What to do when you have no room for a flute room


The problem: 

I have no home for my flute within my home.


The solution:

Creating a dedicated practice space in a corner of my living room with a bookshelf, a mirror, a white board, and a combination lock.


Ever since moving out of my parent’s house, I dreamed of having a flute room. Imagine a home office with scores instead of books, professional recording equipment, soundproofing, a mirror, a small desk, a wind-up metronome, several professional music stands, and an area rug to tie the room together. 


I never got my flute room for several reasons: I stopped playing for years, my kids needed rooms to sleep in and, until recently,  I was never as organized as I wanted to be. But I think the greatest hurdle between me and the flute room-of-my-dreams is the cost of real estate. I live in Los Angeles and as of this writing a single-family home in my neighborhood costs about $813/square foot. I was able to accept the fact that I have no extra rooms in my small, urban dwelling but I could not accept my flute practice being hidden away any longer. The only unused space in our home was a corner of our living room near the front door. I claimed it! 


I started practicing in the space and I loved the natural light. I measured the space to get dimensions. We had a spare mirror and I claimed that too!  Because the space is so small I knew I could only fit one small piece of furniture. I settled on a ladder bookshelf as I needed something that was narrow but still had surface area to put my metronome, phone (for recording), tuner, and other materials. I added the white board for practice notes and added a fingering chart for reference (mostly for trills). 


The greatest challenge was securing my flute music. I was afraid my kids would use my scores and etude books as coloring books. I wanted to have my sheet music available but only available to me so I needed to make a locking cabinet. It’s surprisingly easy to turn a regular cabinet into a locking cabinet with a staple hasp, a drill, some screws, and a combination lock.



Ironically my flute itself isn’t stored in my flute corner. My living room is also a play space for my kids and I can’t risk them getting a hold of my flute or piccolo so my flute and collapsible music stand are stored on a high shelf in my bedroom closet. 


My maroon ergonomic foot mat was a nice addition to the space. It matches my couch and it really ties the room together.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where the hell is my low register?!?!?

Image
  Where the hell is my low register?!?!? The problem: I can’t produce a note below F4. The solution: Start in the middle register and work my way down. As a flutist, I had a secret weapon: a loud, clear sonorous low register. After over a decade sabbatical, It was gone (sigh). How do I get it back? How do you produce sounds that just aren’t there? I tried harmonics starting on the low register. But the same problem: how do you leverage a sound that isn’t there? Then I realized what I need to do: Play what is actually there. I started in the middle register and worked my way down . Set my metronome down to 60 bpm I set my metronome to 60 bpm. And started at C5 and slurred down an octave then back up. I found that this exercise gave me a starting point. Rather than searching for pitches that aren’t there, I could play the notes that were accessible to me then slur down an octave to find the low register again. This exercise was my warm for months and it was also a way for me to ...
Read more

Ear training with Kids Songs

Image
  The problem: I don’t know what to play. All of my sheet music is too hard because I haven’t practiced in years and practicing scales is essential but it gets boring fast. The solution:  Play melodies from children’s songs and nursery rhymes by ear. It’s ear training while playing actual music. When I had kids, I had no idea how my life would change. I simply didn’t know what I didn’t know. I mention in my introduction that I no longer had time to practice post-career-and-kids but after becoming a parent I started singing all off the time. ALL of the time. I sang my babies to sleep. I sang to help them calm down from a tantrum. We sang as a family in the car. My kids and I sang at library story time. We sang in the bath. We sang while watching Sesame Street. And when I lay in bed too exhausted to wake up in the morning I hear my daughter singing the songs I sing to her. When I picked up my flute again a few months ago I didn’t actually know what to play other than scales...
Read more

Introduction - I'm Kate

  Hi, I’m Kate. I’m a flute player and I’m a mom.  I started playing the flute when I was 11 years-old in middle school band class and it wasn’t long before I fell in love with playing the flute. I was good at playing the flute - really good, I stood out among my peers and other kids asked me “How are you so good at flute?”  I continued practicing hard through high school and I went to college on a music scholarship with the hope of becoming a professional flutist. Collegiate level musicians who are training to become professional performers train as hard as athletes. Aspiring pro-musicians' lives revolve around playing music. I practiced 4 hours a day everyday for four years - I spent 10-15 hours a week in rehearsals and every week I had a 90-minute individual lesson with my flute professor.  I practiced so long and hard that I literally gave myself a fat lip with swelling so severe I had trouble playing and talking for an entire weekend. I collected my degree and u...
Read more