Tag: students

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Flute Lesson Grades!

As a college professor, one thing that can be difficult for me to assess at the end of the semester is how much progress my students have made in the preceding 14-or-so weeks. When grades are tied to assessing this progress, it makes things even dicier. Feelings, scholarships, and progress towards their degree completion makes the stakes high. After seven years of college teaching, some things have worked and some haven’t. Here are some ways I organize my assessment of my students’ progress, which can also be used by students for some self-reflection.

At the beginning of each semester, during the first lesson, I determine where that student is as far as tone, technique, and musicianship are concerned. Obviously this task is easier if I have taught the student before. It can be a little tricky if the student is brand new, but there is always room to make adjustments later. At that point, we decide together on various materials that will be used during the course of the semester. It depends on the student; if this is a young or inexperienced student, sometimes I will primarily use one method book. If it’s an older student, we tend to include etudes, technical exercises, repertoire, and other materials from a variety of sources. While I think there are certain materials that every student should eventually work through, I don’t feel like every student must be playing from the same sources at the same time. (This also makes lessons more interesting and varied during the week!) We come up with an approximate amount of material that can be covered; for example, we might outline one etude a week, three heavy technical exercises, tone studies, and two works to focus on for the entire semester. We talk about a reasonable amount to cover each week and try to identify performance dates for the pieces. This way we have benchmarks to hit at various points throughout the semester and can pace ourselves accordingly. I make sure to get students’ input here, as well. Maybe their vibrato doesn’t strike me as something that needs to be heavily addressed during the semester, but the student is quite uncomfortable with it. I will make sure that we cover that. Perhaps they know a piece that they would really like to work on. As long as it is appropriate for their level and is well-balanced with their other repertoire, I’m happy to allow them to make those decisions.

I also do a mid-semester “check up” to see if we’re making sufficient progress towards our outlined goals. If we’ve decided to finish one etude a week, and it’s taking three weeks to get through one etude on average, it’s time to reassess. Are the etudes really that difficult, or is the practice time spent on these insufficient or badly organized? This can be tricky to determine. Sometimes there are circumstances that we aren’t aware of as teachers, and it takes a good amount of trust to know whether a student is being lazy, has a mismanaged life, or is really having trouble with the material.

There is also the circumstance where something that wasn’t apparent in the first lesson reveals itself as an issue that must be dealt with immediately. Perhaps there are serious embouchure problems or major rhythmic inaccuracies in a student’s playing. Things so fundamental must be addressed before making progress towards other musical goals. In this case, a student might not get through all the material that was outlined in the first lesson, but if serious progress was made on these other aspects, it has been a successful semester.

If a student is making good progress towards the outlined goals, everything is in good shape. It’s still worthwhile to have that mid-semester reminder that there is still work to be done and grades do inevitably happen at the end of the semester. And of course, if a student is making progress beyond what was initially outlined, they will hear no complaints from me!

By making expectations completely clear at the beginning of the semester (and giving a reminder midway through), this lessens the possibilities of misunderstandings or hurt feelings when grades are due. Also, by making the student involved with the decision-making, that student has more ownership of the situation and hopefully feels more in control of his or her musical development.

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Beatboxing and Such

So I entered the realm of beatboxing a while back and figured it was time to write about it. I can’t remember exactly when I started experimenting with it, but it couldn’t have been much earlier than this past spring. The name to know in flute beatboxing circles is Greg Pattillo, who is a performer and composer. He also performs with the PROJECT Trio. I think it’s important to note that Pattillo comes from a fairly typical classical upbringing – started music in school, went to college for music study, etc. He even lists Beethoven as one of his main musical influences. (The other he cites is Ian Anderson.) But then he took inspiration from beat boxing, which is a type of vocal percussion performed by hip-hop artists. This style is combined with flute sounds to create something entirely unique. And this is where my interest was piqued. I’m in love with the framing of sounds – all kinds of sounds – and this is a new sound to experiment with. I think it’s also a good idea for me to learn these new techniques because it absolutely stretches me as a performer. Part of my obligation is to keep up with new developments, and it’s also a great reminder of how difficult new things can be to learn. When my students are approaching something new that I take for granted at this point, and they’re having trouble with it, these types of things remind me what they are experiencing.

In 2011, the National Flute Association commissioned Pattillo to write “Three Beats for Beatbox Flute” for their High School Competition, which is a pretty strong indication that this style is fairly well accepted. Whether it will become mainstream or will die away as a passing fad remains to be seen. I don’t know how often it is taught by flute teachers at any level, but my students find it interesting and I certainly don’t discourage them from practicing it. (Are you a flute instructor who teaches this? Let me know!)

For further reading, check out this New York Times article. And check out his Youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/freedomworksfilms.

The videos are really helpful to learn the technique, and that’s what I’ve relied on. I’m currently working on the first part of his “Three Beats,” and who knows. Maybe it’ll end up on a faculty recital one of these days … ?

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The New Gig

I would be remiss if I didn’t write a blog post about my new gig. This semester, I began as an Assistant Professor of Music at South Dakota State University in Brookings, South Dakota. If you told me a year ago (or even six months ago) that this is the direction my career would take me, I simply would not have believed you. Now that I’ve been at the job for long enough to feel settled in, I can give you a bit of an introduction.

My summer was hectic. After being offered and accepting the job, we immediately began making plans to move our belongings, our lives, and ourselves 1377.15 miles from where we were living at the time. The pressure was on, especially since my husband had his full-time job and there were friends to still enjoy (and say goodbye to). I was also preparing to present at the British Flute Society convention, which took place right before the beginning of the semester.

Once I got back on this side of the pond and got into the swing of things, life has settled down somewhat. My teaching load this semester includes applied flute students, woodwind pedagogy, and world music. I’ve taught these before, except for the woodwind pedagogy. My time working with a homeschool band group gives me a background in pedagogy of the OTHER woodwinds, and a very helpful colleague is also a great resource. (Shout out to the amazing Bret Pimentel at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi.) I’m also recruiting quite a bit. While I am not building a studio from the ground up, my predecessor here was part-time so there is an opportunity to expand the studio from its already-healthy size.

As a native Southerner, I was first introduced to the Midwestern work ethic as a graduate student at Indiana University. I can assure you that it is alive and well in South Dakota. With very few exceptions, the students here are extremely hard workers and are receptive to new ideas. It is making my job easier.

I’m also enjoying working on my other projects. I have the opportunity to write, perform in various locations, travel, meet new colleagues, collaborate on different projects, and continue to enjoy a varied career. I’m also really excited to learn about this part of the country, which I have never seen before and which is so different from what I am accustomed to. While my lack of knowledge about this state has required me to print out a map of South Dakota and tape it next to my desk, I think I will learn the area quickly enough.

Yes, it’s cold and very windy. Lately it feels like Christmastime in the South. I have unpacked most of my warmest clothes. I anticipate spending a good hunk of change upgrading my wardrobe this year. But I will figure it out, and if I don’t, please come dig me out of a snowdrift.

After paying my dues for what seemed like a very long time, I’m deeply appreciative of a job that I truly enjoy with colleagues who are a lot of fun to work with and students who are incredibly hard workers.

A view of campus from my office window.

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Practice Tips

The following was a result of a handout I put together for a workshop. More detailed information can be found about these topics in separate blog posts on this site.

 

Establish a solid practice schedule: 

  • Actually block off time in your schedule designated specifically for practicing. Avoid using it for lunch, socializing, homework, errands, sleeping, and so forth. As a musician, practicing is part of your job, so treat it with professionalism. 
  • Write your designated practice time in your schedule. Enter it into your online planner. Make sure it ends up wherever you will see it until it becomes habit. 
  • Arrange your practice time for when you practice best. Some people love getting work done first thing in the morning before anyone else is around to be a distraction. Others work best late at night. Maybe right before or after lunch is when you’re most alert. Figure out when your most effective practice time is and make sure you schedule around that. A reasonable amount of focused practice is better than lots of unfocused practice. 
  • Your practice time doesn’t have to be one large block. Maybe you have 30 free minutes between classes early in the morning. That’s perfect for your warm-up! You can then schedule another practice session for technical work and repertoire, or you can split that work into two sessions. 

When approaching a new piece: 

  • Listen to a quality recording of the piece. Yes, this counts as practicing!
  • Do a quick run-through of the piece to get a feel for it and where the difficult parts are.
  • Actually write the tempos of each problem area in your music (in pencil) so you remember where you are the next time you practice. You will probably have different tempos for each difficult section of the work, but that’s ok. You’ll eventually work them all up to the same tempo. Don’t forget to update the tempo in your music after you’ve made progress.
  • In particularly difficult sections, it may be necessary to break your practice down into just 2 or 3 notes. This may seem too simple, but it’s a much more effective use of your practice time than simply running through the music and making little, if any, progress.
  • Save run-throughs. Start doing more of these as you approach a performance to get a feel for the work in its entirety and to start building endurance. It’s also helpful to do occasionally to assess how well your practice is going, but it’s simply not enough to be your sole practice strategy.

Handling especially difficult sections:

  • First, make sure you’re practicing slowly and with a metronome. Play it as slowly as needed so that you’re able to play the entire passage correctly. This may be half-speed or even slower. That’s ok; you’ll speed it up later.
  • Second, try playing the passage with different articulations. Try slurring the difficult passage, articulating it, slurring small and large groupings, and combining articulations and slurs.
  • Third, alter the rhythm of the passage. If the passage is made up of eighth notes, play a dotted eighth/sixteenth note pattern. Then reverse it and play a sixteenth note/dotted eighth note pattern.
  • Finally, try playing the passage backwards. This gives your brain and fingers a serious workout. Practice this section backwards until you can play it smoothly and comfortably.
  • Once you’ve practiced this difficult section with all of these changes, play it as written. Even after a short amount of practice, you should see considerable improvement.

How do you know when you’re improving?

  • Checking metronome markings. This is a pretty simple way to measure progress, especially in technical passages. Being able to play something a few clicks faster than you could at the beginning of your practice session is a pretty good indication of progress.
  • Being able to play longer passages in a work. Maybe you could play only small portions of a work previously. Maybe you could only make it through one movement before you felt fatigued or lost focus. Suddenly, you can make it through the entire piece successfully. This is a positive sign, especially if you are getting close to a recital date.
  • Noticing an improvement in tone quality. This issue becomes more subjective. Recording yourself, an eye-opening experience, is a great way to hear what your audience is hearing. The sound from the performer’s side of the instrument can be vastly different from what the sound is by the time it reaches the audience. Maybe you’ve been working on tone and you *think* it’s clearer, more resonant, more focused, and so on. Double-check it with your recording device.
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Technique stuff

If  you are interested in following along with Sir James Galway as he overhauls his technique, check out the following video. He has issued a “Practice Challenge,” where flutists from presumably around the world will all be working out of the same technique book. He will be using Marcel Moyse’s Daily Exercises book. I will be following along with the challenge loosely. I usually work out of this Moyse book every day, so I am going to be adapting the challenge by fiddling around with the articulations.

http://galwaynetwork.com/scale.htm

I’m also feeling rather sheepish about my short-lived experimentations with circular breathing. I started work on it a little over a year ago but didn’t commit to it like I should have. Now I’m kicking myself; if I had stuck with it, I would have probably been fairly fluent in the technique by this point. I’ve dug out my book and am considering adding it to my practice regimen. Anyone out there have any experience with circular breathing?

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Teaching non-music majors

It seems that, as young faculty members, the task of teaching non-music majors falls to us. My first college teaching gig wasn’t teaching applied flute (even though I have three degrees in the subject) – it was teaching music appreciation. It’s a real eye-opener to go from a graduate program, taking upper-level musicology seminars, to teaching basic music appreciation to students who may never have heard classical music before.

Obviously, this takes an adjustment. And I will take this opportunity to offer my most sincere apologies to the students in my first semester teaching (because that just couldn’t have been a great semester) and sincere thanks to my first boss for hiring me.

So what are some of the challenges that musicians face when teaching non-musicians? Here are a few; feel free to contribute your own.

1 – Terminology. If you think about it, we use A LOT of jargon. Polyphony. Fugue. Arpeggio. Mixolydian. All I have to do is listen to my computer-guy husband on a conference call, using words that are nonsense to me, to understand the effect that the musician’s language must have on non-musicians. I think it’s important to use a lot of the “correct” musical terms because they’re so precise, but they really need to be introduced gradually and with plenty of explanation and context.

2 – Musical Excerpts. Yes, we know Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Wagner. But a lot of times, non-musicians haven’t heard the staples of our repertoire outside of pop culture. The musical elements we can detect after hearing Beethoven’s 5th for the hundredth time will be different from someone who has never heard it other than the opening motive. We both have something to teach each other. As the musical expert, we can point out subtleties. But sometimes I envy someone who is hearing some of the great classical pieces for the first time. A first listen through Rite of Spring? What an exciting experience that must be. Sometimes the non-musician’s reaction to an initial hearing may remind us of elements we may have forgotten.

3 – Level of detail and expectations. Yes, I eventually learned to analyze classical forms and can argue where the transitions begin. I can do a decent Schenkerian analysis. Is this necessary for non-majors? NO. I think sometimes our expectations are too high. This is understandable. We’ve spent so many years studying music on an intense level that it can be difficult to remember what it’s like to not think that way. If one of the goals of teaching non-musicians is to help them enjoy it, our expectations have to be realistic.

I always look forward to the challenge of introducing western art music to a new group of students each semester. Hopefully they take away something useful from the class.

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Setting Expectations and Establishing a Culture

As the fall semester is very nearly here, it’s time for me to get my Flute Studio Syllabus together. My goal in creating my syllabus (besides appeasing the administration!) is to set expectations and establish a culture in flute studio for the year. Hopefully, by doing this at the very beginning, all of my students will understand what is expected of them and how to best fit into a group of flutists.

Most of the time, my incoming college freshmen have never had flute lessons before. This is a stark contrast to my own experience. As a freshman, I had had many years of lessons, which included lessons with the professor with whom I was studying in my early college days. Therefore, expectations were quite clear. I knew the score – I was expected to be perfectly prepared for lessons every week and never to miss them.

The culture aspect of the flute studio has been vastly different in my experience from place to place. What do I mean by culture? I’m referring to how the members of a particular studio relate to each other. My experience has really run the gamut. I have been part of studios that were incredibly cut-throat, those that were very supportive, and those where there was really no culture at all. In this last instance, the flute students didn’t really interact with each other very much.

So, looking forward to Fall 2011, what do I want the studio experience to be for my students?

As far as their obligations to me, I expect for them to:
Practice.
Come prepared to lessons.
Keep lesson times reserved exclusively for lessons.
Participate in ensembles.
Maintain a positive, helpful attitude.

As far as their obligations to each other, I expect them to:
Be friendly and supportive.
Take on a mentoring role to the younger students.
Maintain a healthy level of competition.
Attend each other’s performances.

And their obligations to themselves:
Further develop their creativity by exploring chamber music.
Read. A lot and often.
Listen to quality recordings.
Attend live music events.
Perform whenever and wherever possible, even though it can be scary.
Develop new friendships with musicians.

This doesn’t feel like an exhaustive list to me, and I’m sure I will continue to refine it until the semester begins.

I’m very interested in how those applied college professors out there (of any instrument) set expectations and establish a studio culture. What are your thoughts?

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Practicing Difficult Sections

What do you do when you’ve practiced that one difficult section over and over and over again, and it still isn’t right? It’s not fast enough, or smooth enough, or loud enough, or …

It can be really frustrating when you’re making an honest effort to improve but you aren’t seeing results.

Next time you find yourself stuck in this situation, try the following tips. You’re still practicing the same musical material, but you’re making your brain (and fingers) think about it in a different way.

First – make sure you’re practicing slowly with a metronome. Play it as slowly as needed so that you’re able to play the entire passage correctly. This may be half-speed or even slower. That’s ok; you’ll speed it up later.

Second – Try playing the passage with different articulations. Take a look at this measure taken from Robert Muczynski’s Sonata for Flute and Piano:


Instead of playing it as written, try articulating each note:

Then try slurring pairs of notes:


Then try slurring larger groups:

Finally, play it again as written.
Third – Alter the rhythm of the passage. Instead of straight eighth notes, play a dotted eighth-sixteenth note pattern:

Then try a sixteenth note-dotted eighth note pattern:

Finally – Try playing the passage backwards. This gives your brain and fingers a serious workout. Work on this section backwards until you can play it smoothly and comfortably.


Once you’ve practiced this section with all of these changes, play it as written. Even after a short amount of practice, you should see a considerable improvement.

Have you tried any of these tips? Let me know how they work!

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Perspective

Often, when you have been doing a considerable amount of practice, you suddenly feel like you’re getting much WORSE instead of better.

In my experience, this is actually a good thing. You aren’t getting worse. It’s just that your ears are now more acutely aware of the things about your playing that could be improved. You’re developing a more critical perspective.

Keep plowing through. You’ll get over the hurdle. Sometimes a little self-awareness is uncomfortable, but it means that you’re improving.

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B-flat options

I will readily admit that I’m a bit of a nut when it comes to playing B-flat on the flute. I’m always very deliberate when it comes to which fingering I choose for this note. It’s really important to make sure that you’re using the most advantageous fingering for the passage you’re playing to make sure your transitions between notes are smooth.

How many ways do we have to play B-flat, you ask? Excellent question!

There are three unique fingerings for B-flat:

1. Most beginning band books introduce this one:

Obviously, this works. However, I find myself using it only very rarely because it can be very awkward. Try playing from B-flat to G. Notice that you have to press down two keys with your left hand while simultaneously lifting the pointer finger of your right hand. Any time we have to lift fingers while pressing down other fingers, there is the very real possibility of not exactly coordinating them perfectly. This can result in a clunky transition, or even an unintentional wrong note between the two notes you intended to play. This might not be an issue when you’re playing slow music, but when you find yourself facing a fast passage, efficiency is everything.

2. The B-flat thumb option:

If you weren’t sure about that key to the left side of the thumb key, you’ve been missing out! Try playing B-flat, switching between the Band Book B-flat and the one using the B-flat thumb key. You shouldn’t notice any difference in pitch at all. (If you do, you might have a leak somewhere!) This is a legitimate fingering for B-flat, and it isn’t “cheating” at all. In fact, you can use this key for ANY note requiring the thumb key to be pressed, except for high F-sharp and B-naturals. This means that the B-flat thumb key is really handy to use in any piece that features a flat key signature. Try the same exercise as above, playing from B-flat to G. This time, use the B-flat thumb key. See how much easier that is?

3. The B-flat lever:

Ever wonder what that strange-looking key was to the left of your right index finger? That’s the B-flat lever, and it is incredibly handy in certain situations. You can use this in what are called prepared fingerings. It works well in chromatic scales and in the G-flat major scale and helps us avoid that unfortunate predicament of having to pick up fingers while simultaneously pressing others down.  Here’s how to use it in the G-flat scale: Play G-flat as usual. When playing the A-flat, use the standard A-flat fingering. However, go ahead and press down the B-flat lever at this time. It doesn’t affect the pitch at all. Then, when you lift the appropriate fingers to play B-flat, you only have to lift instead of having to also press down a key to play B-flat. Pressing down keys in anticipation of a note is what is called a prepared fingering. This might seem overly-complicated at first but once you work it into your technique, it does make things smoother.

Make sure you choose the correct B-flat fingering for the music! Playing more efficiently is always a laudable goal, so streamline your practicing by familiarizing yourself with all of your options.

* Fingering charts courtesy of the Fingering Diagram Builder by Dr. Bret Pimentel, Assistant Professor of Woodwinds at Delta State University and all-around nice guy. Check out his work (including fingering chart builders for the other woodwinds) at www.bretpimentel.com.

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