Author’s Note:
For My Students
This book grew out of my love for the orchestral and solo repertoire. I hope it inspires flutists to truly find their own voice, enjoy playing every day, pursue their imagination and curiosity, and to become more well-rounded musicians.
In this book you can warm up by playing various melodies from the orchestral and solo repertoire. Marcel Moyse (1889-1984) introduced generations of flutists to the benefits of playing famous melodies (often composed for other instruments) to develop tone and musicality in his extraordinary book, Tone Development Through Interpretation. The fundamental concept is that playing melodies is developmentally beneficial, enjoyable, creative, basic tone maintenance. We can apply these techniques to tone warm up based on the following concepts:
Daily care of the tone can lead to a resonant* and beautiful tone.
Limbering up the embouchure is as essential as warming up the fingers.
Practicing the motion of the air is as important as practicing the motion of the fingers.
We should challenge air, breathing, embouchure, and vibrato skills to the same extent that we test the fingers in daily warm up.
Playing scales and arpeggios at rapid tempo is not always beneficial for the tone, intonation, or timbre.
Numerous methods exist to warm up the fingers, but few address the warming up of the embouchure and breathing in a musical way.
Playing simple melodies is a natural extension of playing slow scales to develop good tone habits.
Tone warm up purely through the playing of slow scales can become tedious, and contribute to unconcious practice, resulting in poor habits and boredom.
Singers often “Vocalize” during warm up: a chosen melodic pattern can be sung at different pitch levels to maintain the voice; flutists can benefit from the same practice.
Exploring melodies in diverse octaves and tonalities is beneficial as each has its own set of challenges for color, dynamic range, intonation, and expression.
Inspiration, imagination, and creativity are the building blocks of great tone.
We warm up to keep our playing healthy and our habits consistent. The goal is to more naturally produce our true resonance, and more easily play the great repertoire. Let us bring this repertoire more completely into our basic skills through melodic warm up.
