Blog

The Different Levels of Flutes

There are three basic levels of flutes. There’s the Student, Intermediate, and Pro. I’ve noticed a lot of confusion over this recently, so I thought I’d lay this information out for you.

All the levels of flutes have their own purpose. It’s not advisable to skip a level because each level helps you become a better musician. It’s important to upgrade when you’re starting to be held back by your instrument. It’s also important to not jump the gun. You need to put in the work before you upgrade.

Student Flute

The student level flute is what you should start with. It’s usually made out of nickel silver, sometimes it’ll be silver plated, occasionally plastic. It’s sturdy because the flute makers know that this is going into the hands of a Tween. The plastic ones are designed for even younger students. That being said, it’s still a delicate piece of machinery that should be handled carefully.

It has closed holes, sometimes called plateau keys. Sometimes you can get a Split E option. I personally think the Split E is clunky, but that’s just me.

The head joint is designed to help you make a consistent sound because it’s the most forgiving. The biggest challenge of the first year or two is getting a sound, and this head joint will help. This is why it’s important to start on a student flute.

Usually you’ll stay on the student flute for 3-5 years, then you’ll outgrow it. You’ll know it’s time to upgrade when your sound has been stable for awhile and your tone has deepened and begun to mature.

Intermediate/Step-Up Flute

The intermediate level of flute is usually your second flute. Sometimes it’s also called a step-up. They’re the same thing. Some manufacturers call their bottom-of-the-line intermediate a step-up, but in normal conversation, the terms are interchangeable.

You probably kept your student flute as a back-up, or you traded it in to help off-set the cost. It’s nice to have a back-up for when your flute is in the shop for its yearly COA, or if you have to play outside in bad weather.

This is the first flute that you go to a music store or a flute festival, try everything, and let the wand choose you. You’re shopping for your ideal embouchure. What makes you sound the best?

The most important part of the upgrade is the head joint. It’s designed for a developing embouchure that’s not quite mature, but far enough along that you need an embouchure hole that works with your anatomy. You’ll notice you don’t sound quite as good on the pro flutes as you do on the intermediates. That’s because the intermediate embouchure hole is a little more forgiving for the developing embouchure.

There are a ton of bells an whistles starting to come up at this stage of the game. The most important part is to make sure you get the best brand for you and the best flute you can afford.

Many people stay in this kind of flute for the rest of their lives. They don’t need to do anything beyond what their intermediate flute will do, and that’s great. You’ve found your lifelong friend.

When I got a little over half-way through college, I realized I needed to upgrade to a pro level flute. My fingers were going faster than my mechanisms, which leads us to the next level.

Professional Levels of Flutes

These are the levels of flutes where the sky is the limit. You can get your flute in any precious metal your heart desires. Engraving. Diamonds in the crown. These flutes are beautiful.

There is a little confusion, though. Some sellers try to claim that their top-of-the-line intermediate flutes are pro level. Double check with the manufacturer’s website. In my opinion, those sellers aren’t to be trusted because they don’t know what they have.

Another source of confusion is that there’s a semi-pro level that has recently emerged. They usually don’t have solid silver keys. That’s the difference. I have been led to believe they still have the more precise tolerances that the other pro level flutes have.

The embouchure holes are even more specialized at this stage. They’re all hand-cut. By this time your embouchure is fully mature, so these head joints free you to soar through your entire range with all the volume and tone control your heart desires.

The mechanisms are hand made to much more precise tolerances, so you can fly through those runs and arpeggios so quickly that you didn’t realize you got to the end.

Don’t Hold Yourself Back

When I was in college, I decided to just make things work with my intermediate flute. I was a poor college kid. There was no way I could afford a new pro flute. I wish I would have known about other options, but those were the days when the internet was just starting to flower. The options that are available today weren’t available at that time.

When my music studio really took off, I started saving a certain percentage for business expenses. I was able to keep my expenses under that number, and I decided to use the excess to buy a new flute.

It took a few years, but I saved enough to buy a 1960 Haynes Commercial. I’m not stopping with this old Haynes. I’m going to get a brand-new pro flute eventually, this is just allowing me to grow in the meantime. It has already taken its depreciation, so I can sell it when it’s time to get the new flute. When it comes time, I might keep it as my back-up, who knows. I’m just happy that I found this path.

The Used Instrument Market is Changing

Have you noticed that the used instrument market is changing? Pianists, ignore this. Your market is the same.

For as long as I can remember, you could get a decent used student or intermediate flute for 80-90% off retail, and a used pro flute for 40-50% off. It didn’t matter how old or new the instrument was, it took an immediate plunge and stayed there. Those numbers are no more.

I’m a huge supporter of buying used instruments, and I practice what I preach. I’ve been looking for an intermediate flute for my daughter for about 6 months, and I’m consistently seeing used intermediate flutes go for 15 – 30% off retail. That’s a big difference from before. To me, that’s not a used price. That’s a sale.

While I was looking around, I decided to mosey on over to the flutes that are on my wish list. I really want a Haynes Q3 or an Altus 1107 with a gold riser. The pro flute market hasn’t changed much, to the point where I could get a used pro flute for the same price as a used intermediate. Hmmm. What’s up with that?

Used Car Market has Parallels to Used Instrument Market

I did some digging. I found some parallels between the used car market and the used flute market. Remember how for the past couple of years, you couldn’t get a new car if your life depended on it? There was something about the computer chips being stuck in a shipping snafu. The used car market skyrocketed, up to 4 times the normal price because people were still getting in situations where they needed to replace vehicles.

Once new vehicles became available again, the used cars came back down in price. They’re still not at what they were before, but the market is calming down.

A similar thing happened in the musical instrument market. The flute parts are mostly made in Asia, even if they’re assembled here in the USA. With the shipping situation that happened in the past three years, the instrument makers couldn’t get a hold of parts to make new instruments. I heard that new instruments were on backorder for 6 months during the past few years.

The student market and the intermediate market have a little more urgency than the pro market. If a person wants to start playing an instrument in school, they usually get a new one. With the new instruments on back-order, the people who would normally buy new had to buy used.

The intermediate instruments have a little less urgency. In flute, usually a student will upgrade to an intermediate after 3-5 years. They won’t be held back by their instrument until about the 5-6 year mark or so, so they have a little bit of breathing room. Still, once an instrument is holding you back, you need to upgrade.

The pro instruments are handmade, so they’re not held back as much by shipping issues. Less people get to a pro level so there’s less demand. Even if they outgrow their intermediate, oftentimes a musician will know how to make do until they can afford a new instrument (me!). With delayed gratification already happening, people are more likely to say, “That’s okay, I’ll wait.”

How to Handle the Changes

The used car market has gone towards normal levels for the past 6 months. I would expect the used instrument market to do the same within the next 6 months or so. We’ll see.

Here’s what I’m going to do. First I’m going to wait 6 months to see if the prices go down. If they do, I’ll get a used intermediate flute for my daughter.

If the prices don’t go down by this summer, I figure I have a few options:

  1. Get an intermediate headjoint from a parts flute for less than $50 off ebay, in the brand that works well for her, and find a used intermediate flute that’s a less expensive brand than the ones she likes. Have my tech fit the headjoint to the cheaper flute.
  2. Get a pro flute for the same price as the ones that she likes. Do the same thing as above with the headjoint.
  3. Just buy a new intermediate flute. There isn’t enough of a price difference to warrant getting a used one.

How about you? What would you do in this situation?

Variable Practice – Making Lessons and Performances Easier

Variable Practice helps make your lessons and performances easier. Does your music seem harder for the lesson? I can’t count how many times per week a student says, “I had that perfect yesterday!” I always say that I believe them because it happens to me, too.

This is the science behind why you make more mistakes in your lessons or performances. They also have a way to fix it – Variable Practice!

Here are some additional ideas to do variable practice:
1. Staccato
2. Legato
3. Swing it
4. Arpeggiate the chords (piano only)
5. Do opposite dynamics than what are written
6. Move/Add Breath Marks
7. Practice in a different room (not with a standing instrument like a piano)

I know that I’ve been away from the blog for awhile due to some health issues. They’re wrapping up really soon so I can be more consistent in my writing. I saw this information come across my desk and I just had to share it with you!

Soaking the Pan – A Practice Technique

Soaking the Pan is a clever name that one of my students and I came up with together. It’s a pretty common technique that most people do already without thinking about it, but I’ll describe it, step by step, just in case it’s a process that doesn’t come natural to you.

How Did We Come Up with the Name “Soaking the Pan”?

You know how when you’re doing the dishes and there’s the crusty pan that had the entrée in it? You will probably need to soak the pan, possibly overnight, but you want to get a good crack at it and see if you can get it cleaned up tonight so you have less work later.

So, before you even start cleaning up the dishes, you fill up that crusty, filthy pan with water. Usually by the time you’re done with all of the dishes, that pan cleans up easy as pie. Minimal scrubbing needed.

This is an analogy of what we can do when practicing music. Here’s a step-by-step description.

The Steps

  1. Identify the tough parts. You may have already been doing this by marking parts that you want to work through later, but you can usually identify them with the amount of black or jumps in that area.
  2. Play through the tough parts. You can run some small section practice techniques during this time, but just playing through helps, too.
  3. Play the whole piece. The tough parts aren’t so tough anymore.

Conclusion

I’ve been using the soaking the pan practice technique ever since I can remember. It’s always been very natural to me. I decided to write about it, anyway, because not everyone thinks the way that I do. I hope it helps!

Music Helps with my Chemo Side-Effects

Playing and singing music with others helps with my chemo side-effects. It has helped more than any other musical thing that I’ve tried.

Music Therapy

The week I was diagnosed with cancer, I looked up music therapy. Was there anyone local where I could get treatment? Would it help with cancer or was it more targeted towards other diseases? What exactly does music therapy entail?

Well, I found a list of what a typical therapist does during a music therapy session. I found similar lists all over the internet. Here it is:

  • Create music. You might compose music, write lyrics, or make up music together
  • Sing music. Use your voice to share a piece of music.
  • Listen to music. Enjoy the sound and lyrics.
  • Move to music. It can be as simple as tapping your toes together or as complicated as a coordinated dance.
  • Discuss lyrics. Read or listen to the lyrics of a song and talk about their meaning.
  • Play an instrument. Use an instrument like a piano, guitar, drums, etc. to share music.

I took one look at that list above and said, “I do all of those things a lot because of what I do.”

I asked my oncologist about music therapy and she said that all they do is a drum circle, which is canceled right now due to covid.

Chemo Side-Effects

One of my side-effects from chemo is my heart races. The first time it happened, I didn’t know what to do. After I thought about it for awhile, I remembered a study that came out a few years ago about heartbeats syncing in choirs.

I set out to see if playing or singing music helps with my chemo side-effects.

Experimentation

Disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional and I’m not a scientist. These are my personal results, they’re not a study. If someone would like to contact me to further these findings, please do.

I made my kids sing with me and it helped! My heartbeat went from 120 down to 100. It stayed down there for a good couple of days.

I had a few friends come over and sing with me. My heartrate went all over the place, but about half an hour after they left, it settled down for a few days. I never checked my heartrate afterwards, but it didn’t bother me so that was good.

Then I decided to experiment. I made my oldest child play flute and clarinet duets with me. She’s in her fifth year and the duets were a little on the easy side for me. My heartbeat went from 115 down to 90.

I had my youngest play flute duets with me. No change, but she’s only in her second year and the duets might be too easy for me.

I played flute and trombone duets for half an hour with a friend. My heartrate went from 110 down to 70. Jackpot!

Piano was more of a hinderance than a help. Another chemo side effect I have is that I’m shaky. My aim is gone. I can’t hit jumps for the life of me and that’s frustrating.

So, what I discovered was that singing OR playing a wind instrument helps with my chemo side effect by calming down a racing heart. The harder the music was, the more effective it was at bringing down my pulse.

How I’ve been Implementing My Findings

In order to keep my pulse in a good place, I’ve been calling on my music friends to play or sing with me. I try to have at least one person over to the studio or the shop every two or three days.

I’m only playing with my musician friends who have volunteered to do this and cycling through my friends so I don’t become a burden to them. I also don’t set up a session with them when I’m going through a lot of fatigue.

Knowing that these sessions are coming up are something for me to look forward to. They’re fun and exciting. We’re basically sight-reading the whole time, which always makes for a ton of curveballs and extra laughs.

I’m so glad that I remembered that study and have been implementing it to the best of my ability. I hope it helps you, too!

Arm Flapping

Arm flapping is a common mistake among both piano and flute students. Let’s talk about why we flap our arms and ways to fix it.

The Ideal Way to Hold Your Arms

Whenever you play a musical instrument, it should feel like your arms are wet spaghetti noodles that hang between your wrists and your shoulders. Obviously you’re going to move your arms occasionally – we’re human and need to move around or the joints will get stiff. The movements need to be graceful and, ballerina-like, leading with the elbow or wrist.

Arm Flapping on the Flute

Some flutists have a tendency to flap our arms in order to send out our emotions. When our elbows are raised, it changes the shape of our chest cavity enough to create a different tone color which makes it very easy to pull out the emotion of the piece.

The big problem: if you’re flapping your arms or even just holding one or both elbows up for an extended period of time, you’re compressing your wrist and putting extra strain on your shoulders and upper back. Compression + strain = pain.

The other problem: it makes you look ridiculous. I don’t care as much about this problem because I’m not an aesthetic person, but I thought I’d put it out there.

The solution: if you want to emote in a certain section, raise one elbow for 1-2 measures. You’ll create the tone color that you want and then you’ll be able to hold onto it with your embouchure once you lower your arm. Write a reminder in the music to raise your arm here and lower it there. Otherwise, use the ideal way to hold your arms as described above.

Arm Flapping on the Piano

Most pianists flap our arms because we’re flipping our thumb under our hands for more than an interval of a 2nd in order to crawl our fingers across the piano. We don’t realize we’re doing it, we’re just concentrating on getting our thumbs a 3rd or a 4th up the keyboard. Our bodies do funny things when we’re concentrating.

The problem: it puts extra strain on your shoulder and it slows you down just a tad for that one interval.

The solution: Take your thumb and move the tip all the way across your palm. That’s how far you have to move your thumb in order to leap a 4th.

Don’t concentrate on it too much when you’re practicing your piece. Your body needs to do funny things in order to to concentrate. Concentrate on doing this when you’re doing your one-handed arpeggios during warm-ups.

Since arpeggios are fun and easy, it will give you more time to concentrate on your new habit. After you’ve mastered this, your new skill will naturally matriculate into the other aspects of your playing. I talk more about why we do scales, cadences, chords and arpeggios at the beginning of the warm-ups here.

What to Expect

It takes about a month to change a habit. Some people take a week to stop the arm flapping habit, some take a month or two. It depends upon the situation and how long you’ve been doing it. Good luck!

Everyone Has their Own Journey

Everyone has their own journey. This philosophy applies to everything in life, but I’m going to apply it to music. I had to give this same speech to two of my students in a row this week, so it’s time to send it out to the world.

Average Progression

We often compare ourselves to people who have a lot more experience than us or people who just go, “zoom,” through things that have the rest of us on the struggle bus. That’s when it’s nice to know what the average person does.

If you’re under average, that’s fine. You’ll catch up. If you’re over average, don’t rub it in. Average means that there are going to be people above or below that point, because everyone has their own journey. I’ll hash out what average is on each instrument that I teach.

Piano

This is based on the average student who begins in 1st grade. If you started later than that, you’ll probably go faster through all of these stages. If you started earlier than that, you’ll probably go slower through the first few stages.

Average is one lesson book or conservatory level per year.

Early Elementary – 6 months to a year
Elementary – 1 year
Late Elementary – 2 years

Early Intermediate – 2-3 years
Intermediate – 2-3 years
Late Intermediate – 2-3 years (many people stay at this level for the rest of their lives).

Variable and most people stay at one of these levels for the rest of their lives:
Early Advanced
Advanced
Late Advanced

Flute

These are based on the average student who begins in 6th grade. If you started earlier, your progress will be slower. If you started later, your progress will be a little faster, but not much. Already play a different wind instrument? You’ll go much faster through these levels.

This is a little more nebulous than piano because there are a lot of different grading scales, so I broke it down per year.

1st year – notes in the Bb scale; beginner tone; sometimes it takes up to three months to make a sound.

2nd year – note range is up to the F above the staff and down to middle C; tone solidifies; 16th notes introduced.

3rd year – 16th notes become normal; drag triplets are introduced; tone begins to mature.

4th through 8th year – dynamics become easier; tone fully matures; ear begins to develop; full note range is used. Sonata level.

9th year and above – college or greater level playing.

The Importance of a Teacher

All of these levels are based on a student who has a teacher. While everyone has their own journey, a teacher helps you go faster along that journey. This is because a teacher’s job is to push their student forward so they’re learning as quickly as possible. I have heard it said that it takes twice as long to learn a musical instrument on your own than it does with a teacher.

This is because of:

  1. Accountability – you know you’re going to have to play for your next lesson.
  2. Repertoire Choices – a good teacher will usually choose a piece on the far edge of the student’s knowledge, unless it doesn’t help with the student’s learning style.
  3. Form – when we’re learning something new, our bodies do funny things. A teacher will catch those things and bring the student back to good ergonomics.
  4. Tricks of the Trade – you’ll learn some tricks of the trade off the internet, but there’s nothing like a teacher saying, “Do it this way,” and it works so much better.
  5. Practice Techniques – I write a lot about practice techniques, but it can be hard to apply them to your own practice unless you have a teacher saying, “Use this practice technique for next time.”

Conclusion

Everyone has their own journey. Not everyone will learn the same repertoire pieces. Everyone has a different stumbling block when it comes to music. Be easy on yourself, knowing that you’re doing the best you can with what you have.


More Excuses.

I’m not one to give or accept excuses. When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. That’s why it pains me to say this, but I’m not going to be able to write articles for this blog as regularly as I would like for the year of 2021.

Here’s my excuse. It’s a good one, but it’s still an excuse, which rankles me.

I was recently diagnosed with Stage 3C Aggressive Ductal Breast Cancer.

No, this isn’t an April Fools joke. I just thought my readers deserve to know. Here’s the good news:

  1. I have one of the better cancer teams in Omaha (which also means within a two state radius).
  2. This cancer is very common and there’s tons of new research on it every day.
  3. I’m relatively young and healthy.

All that being said, I’m not worried for myself. It’s just going to be a hard road for the rest of the calendar year. I’m going to have to give myself the grace of having as few deadlines as possible.

Based on what the doctors are telling me, my treatment plan should last until right around December of this year. After I’m done with the plan, I should be cured.

The doctors said that I should still be able to keep my regular lesson schedule. Most people work full time while they’re dealing with this kind of disease. It will be a long, hard road, but I’ll come through it with flying colors, like I always do. Maybe it will give me a different perspective which I can pass on to you.

Phantom of the Opera Update and Recordings

Some casual recordings came out this week from Kim Moore’s Phantom of the Opera. We did it in Bay 5 of my husband’s mechanic shop at DC Automotive, which has almost perfect acoustics. That’s me playing the flute. 🙂

I know that it’s not Thursday, but these videos came out and I couldn’t contain myself! I had to share them with you!

The Story

I’ve already discussed that I’m directing the music for the musical, Phantom of the Opera by Kim Moore here. These are some of the pieces I’ve been working on with the singers for the past few months. The only reason I’m playing flute for one of them was because it’s a duet and only one person could make it.

When I toured my husband’s new mechanic’s shop before we rented it (more on that here), I noticed the acoustics were amazing. I told my husband that I’m not wasting these acoustics and I’m going to record some music here from time to time. He laughed. Little did he know…

A couple of months went by and it just came to me in the middle of the night that we could do some a capella recordings of the singers at the shop. I brought it up to the producer, she checked on some copyright stuff, and she approved it!

I always take my ideas that I get in the middle of the night seriously.

When the singers came, we had a blast. Our Phantom grabbed a ladder and climbed up to the second floor of Bay 5. He serenaded our Christine from the balcony. We joked around a lot, had a bunch of bloopers, and made beautiful music.

That day is a time I will remember for the rest of my life. I love hanging out with music friends and having goosebumps all day from the music that we make.

Epiphanies from the Trumpet

I have had some epiphanies from relearning the trumpet for the past month or so. I thought I’d give you guys an update and let you know what has been happening, since I talked about relearning the trumpet here.

My Lips

I’m of the age where wrinkle cream is a thing that I use. After my first week of learning the trumpet, my lips got so much more muscular that the two wrinkles on my lips went away! Woohoo!

Another thing that happened that surprised me a little bit was that my lips became a little fuller, more like how they were back in high school. The reason that surprised me is because I’ve known a lot of trumpets with very thin lips.

So, one of my epiphanies from the trumpet was that my lips were losing muscle and I didn’t realize it. I really wouldn’t realize it on the flute because that’s all about relaxation of the lips.

My Flute Embouchure

Speaking of the flute, over the years I’ve noticed there are two groups of people when it comes to embouchure. Some people find that the trumpet improves their tone, others find that their tone fuzzes out.

Back in college, my tone fuzzed out a lot during brass class. I couldn’t figure out what happened, until a month after brass class when my embouchure came back.

Knowing that, I decided to make sure that I was doing a twice as many tone studies as normal on the flute. Hopefully that would stem the tide.

After about a week, my normal tone on the flute had a new texture to my tone color. Normally my tone color is dark blue velvet with silver streaks. Now it is dark blue, clean and clear water with the sun glinting just a little on the surface. My high notes are now effortless. Great improvement!

So, one of my epiphanies from the trumpet is that if you pay close attention to not lose your tone on flute, your tone will improve.

Backpressure

The backpressure on the trumpet is real! I know that oboe has it the worst, but wow!

I’ve had to switch to J-breathing so I don’t accidentally take too big of a breath. Even then, I still take too big of a breath sometimes. I end up with a bunch of stale air in my lungs because I still need to take in oxygen but I haven’t been able to expel my air.

It’s hard because I’m used to using so much air on the flute. It’s common for a new flute student to get dizzy or faint from over-breathing.

On the other hand, my abs are feeling a little stronger from the backpressure! Sometimes it actually feels like a little bit of a workout. I’m sure that will pass as I get used to it.

So, one of my epiphanies from the trumpet is that we need to breathe in different ways for different instruments.

My Kids

My kids have thoroughly enjoyed hearing me mess up. It has shown them that it doesn’t matter how good you are at something, when you start out, you aren’t good.

It doesn’t matter how much I say it, they needed to see me do it.

So, one of my epiphanies from the trumpet is that I need to start a new project every once in awhile and let all of my students (not just my kids) see me mess up. It will help motivate them to continue in their practicing and not get overwhelmed.

Conclusion

I’ve learned a lot from adding the trumpet at this stage of life. It’s so different from when I was in college! I have developed the habit over the years of mostly doing back breathing, so it’s nice to hone J-breathing a little bit. My lip muscles were deteriorating , and the trumpet helped out with that, which also helped my standard tone color.

I’m so glad I’ve started this process!