces forever. There should of cource be some piece that I try to polish, but I do need to move along and play new pieces to learn new things. Not to forget what would happen to sightreading. I think I have been stressed because of work lately, and that also has a negative effect on my patience.

You two click...

Good points. Consider these things.
There is the learning of a piece that we will always develop to our best ability but as we study flute properly that general core ability improves. This is why when we work on a piece the first time it's OK but if we come back a few years later and work again on it, it is easier to understand, we improve the performance quality faster in practice and we also will play it better.
One key to efficient practice is to understand what abilities are important. Things like 1) a beautiful tone that we have full control over in quality and dynamics as well as 2)technical ability of the fingers and articulation. Now, that we understand basic goals, we need to find ways to develop these general issues. Examples of things like
1)being able to simply hold a long note without waiver or play a crescendo / decrescendo smoothly.
ppp<ffff>ppp
on any note in tune or being able to play a very short and clean note.

2) Being able to develop finger coordination on the keys. This can be a study in general coordination such as an etude, or even a scale or we can get very specific like slurring quickly back and forth from C to D.... as example.

So we have to develop a practice routine that includes warm-up/daily exercises/Etudes/ pieces of quality music/tone quality studies. (notice how I organized the order of these ;-)
The goal of a good practice workout is to develop and improve something in a pro-active manner. This does not mean that we do something in a passive manner expecting that this action will cause improvement. The example of doing things wrong is the person who does a long tone study habitually every day while daydreaming out the window and not listening intently in hopes that just this act of making their flute play some noises will someday cause their music to improve and grow into a beautiful quality by itself. Of course no practicing at all would be worse.

again, well said Bilbo...

recently, in trying to get my private students to improve, I put forth a series of challenges...I assigned each of them a piece that they had never worked on before, and I said nothing about it..they were required to use their counting/rhythm skills, etc to prepare the piece, the key was that I told them to think like they are sightreading...

the result?

almost every student prepared the piece perfeclty, maybe not up to tempo 100% though,,,but goes to show you what you can accomplish if you set your mind to something

Nice analysis, Bilbo. Since I have a full time job, I have always been interested in making practice efficient. If I spend time practicing - I want it to pay off. I guess there is a lot mindless practicing around because it does require effort to pay attention to what you do. Making sure you are practicing the right things is an important place to start. And that there is a clear purpose in what you do.

I am not sure I follow how the exercise was organised, Patrick. Do you mean you simply did not tell the students what to pay attention to, and left it up to them to try to improve it as much as they were able to on their own? Or was it about preparing a piece by analyzing the score before trying to play it? I have a feeling it might be the second. If so, it certainly should be useful, since you have more mental resources available for focusing on the piece compared to when you are busy playing as well. You can pay more attention to different details. Thinking things through before doing is common in other situations, so why not in music.

This discussion makes me think about how learning can be evaluated. It seems hard to assess if one way of teaching or practicing really is better than another. Both because it is such a long term process, but also because there are a lot of factors that might interfere. It is of course possible to look at what kind of training and practicing have the players that we really think play well used. Though not even that is a guarantee that a method suits us. In order to be able to practice the right thing we need to have a correct assessment of what the shortcomings in our playing are, what is it really that is lacking or hindering us, and also different good possible methods for overcoming the obstacle. And then there is the question of motivation. In order to practice or learn well, you need to want to do it, and even enjoy it for a lot of the time. What makes that happen?

"overcoming the obstacle. And then there is the question of motivation. In order to practice or learn well, you need to want to do it, and even enjoy it for a lot of the time. What makes that happen?"

Here is my heresy:

Competition! Adult learners lack competitions among them.

Yes, competition. for us kids, we compete from day 1 of learning an instrument to adulthood: Sitting performance grade exams, taking school/local competitions, all state auditions, youth orchestra auditions, orchestra seating assessments, inter-schools competition, conservatory auditions, ALL ABOUT beating each other.

This is our motivation, believe or not, I have seen many kids, including myself, practice like hell, just want to beat the competitors, lol.

Like sport, do you really think those sportsman practice just to get a better physical health? no way, they want to improve then win and beat others, and get opportunities. This is their motivation.

If they only wanted physical health, they could have gone easier way like hiking, instead of buidling muscles and train like hell to get shorter time on 100m sprint.

Most kids just want to win and get into conservatory, and learn more music, and then win more international competitions, then enjoy success and then enjoy music! Do you think Sir James Galway could have gotten into Royal School of Music at age 16 without winning that famous 3-in-a-row town competitions?

Do you think Pahud could get into Berlin Phil at the age of 22 without winning Paris conservatory competition and Paris grandprix and Kobe in a row?

All about competitions.

Adults without competitions and performance opportunity, they get frustrated when obstacles come, we called Bottle Necks here, it comes again and again, without strong motivation, you just can't get through it, you will feel tired, frustrated, depressed, doubting yourself, and then starting to give up bit by bit. Or you will feel today I am too tired, I'll practice tomorrow, or you will think technique is not music, why should I tackle it endlessly, I should practice and play simple tunes, or play slow movements.

Time is not an excuse! If you love something and you have a strong motivation, you can always find time to do it. If you can spend 2 hours watching a new good movie or play video game or speak with bf or gf on the phone, why can't you find time to practice flute? because you feel bored, lonely and afraid of the obstacles that come every week. We kids go to school for like 7-8 hours too, then ECA, homework, study, video games or online games or go on web to have recreation, but we still can learn piano, flute, theory, chess, soccer, and practice musical instrument for hours, I manage to practice flute 4 hours a day, I only get to sleep 6 hours a day. Why can't adults do it? They don't love music? No, they are lacking strong motivations or wills.

Also, adults want to see immediate results, that is the problem, they know so much, but they want to see results. That is why they often get frustrated when they can't see immediate results after a short while of practice! We kids can accept to learn slowly, step by step, and sometimes take years of practice just to improve one things at a time. Can you even imagine I spent 3 years just correcting my tone, then spent 3 years just to practice scales and basic techniques, without any music pieces to play. Adults can never accept this kind of practice life. You know the Chinese monks they usual spend 5 years just to practice sitting without a chair, and Japanese chef spend 5-9 years just to practice knife cutting. Without fundamentals, you are just nothing.

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Pahud practiced lots of fundamentals, when he was 16, he only started to play grade 5 piece Stamiz in G!

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Galway said he practiced 10000 hours of exercises and etude when he was in RSM, without any piece of music. And then 3 hours of scales everyday (from 6-9am) for decades!

So you see, once you acquired fundamentals, you can learn and play any music very easily.

The Analysis part is an interesting concept. I believe that most good piano students spend more time in the beginning of their work on a piece with careful analysis. On the other hand, many flute students tend to want to run fast and wiggle.

Galway said he practiced 10000 hours of exercises and etude when he was in RSM, without any piece of music. And then 3 hours of scales everyday (from 6-9am) for decades!

This may be a true anecdote but I'd venture to guess that a good deal of this time wasn't necessarily only spent on developing speed. If one spends that much time, sometimes on speed but also sometimes on tone, musicality and intonation then the speed and the equality will be there. The issue is in the details.

It also may seem that "Adults without competitions and performance opportunity, they get frustrated when obstacles come....want to see immediate results..." But it may also be that they are more judgmental of their own work or they expect it to come easier, quicker maybe true. It may be that youths don't have expectations and assume that their future will unfold exactly with their plan. The future almost never happens exactly as expected. One also can make assumptions about others that would appear different from the other person's bottle neck. For example, after a long day at work or long sleepless nights of raising an infant child, one may be looking for a more balanced experience....some time without demands and stress.
The issue about deadlines, competitions and performances for stimulating motivation is good and true on one side but those things aren't necessarily the goal of many musicians -adults or youths.

So you see, once you acquired fundamentals, you can learn and play any music very easily.

Yes this is true but we flutists need to define exactly what we consider fundamentals. For me the fundamentals go beyond only cranking out scale patterns to a ticking metronome. They involve all of the necessary skills of
-listening to one's own flute/controlling sonority,
all technical considerations,
reading the manuscript,
applying an interpretation to the music,
music theory.
If one is a dedicated performer then they need to work on stage presence as well.




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So, if we try to get back to the private teacher subject,

a good performer can greatly benefit from a advocate that can give an honest assessment/constructive criticism of their performance.
A good student who is properly interested in learning should be able to confront their difficulties by accepting constructive criticism and also should try to include a healthy measure of self-assessment. When either the private teacher or the student discovers some difficulty or obstacle in the student's learning process, they may do well to discuss a practical solution to this problem.

A flutist who has no teacher runs the risk of never finding any solutions to their issues or will invariably implement wrong solutions. This is because our sense of self-assessment is faulty and our knowledge of the possibilities of solutions is uninformed. Or-to rephrase the obvious: They don't know what they don't know so at some point they begin to mistakenly think that they know it all.
My flute education began in 1963 and I'm still seeking out things to learn.

Thanks Bilbo. I know you are a good teacher with lots of experiences and you try to advise me or make me a better flutist. Im trying too.

I know what you mean.

This is a local senior flute champion with great musicality and he conducts orchestra too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QehesEhPoZM

This is me a local senior flute champion without musicality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZgexp6lGr0

We are same age 16, played same piece, but we had different approach.

I understand what you mean by all round education But East and West are completely different in music education.

Now, education masters begin to understand and modify their teaching ideas. For example, Trevor Wye told us in every masterclass that we must acquire all our technique before 16, then move on to music for the rest of our lives. If you don't believe me, check Larry's forum, Trevor Wye wrote a couple times there years before about this. Canadian Master Robert Aitken also told us repeatedly during his masterclass that his new teaching idea is "practice fast and strong tonguing! and get your tonguing and fingering speed up first, and then refine later", I swear to God I am not lying.

Unlike piano, flute is mono tone instrument, most of the times its music requires fast playing. I still have great trouble to play that Socerer's Apprentice flute part with ultra-fast double tonguing, Mendelsohnn's flute solos. And Andersen's super fast etudes!

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Im not arguing with you teacher bilbo, I know you are right. But just discuss some different music or flute education approaches :)

Pyrioni does make and excellent point...competition drives a lot of people to do stuff....I mean, I don't think it's right if you're playing just so you can "win" at spots and competitions....that'd be too much for me, and I dunno about you, but I would burn out if all I lived for was that.

"Unlike piano, flute is mono tone instrument, most of the times its music requires fast playing. I still have great trouble to play that Socerer's Apprentice flute part with ultra-fast double tonguing, Mendelsohnn's flute solos. And Andersen's super fast etudes!"

Why do you have to compare us to piano? It's always the piano...

Cessi,

In answer to your question, let me clarify, my goal for each student is for them to be able to learn a piece without me guiding them each step of the way.

So, by having them prepare a piece on their own, I can see if they can count and understand the tonality, dynamics, articulation, etc.

They also have to understand the title of the piece as it relates to the character so that they can develop their own interpretation.

Patrick: That's very logical. I have a feeling such a task can help you a lot as a teacher. You get to see how the student approaches a piece from beginning to end, and that gives you more perspective. You might notice they know things you had no idea that they knew about, or that they actually were not able to do something you both had assumed the student were skilled at. For the students, they get to know themselves as musicians in a better way. It is actually scary to trust you own opinion, so I think it's great you give them the opportunity to do it in a teaching context.

Pyrioni: As for competition, it sure can be a motivator, but definitly not for everyone and in every context. Did you notice I said I was too hard on myself? Whatever would happen if I really would start to compete?! Neglecting work, sick friends, and eating and sleeping, just so that I will something flute related? The winning would be fun, but it would also be something temporary that not really is important. In the worst case scenario I could lose, job, home, and friends by forcusing on competing as something important. Bilbo actually described it excellently. Adults have a different kind of responsibility, that is not very flexible, even if you want it to be. I am a busy PhD student, and make a lot of sacrifises just to be able to play the flute at all.

There was a girl in a beginner ensemble I was in, who left because she felt she didn't feel good enough. I think it's terrible she felt she had to "compete", because we were all a very supportive and friendly group doing this for fun, and not performing except for the music school's small recitals. She played way more advanced repetoaire than I did, but had problems with keeping a steady pulse. So, the feeling that she (mistakenly) had that she had to be at a certain standard, did not encourage or push her, but instead caused her to feel as if she was not "good enough" to play with others. This is an example of bad competitiveness, and I do see there are other contexts where competition is a positive factor.

So what do adults need instead of competition? Well, for me personally any kind deadlines are helpful. It is enough for me to have regular lessons to prepare to, or to prepare to play some Christmas carols for friends and family, going to a summer course, play in any kind of group setting that requires me to prepare, or the music school recitals, even though I know it's not an exciting event if compared to more advanced performance opportunities. These are smaller kinds of deadlines, but they are definitely enough to keep me putting in some extra practice.

Additionally, let's get back to lessons and teachers. I can hardly imagine anything more motivational compared to a good teacher. Even if you have a non musical surrounding, there will always be the teacher to cheer for you when things go well, and to help you back on track if things are going slow. You simply have a person who once a week i soley focused on your flute playing and on the development of it. If the teacher cares about you improving, it is very inspiring and contagious.