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While presenting some of the Supercharge Your Flute Technique exercises to the teachers at last Friday’s Professional Development Day, it dawned on me that people aren’t completely comprehending the myriad of possibilities that each exercise contains.

Each exercise is purely a template for further exploration. You can play each exercises with a range of one octave, two octaves or over the entire range. That’s 3 possibilities right there. You can then try all of that with each of the suggested 10 articulation patterns; so that’s 30 versions of the exercise.  You can then play the exercise in all major, harmonic minor and melodic minor tonalities so that is 36 more options. So 3 by 10 by 36 is 1080 possible variations of each exercise. No doubt you can add to that with your own ideas; more articulation patterns, different tonalities, the range and we haven’t even talked about tempi.

Supercharge Your Flute Technique is a bridge from the beginner materials to the advanced technical materials and way beyond. As I say in the introduction:

At first glance some of the exercises may appear straightforward but don’t be deceived by this apparent simplicity as they should only be treated as a template for further study. 

So are you truly ready to Supercharge Your Flute Technique?

 

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Here’s an effective way to encourage students, or yourself, to incorporate plenty of repetition into your practice. Break challenging passages down into smaller manageable parts and repeat each part 5 times, 4 times, 3 times, twice and finally the passage as it was originally intended. I call it diminishing returns.

.Diminishing_Returns

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What a fantastic PD Day today for the Victorian Flute Guild. Thanks to all the participants, to Annette Sloan for her tireless work, Jess Farrell for welcoming us so warmly to St Catherine’s and of course Elizabeth Koch for her marvellous presentations.

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Have you played all your major and minor scales and arpeggios today? I call it brushing your teeth. You just do it without question it as you know it’s good for you.

Play them all with the range that suits you. One octave if your starting out, two octaves if your a bit further along and ultimately over the entire range.

Have you brushed your teeth today?

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The Victorian Flute Guild’s Professional Development Day will be taking place on Friday August 25th with the fabulous Elizabeth Koch from Adelaide as the special guest. I’ll be co-presenting some sessions with Liz as well. Here’s the flyer and I’m looking forward to seeing lots of flute teachers on the day.

PD Day 2018

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Thank you to everyone who took part in last Sunday’s Junior Flute Day. It was a great success with 35 young and enthusiastic players spending the whole day engaged in flute activities. Once I get some photos I’ll post them.