Summer flute practice: accountability and motivation - who are they?
Tell me if this sounds familiar:
You play the flute. For school, or for band, or just for fun. Summer rolls around…I call that the “off season”. Rehearsals slow down, there’s no class, no structure, the world is your oyster. You can do as many creative things and practice as much as you want and whenever you want. It’s great.
Suddenly it’s the middle of August, and that entire summer was spent thinking about all the stuff you can get done in your free or more flexible time.
Whoops.
Three practice tips for musicians that will break your brain
Do you ever practice something over and over and everything is going well, but then you hit a wall in your practice? Or something throws you off when you’re out of the practice room? Or just bored of the same practice strategies?
I have a few practice strategies for musicians that are definitely character building. In other words, they feel like they’re breaking your brain. What’s actually happening is strengthening the fortress around your skill by building the skill from different approaches and angles than what we’re used to as musically inclined practice room dwellers.
Three different ways to tackle tricky technical passages and supplement slow practice
Having trouble with a technical passage in your practice? Here are three of my favourite ways to tackle them that can use to supplement everyone’s favourite practice method - slow-practice.
Three things I never skip in my flute warm up
Three things I don’t skip in my warm ups. I consider these extremely useful tone exercises for resonance, tone colour, depth of tone, dynamics, flexibility, and more. When I started using these in my own practice, I noticed a difference rather quickly, but that of course came with consistency with using them along with my other warm up activities.
Just as the saying goes, “don’t skip leg day” - I don’t skip these. So let’s get going with a few of my favourite things.