The Taffanel- Gaubert Challenge (My 2021 New Year's Resolution)

     


    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 myself what T-G exercises are useful for. After playing all 17 exercises between now and the end of April I hope to gain the ability to thoughtfully utilize T-G exercises as a tool to help me play specific pieces of music, not just play the exercises as a chore and hope I play better eventually. Time to get the metronome...

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