On the flute, there are times, like Ab and Eb, where you have to move two or more fingers at the same time to move a half step and the movements seem weird to me because they don't conform to how I wired my brain before I started playing the flute.
Every so often this issue crops up on the horn, but since there are two different ways to make every note, and since there are few sequential movements analogous to the keyboard, I usually haven't been lulled into that frame of mind, though it does happen.
What gets me about the flute is that a lot of the fingerings are sequential, with raising or lowering one finger moving you a half step, and that lulls me into a frame of mind that gets me into trouble.
I also set myself up for this by never venturing much beyond one sharp or flat once I took up the flute thirty years ago. I distinctly remember our Vermont readership patiently telling me a few times that if I practiced scales, it would all be easier. Now that I'm trying to play things with 4 flats part of me wishes I'd at least nailed down using the Ab key. Old dog; new tricks.
Scales are very good for sightreading, because scales (or fragments of them) often crop up in pieces!
ReplyDeleteIt's part of the UK teaching system for instrumental music that you have to learn a progressively wider range of scales as you go up through the graded exams until at Grade 8 you have to learn every scale (major, harmonic minor and melodic minor), whole tone scale, every arpeggio, dominant 7th and diminished 7th, slurred and tongued.
On stringed instruments you have at advanced levels to be able to do a selection of scales double-stopped, and on piano you have to be able to do scales in octaves, thirds and sixths.
It's never too late to learn your scales. You could learn one a week, which would give you all the major and minor scales within a year.
Concentrate initially on the scales in the keys of the pieces you are playing at the moment, both the major and relative minor. So for 4 flats, that means learning Ab major and F minor. You're learning technical facility here, so take the left-brain approach to it we discussed last year. Learning a scale is not inherently harder than learning a piece.
Mea Culpa!!! Thing is, tough, it's the price I pay for trying to learn a number of instruments and not focus on just one. Until recently, the flute was just to have fun with, not to labor on. But you're right, I should have been spending at least a bit of every session on scales.
ReplyDeleteI hear you. For what you're trying to achieve, I don't think you need go through all possible scales, but scales up to say 3 or 4 sharps & flats should be part of what you want to know in order to get facility on the instrument in a variety of keys.
ReplyDeleteThat should be enough to ensure that your brain doesn't scream at you if it sees a piece in Ab major.
The " brain doesn't scream at you" line is very apt! Also, have figured out the real underlying issue. Played the alto flute a lot during the 90's. Everything is fingered the same (but sounds a 4th lower). EXCEPT - on the soprano flute you lift the left index as a register key for better tone and intonation on upper D and Eb, but I discovered that for whatever reason, on the alto flute there was better intonation and tone keeping that finger down on the Eb. So that's what I've got to rewire - before this Sunday if I'm not to embarrass myself in performance.
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