Woodwind playing and pedagogy

The role of tone exercises

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Tone exercises are useful, sort of. Read last month’s post about tone for a reminder why tone exercises are only part of the process.

photo, valentina
photo, valentina

Here is what tone exercises do:

  • Excellent tone exercises demand solid fundamental tone-production technique, providing a chance to habituate useful muscular actions. Trevor Wye’s “Flexibility I” flute exercise is a perfect example. (I suggest you buy the whole Trevor Wye omnibus edition.) If your tone-production technique is correct, you can play the exercise successfully (in tune, in time, with all notes responding easily). But you will fail if your breath support, voicing, and/or embouchure are bad. If you are doing something wrong, you get immediate feedback.
  • Poorly-designed tone exercises lack that self-destruct trigger. Often the creators try to prop them up with text explaining fundamental technique: “Use strong breath support! Keep your embouchure flexible!” If that kind of textual instruction is necessary to make the exercise useful, then the content probably doesn’t really matter—it might as well be a single note with a fermata.
  • Regardless of quality, any exercise you do with tone in mind is an opportunity to focus on your tone. That’s a good thing.

Seek out high-quality tone exercises and do them regularly, but don’t forget to listen.

Practicing and breathing

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Sometimes we forget to practice breathing. Don’t let your performances be derailed by panicky breathing—practice the breaths just like you practice the notes.

Woodwind doubling for flutists

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Here is a cleaned-up version of my lecture notes from a presentation on woodwind doubling I gave last week at the Mid-South Flute Festival: Woodwind doubling for flutists What is doubling? Primary-to-secondary doubling: Playing multiple instruments within a family, such as flute (primary), piccolo (secondary), and alto flute (secondary) Primary-to-primary doubling: Playing instruments from different families, … Read more

Repair or buy new?

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Should you have your old (woodwind) instrument repaired, or put the money toward a new one? Here are a few things to consider. First, you should understand the difference between having “playing condition” repairs done and having a full overhaul done. The overhaul is an expensive service, often costing a significant percentage of what you would spend … Read more

Trevor Wye’s “Flexibility I” flute exercise

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One of my favorite flute warmups is “Flexibility–I (after Sousseman)” from Trevor Wye’s Tone book. This exercise is value-packed and meticulously thought out, and leads inevitably to some fundamental truths about flute playing.

Beginners, parents, and making double reeds

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If you are a parent or band director of a young oboist or bassoonist, here is what you need to know about reedmaking.

Practice slump checklist

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Sometimes my students complain that they have had bad practicing days or weeks. Here are a few ideas for breaking out of a practicing slump.

Creating fingering charts with diagrams from the Fingering Diagram Builder

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Here are a few examples of how to create fingering charts with diagrams from the Fingering Diagram Builder, using music notation software, using a word processor, and using a text editor to create HTML code (such as for a website).

Endurance and breath support

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Physical endurance can be an issue for woodwind players, most often manifesting as fatigue in the muscles of the embouchure. But in most cases I think tired facial muscles are a symptom of a more fundamental problem.