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Impressive articulation can bring a lot of interest, variety and clarity into your playing so it is worth incorporating articulation practice into your daily practice routine. This may be as part of your tone development exercises, your technical practice or heightened awareness of your articulation in your studies and repertoire.

A good place to begin is to ensure that your basic or default articulation is serving you well. There are many different ways to articulate but my preferred first or default option is to use the tongue just behind the top teeth as in saying ti or tee. This is the first style of articulation that I teach my new students. There are other approaches and they are all valid. The thing to always ask yourself is, ‘how does it sound?’

To explore this type of articulation, go on a journey of discovery within your mouth. Place your tongue on the bottom, inside edge of your upper front teeth. With your tongue, travel up the inside of these teeth and find the spot where your teeth stop and your gum begins. Continue into your mouth along the flat surface behind your teeth, known as the alveolar ridge. Move further into your mouth and you will feel the curve up into the palette or roof of your mouth.

Now that you have a basic geography of your mouth in place, say ‘ti’ a few times and notice where your tongue is touching within your mouth. For most people, but not all, it is usually behind the top teeth on the alveolar ridge. This is an effective place to articulate from. There a few points you can think about when using your tongue in this manner:

Where on the alveolar ridge is your tongue striking?

Which part of your tongue are you using?

How firmly is your tongue pressing into the ridge?

What movement is your tongue making? Up and down or forward and back?

For a beautifully clear articulation I aim to use just the tip of my tongue and place it quite close behind the top teeth, almost at the point where the teeth and gum meet. The action that seems to work well is to draw the tongue into the mouth as opposed to a strong up and down action. I also use as little effort with my tongue as possible, just lightly tipping the alveolar ridge.

  • Tip of the tongue
    • Just behind the top teeth
    • Back and forth like a snake’s tongue
    • Imagine the roof of your mouth is super hot. You have to touch it but you don’t want to stay there too long.
    • Use the tongue lightly, like a feather

There are two important points to remember when articulating:

  • The tongue makes zero sound on the flute. It does not generate the note but merely acts as a valve to release the air so be gentle but precise
  • The tongue is only involved in the beginning of a note, not the end. Your tongue only returns to the roof of your mouth in time for the subsequent note and doesn’t flick back up to stop the note.

Try some of these ideas out on some scales or simple exercises. Trevor Wye’s third book, Articulation, in his Practice Books For The Flute has plenty of exercises to work on. Many simple studies are excellent such as Andersen’s 24 Studies, op 33 No. 2 or some of the 24 Little Melodic Studies by Moyse. For the younger player 76 Graded Studies For Flute, Book One, has many options to explore articulation as well.

As I stated earlier, there are many approaches to articulation that are valid. By listening carefully and noticing how you are articulating, you will be able to create a whole new layer of interest into your playing which I think you will find is well worth the effort.

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As the school year commences (in Australia at least) it is a great time to set up positive and effective technical routines for your students. Why not try out Supercharge?
#superchargeyourflutetechnique

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I thought I’d post the Flute Talk review Supercharge received:

 

 (3) Flute – Supercharge Your Flute Technique
Composed by Peter Bartels


Australian performer and pedagogue Bartels has created a technique book aimed at bridging the gap between materials for the beginner and advanced player and has done so in a creative and engaging manner. Consisting of seven chapters, he covers such topics as scales, arpeggios and broken chords, chromatics, and scales in thirds, but he does so with varying patterns like half scales, sequential scales, continuous arpeggio expansion, and by varying meters. By providing parts of the whole and ways to practice them, students then understand the patterns better and master the whole more fully. The final two chapters focus on working on difficult passages and how to organize practice. Bartels’s clear language, clever titles, copious musical examples, and effective strategies make this a book useful one for flutists of many ability levels. (Available for $42 AUD from the composer at peterbartelsflute.com) (D.B.S.)

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Kind words from the current president of the Victorian Flute Guild, Greg Lee.

Peter Bartels (Melbourne flutist, teacher and Leslie Barklamb Scholarship committee member) must be congratulated on the release of his new publication, ‘Supercharge your flute technique’. It brings together elements from years of teaching experience from Peter, and compliments masterfully the existing range of flute technique literature.

Thanks Greg.

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If my students are confronted with a passage that seems daunting to them, I like to create a little duet out of that passage. This idea works really well with sequences as you can take it in turns playing each statement of the sequence.

Here are a couple of examples taken from pieces in the grade 3 and 4 AMEB repertoire books. Take it in turns playing each part of the duet and then ask the student to play a duet with themselves. I’ve deliberately left the rests out of each part to try to give a sense of one part flowing into the other. You also don’t need to write the duet out as I have done here. Part of the exploration can be working out which part belongs to which player.

While you’re on my site, maybe you’d like to read the Introduction to Supercharge Your Flute Playing which can be found by clicking the Supercharge menu item.

making_a-duet

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On Sunday August 26th the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, at the University of Melbourne,  is running a preparation for VCE and Tertiary studies day. I’m excited to be a part of this day presenting a two hour flute masterclass/workshop.

Markiyan Melnychenko (Lecturer in Music Performance, Violin) is coordinating the day and I’m sure would be happy to provide further information.

markiyan.melnychenko@unimelb.edu.au

 

Time

Activity

11:00am:

Registration and welcome.

11:15am – 11:45pm:

Where can music take you? Creator of MCM’s exciting new career development program – Ignite Lab, talks to you about the myriad of ways you make have music be a part of your life. Parents encouraged to attend!

11:45pm – 12:45pm:

The life of a music student: Performances by and interviews with some of the MCM’s best players.

12:45pm – 1:30pm:

Lunch provided.

1:30pm – 3:45pm:

Masterclasses: A chance to perform and receive feedback on your playing from some of the top professionals in the country.

3:45pm – 4:30pm

Before you play: How can you take care of yourself, in order to prepare to deliver your best performance?

4:30pm  – 5:00pm

Afternoon tea, wrap up and farewell.

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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?