Flute Mom

       Since I’ve started playing again, I joined the Flute Forum Facebook group. I love reading all of the posts about actual flutes on Flute Forum. Someone mentioned a gold riser in a post and I suddenly remembered - I have a gold riser. Or at least, I used to. I play on a Miyazawa 401 heavy wall flute. I loved my Miyazawa when I got it in 2002 as a high schooler. I could feel the super fast action as I burned through scales faster now than ever before. I was so privileged to play on such a professional instrument and so privileged to be from a family that could afford to pay for a professional-level flute for a teenager. My Miyazawa also had a gold riser on the head joint. After a couple years, I wanted to change my sound. I was in music school by then and playing extremely well, but, from what I remember I wanted my sound to be bigger and darker. Also there was peer pressure. My flute was sterling silver but many of my peers were playing on gold or aurumite f...

           I have been playing again for 6 months and I have come a long way from Twinkle, Twinkle little star . I can play my full range and I am starting to sound like myself again. I have been playing exercises from Taffanel & Gaubert's 17 Grands Exercices Journaliers de Mecanisme pour Flute . As I was thumbing through the book again I realized I actually didn’t know most of the exercises. I had only really played exercises 1, 2, 4, 6 and 10. That’s less than one-third of the book! I used to play T-G exercises literally everyday. I thought I knew the T-G book well. It turns out I know close to nothing.      Here is my New Year’s resolution: play every exercise in the Taffanel-Gaubert book. I will work on 1 exercise a week for 17 weeks. Over the course of a week I will play every suggested articulation and actually read the introductory description. My goal is to improve my technique and actually understand the book and teach my...