The Sounds of Music

I made three purchases at the NFA Convention in August: two pieces of music and a tuner. I've never owned a tuner before, but the leader of one of the workshops for amateurs that I attended said a tuner was an absolute must. It came home and sat on my shelf for two months.

Thursday I finally pulled it off the shelf, took it out of the box, put the batteries in, placed it on my music stand, and turned it on. And stared at it. Now what? Of course, I've tuned my flute before, but that was always in the context of playing with other musicians. So what good is it really in terms of individual practice?

So I tuned my flute to the standard A440, and tuned the A in all the octaves. Not bad. It took only minor adjustments to bring the A's into tune. Now what? Play long tones, the teacher said, so that's what I did. And I started to learn some things.

First, my flute tends to be a little sharp once it's warmed up. That means I have to pull the head joint out about an eighth of an inch. Second, I need to be more deliberate about rolling the flute in or out, depending on which octave I'm playing. Third, I need to work on my embouchure, especially in the low octave. I always understood the effect of rolling the flute and my embouchure, but for the first time I can actually SEE what that effect is.

I've been spending five minutes at the start of my practice time playing long tones with the tuner. It's a very different headspace than working on the Taffanel-Gaubert exercises or a piece of music. Focusing on the intonation of one note at a time is both easier and more difficult than working on the technical exercises. To use a trite phrase, it's almost Zen-like.

Over the past couple of days I've noticed that during the rest of my practice time I have trouble playing notes here and there. Some of it is simply introducing new elements into my playing, but there was something more I couldn't quite put my finger on. Finally, Sunday afternoon, as I was putting my flute together, I realized what it was. Pulling out the head joint makes the flute longer. Of course, I know the basic physics involved in how a flute produces sound. I just didn't understand how much difference even an eighth of an inch makes in the mechanics of producing sound. It's getting to know my instrument all over again.

It's becoming a better flutist.