Alyssa M.
Hello,
Great work on Saturday! You have been making excellent progress so far and I encourage you to keep up the great work. During our lesson we started a new scale which is the 2 octave F Major. Remember that the higher notes starting on high ‘D’ will have different fingerings than the lower notes. If you forget where to place your fingers on the keys, you can refer to your chart to help you. We played a few exercises in your Trevor Wye technique book and also played a weekly duet together. I like to include a weekly duet with all of my students every lesson because this teaches sight reading skills and ensemble skills. When playing within an ensemble we are constantly paying attention to not only what we are doing but what our other classmates are doing as well. Lastly, we continued to work on the piece in your RCM repertoire book ‘The Rakes O’Mallow’. When practicing this piece try to divide the music up into small parts before playing the whole thing start to finish. Please try not to use the flute chart if you don’t need it. It is easy to rely on this, but I know that most of the time you can play the music without having to look at the chart.
We also talked about keeping the flute parallel to the lips when playing. This is important to ensure that you create a good tone and avoid that “airy” unclear sound. Try to practice in front of a mirror so that you can tell when you start to let the flute ‘droop’ a bit. It is hard to catch this mistake sometimes since we usually can’t see ourselves when practicing. Overall I am very pleased with the progress you are making so far and keep it up!
Have a Happy Easter!
~Andrea