Flute Lessons For Beginners

1. Flute Lessons For Beginners: Welcome to the music coach online flu program, or I'll help you learn how to play the feet from scratch. My name is Todd Porter, and I'm a professional musician and educator, Canada, where I've been teaching and performing for the last 50 years. The Music Coach program has been designed to get you playing with other people as quickly as possible, because the real joy and music is being able to express yourself with other people, listen and interact. And so the whole course curriculum has been designed around this idea of teaching you how to play the instrument, but at the same time teaching how toe have the skills you're gonna need to play by the end of the court, you're gonna have the confidence to going up friends and family and other people who play and get a jam session going, because the goal is to get you playing with other people as quickly as possible. Program starts by learning how to pick your first instrument. You need to rent a by. It helps you move through how to put it together, make your first sound and learn how to play some scales and rhythms and harmony so that you can interact with other musicians as quickly as possible. This course is designed for complete beginners. We're looking for a way to get into the musical game in a fun, fast and friendly way. You've always dreamed about playing the flute and just not know where to start. Come to the right place. 2. 4 essential elements of music: What is music? Music is the language of the planet, spoken by every society since the beginning of time. Music is a vibrational language that allows us to convey complex ideas that spoken or written language alone cannot adequately express music gives us an almost unlimited vocabulary for communicating emotional information through sound way. Are all born musicians Theo Idea. That some of us are musicians and some of us are not is so far from the truth. It's laughable. You are made of music. Your heart is beating steadily in your body, keeping the rhythm of your life flowing. Your ears and voice are constantly working together to shape your experience through the sound you make and sounds. You hear it is all music, therefore, essential elements to be able to play music on any instrument. They are rhythm, harmony, melody and your passion for music. To explain these concepts, we're going to use the analogy of a train train itself is you. And the passion that you have for music is the boiler. Inside the train, you were born with the deep passion for music, like every other person whose ever been born and come before you and everyone who will come after you now you might be saying yourself, I have no passion for music or I can't even remember a time when I did thistles just simply because it got extinguished in you. And the good news is it could be reignited and made to burn hot and passionate again. The key to starting any good fire is to start with the right amount of fuel and a little bit of air. This is the same in music. One of the biggest problems people run into is they get overwhelmed. This is like putting too much wood down and trying to light it with one match. A roaring fire always starts out small, and it's helped, along with just the right amount of fuel at the right time and a continuous flow of air fire and the boiler of your train is the single most important part of your musical journey . Now, for a train to go anywhere it needs to go along a track. You can't just have a train in the middle of nowhere, with no track and get a fire burning hot and expected to go somewhere. A railroad track has three main elements. Railroad ties, which are the wooden beams that go along the ground. And two tracks, one on either side with trains. Wheels sit on rhythm is like the railroad ties, which are evenly spaced and allow for the stability for the train to move. Once the tracks are in place, railroad ties air spaced in a way that is even and breaks up the distance between two points so that time can be felt in a consistent way. If you put your train on top of just railroad ties, you're not gonna be going anywhere, so let's have the next piece of track. Harmony is the piece of track that runs alongside the railroad ties. It's fastened securely to them, which allows the rhythm to pass freely underneath harmonies most often expressed as cords. Cords air simply a grouping of three or more notes stacked vertically. The most common use of them, his major and minor. Most people experience major chords, is sounding happy, and minor chords is sounding sad. Almost all music that you've heard on the radio or on television and in movies is made up of major and minor courts. Melody is the piece of track on the other side. Opposite the Harmony, the melody is the most recognizable and distinctive part of any song to songs can have the same rhythmic and harmonic structure, but melodies are completely unique to the song from which they come from. When you think of a famous song in your head, most likely you're thinking about the melody. A melody is just simply a pattern of notes moving up or down involving the rhythm and interacting with the harmony that is connected to once you have these three elements of track of railroad ties, which of rhythm Harmony, which is one of the tracks in the melody, which is the other track your train can now roll along. Then all you have to do is keep adding more pieces of track your train control further and further faster and onward in your musical jury. 3. Harmony: harmony like the universe itself, is all about relationships. We're alive right now on Earth because of its relationship to everything else in our solar system. Any two notes played at the same time are considered harmony. Sound travels in waves that are measured in Hertz hurts measures how maney waves per second a note is generating a string on a guitar, for example, vibrates 440 times per second. Lower notes vibrates slower and higher. Notes vibrate faster human ears can hear in a range of approximately 31 hurts. Up to 18,000 hertz dogs, for example, can hear a much larger range. They can hear from 40 hertz all the way up to 60,000 hertz when two or more notes air played. At the same time, the sound waves interact with each other, creating two states of dissonance and continents, more commonly known as tension and release. Imagine the sound waves are like dolphins jumping in and out of the water notes that Aaron dissidents or tension never line up evenly so that the pattern of the dolphins being in and out of the water is never in complete alignment. This is a physical event and why some people experience tension in music as very uncomfortable. This technique is often used in movie soundtracks to enhance the sense of unease. Continents or release is having the dolphins come into a pattern where sometimes or all of the time they're at the top or bottom of their pattern together at the same time, much like our preference for spicy or sweet tastes, we each have a sense of how much tension and release we like in our music. And like a sense of taste, it can evolve over time, depending on what were exposed to the fact that there are no wrong notes is not just a spiritual state of mind. It's a fact. All that exists is tension and release or dissonance and continents and how much you enjoy . He is entirely up to your own sense of personal taste. Cords are organized harmony. Harmony is used most commonly to make up chords that air called triads. They're just simply cords that have three notes in them, cords are built like houses. There is a foundation which we call the route the third, which is like the main floor and the fifth, which is like the second floor of the house. The route is the note that gives Accord its name. For example, in a C chord, the route is see. The third of the note is the third note in the scale, so see is one is to and is three. The fifth is the fifth note in the scale. See is one D is to his three, Fs four and G is five. There are several different types of chords. The two most common are major chords and miners. What makes a cord major or minor is the relationship of the third to the root of the court . When it is closer to the fifth than the route, it is major, which is like moving the main floor of your house up slightly when it is closer to the basement, where the root it's minor. The way you move a note, closer or further away, is with sharps and flats to change a C poured from major to minor, you change the third, which is E. T. Flat. Most people experience major and minor chords by hearing them as happy sounds for major on and sad sounds for minor. It's always good to remember that music is a language that you were built to speak. And even when you're working on something that's a challenging concept, just know that with enough time and practice you'll be able to master it. 4. Notes, and the musical alphabet: throughout the world. There are many different notation systems in music in Western Europe and North America. We use a 12 tone system with the musical alphabet toe. Understand the 12 tone system. We first need to understand how we measure the distance between two notes, their two main distances used in our system. They're tones and semi tones. The easiest way to see and understand tones and semi tones is on a piano. A piano is made up of white keys and Blackie's, and a tone is the distance between two white keys with a black in the middle or between two black keys with a white key in the middle. A semi tone is our smallest unit of distance, which is between a white key in a blackie or between two white keys where there is no black he in the middle. All scales and music are simply a pattern of tones and semi tones that repeats. The most common one is the major scale, which goes tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone on a piano. If you start this pattern on, see, there's no need to use any black keys because the pattern is built right into the keyboard of tone, tone, semi tone, tone, tone, tone, semi tone. If you start the pattern on any other key, however, you need to use the Black Keys to maintain the pattern. This is why we have sharps and flats to make up the 12 different keys inside of the system . 5. Melody: melody is the part of songs that most people identify with, since there are so many harmonic and rhythmic combinations melodious the most distinct part of any song. Close your eyes and think for a moment of your favorite piece of music. Chances are you're hearing the melody in your head. A melody is both rhythmic and harmonic, and if it is well constructed, it could be sung or played on its own and be clearly understood. Simply put, a melody is a string of notes and rests that move up and down in relation to the harmony underneath it. 6. Rhythm: rhythm is a word that has many meanings in music. This could be the source of unnecessary confusion for students. When they first begin. You may have heard the words time and tempo used in the same way. Let's break this down into the essential elements. Tempo is like a river. Think of a river for a moment. It usually flows at a constant pace, but it's not rigid or mechanical. When humans make music, it is a goal to be as consistent as possible with the tempo. But in reality it's alive, and it has subtle shifts, like the flow of a river Rhythm is how we interact with flow of this river. Imagine sticking your hand in the flow of the river for one second and then pulling it back out. Then imagine doing the same thing for two seconds and half a second. This is the equivalent to playing notes of different lengths. The river is constant, but how long we play the notes for is what makes it in the music. Rhythm is the most mathematical part of music education, but fear not. There is nothing more advanced than simple addition and subtraction involved. Imagine your favorite type of pie for a moment. Now, the size of the pie is constant. No matter how we slice it, the pie represents a bar of music. If you eat the whole pie yourself, it's like playing a whole note, which takes up the entire bar. If you invite a friend over and cut the pie in two, you have to half notes. If you cut it again, you have 4/4 tones. Cut it again and you have 8/8 in music. All time has to be accounted for again. Think of the pie if you have a pie and you cut it into 4/4 and you only want to eat one of the quarters. The other 3/4 still exists because the whole pie was baked. This is the same in music. So wherever there's not a note played, there has to be arrest to take his place. So each of the note values in music of whole half quarter eighths and so on all have rests that last for the same amount of time 7. Flute Setup and Buyers: welcome to the instrument buying and set up guide for the flute. Now, if you're interested in playing the flute, there are many different ways you can go in terms of buying or renting and different types of flutes that you can get into playing. A question I get asked a lot by my students is should I buy or rent first? And this is an excellent question. If you're not sure about how committed you are playing the flute, if you're new to it and you just want to try it out, definitely go ahead and try and find something that you can rent. Almost every major music store that sells instruments will have some sort of a rental program and usually rentals runnin about the $30 per month range. You get a price discount as you rent for longer periods of time, but I definitely recommend renting something before you buy it. When you feel ready to purchase a flute, there's a few things to consider. There are three main price points with almost all instruments. There are student level instruments which are on the bottom, intermediate level instruments above that and then professional level instruments above that student level instruments for the flute start in the $400 range and go up to about $600 within that range there are different quality. You know, you'll find a variance in there, and with any instrument purchase, I definitely recommend, if at all possible, don't buy right at the bottom because any cost cutting that's been done by the company that's making it, you'll notice it the most right at the bottom and some things that can happen when a student horn is very inexpensive, Sometimes the metal is really soft. It's not as durable, and also the sound quality will usually not be great. Um, when you get into the intermediate level, things like durability get a little bit better, sound quality will get a bit better, and the intermediate price point for flutes is going to start in the 5 to $600 range and go up towards 1000. And then professional level flutes are going to start in the 8 $900 range and go up into the many thousands. One of the main features on Ah flute that's different on a professional one than a student is This is a student flute and the tone holes air completely covered. So my finger isn't actually doing any of the covering of the whole and on professional level flutes on many of them. Ah, lot of the tone holes are open, more like on a clarinet, so your finger is actually doing some of the work of covering the hole. This makes it sound a little warmer and more woody sounding than a student flute, but definitely when you're starting out, that's not something you also want to be dealing with. So student flutes are always made without the open toe holes. Some things to think about when you're playing a flute are that the keys and the rods themselves are very delicate. The flute is a very light instrument, which means that it's very susceptible to being bent and damaged, so you want to be very careful when you're setting it down. I definitely recommend if you're going to set it on a flat surface, said it along the rods like this because there's Ah kee that sticks out here that you don't want to set it on that and bend it. Any wind instrument is going to be really relying upon all of the keys, closing properly to allow the air to pass all the way through. So as soon as things get dented or bent or they aren't closing properly, you're gonna have a harder time playing. Now, someone in your family may already have a flute. And if said to you, here you can take my my old flute and just play it for free, and this can be a really great thing. One thing I recommend with that is definitely taking in tow. Have it looked at by a repair technician because sometimes if a flute has been sitting for a really long time, the pads will get dried out and they don't close quite properly. And this doesn't mean that the flu it is not going to be able to be played later. It just means that it might need maybe a few $100 worth of repairs done to it to make it play really well. You're gonna want a plan to have your flute repaired by a proper technician about once a year if you're playing regularly and usually the cost for this for a basic tune up on a flute will be somewhere between one and $200. And like with any instrument, it's really important to make sure that it's in good playing condition so that you feel good about playing it. You're happy with your sound, and you know you're just looking forward to playing it rather than feeling like it's frustrating to play with all the time. If you're having trouble finding a good technician, music stores like big music stores are a good place to start. If they don't have someone on the site that actually does the repairs, often they can refer you to someone who will. Who does repairs outside for them. When you're playing the flute, it's really important to maintain good posture, which means that your back has to be straight and you don't want to be slouching because the air is being delivered through your body. The column of air has to be a straight as possible to let the air speed really flow through . If you're playing seated, a couple of things to look out for is to make sure that your arms are keeping the flute in level with your with your head so that you don't have to turn your head sideways or do this . Ah, common thing as you get playing the flute more often is if you play for long periods of time, even though the flutes, not heavy your arms, are going to start to sag a little bit. Because even if you just had to do this for 10 minutes, your arms would get tired just holding them out in position like this. So good thing with flute is just be mindful of how the angle of the flute is being held. Ah, good technique that I always recommend is playing in front of a mirror. It's a great way to just keep your eyes on your posture and your technique so that you're keeping the horn balanced and keeping your back totally straight. 8. You will learn how to put the flute together, make your first sound: I and welcome to week one of flute lessons in the music Coach program. We're gonna get started on a great journey today, learning to play the flute. Now the flute is a descendant of one of the oldest instruments that humans have made. Flutes began as simple woodcarvings with holes in them that people played and you may have seen in Celtic music or Irish music or indigenous music. Flutes that air played that are made of bamboo are made of wood, the modern flute that we play in orchestras and in other kinds of music. Is it directly connected to that lineage of instrument? So we're gonna get started today by learning how to put the flu together and make your first sounds and learn your 1st 3 notes. They're gonna be part of the scale for this program. Now, when you're opening the case, it's really important to make sure that the latches are opening up. This'll way. You can be sure that the instrument is on the bottom of the case. The flute is made up of three main sections. The head joint Sorry for me. Okay. The body and the foot joint. Now, when you're putting it together. You're gonna take the body and attach it to the head joint. The way you know which way the head joint goes into the body is it's the longer piece of tube is the top and you're just gonna gently twisted into place. And now put the foot joint into the body. The foot joint is going to connect to the body where the keys are now, the lineup, your flute to make it playable. You want a lineup? The rod on the foot joint with the center of the key that it's closest to and head joint is gonna be lined up with the first key. The opening will be lined up with the first key here. So now we're gonna work on getting your very first sound. In order to practice this, you don't even need to have the whole flute put together. So we're gonna take the head joint back out and rest the fluid in your lap. Now making a sound on a flute is a lot like blowing air over the top of a pop bottle, which you may have done before to make make a sound what you're trying to do is with your amateur, which are all the muscles in your face right here. You're trying to make a very small opening and pushed the air across the opening in the mouthpiece and split it so that some of the air goes into the tube and spins and some of the air goes right over top. So when I'm making the sound, a lot of the air is going right off the top and over in my hand. It's very similar to whistling. In that way, this is the trickiest part of a playing the flute. Once you master this, the rest of it is actually quite a bit simpler, so make sure to take lots of time to practice it. It's easier to practice it with just the mouthpiece than it is the whole body, cause you're not holding up the whole thing the whole time. So try rolling the mouthpiece forward and back to find the sweet spot where the sound happens, Uh, and remember to think about blowing some of the air down into the mouthpiece. Another good way to think of how big the opening should be in your mouth is it's a little bit like trying to hold something the size of a pen or a pencil and making the air go through like that. Now we're gonna get ready to learn your 1st 3 notes. The flute works like every other wind instrument Where the more of the tube we have closed , the lower the sound is going. Keys that we're gonna hold down to make our first note are the thumb key on the back. It's important to play the one closer to the bottom and not this one. Later on, we'll explain why, but for now, hold that one on your gonna play the first key with your pointer finger, which is the Beaky. Then you're gonna skip over one and play the a key, and then you're gonna play the G key with your ring finger. And this note is G. And it sounds like this now to play your second note, which is a lift up your ring finger and keep the other fingers down. And for your third note, lift up your middle finger and play. Be so there's no it's one more time RG all the fingers in the top end Lift up your ring finger and you have a lift up your middle finger and you have be now your bottom hand or your right hand is giving you the balance to hold up the instrument so you want your thumb to be resting on the body. Now there is no specific holder or clip or anything for your thumb, but you wanna have it down close enough so that your bottom hand can touch all the keys. And for now, you're gonna want to just let your other fingers rest on the keys. You don't want to be pushing them down, but just arresting them there and balancing the flu. And one of the thing to keep in mind when you're playing the flute is your left shoulder can get sore or get tired very easily. Even though the flute is not heavy, holding your arms just in this position for a long time can be tiring. So whenever you need to take a break, make sure to drop your arms, especially your left arm, even on the practice video. When I'm talking between things that you're going to be playing, you'll see me sometimes dropped my arms even just this far, because this gives your shoulder a bit of a break, and you want to avoid doing this. You'll see flute player sometimes start to tilt their bodies to rest their shoulders. It's better to keep your flute level all the time and then rest when you need to and then come back all right, excellent work and I'll see in the practice video. 9. Flute week 1 practice: We're gonna play whole notes for the 1st 3 notes of our scale. The notes are G A and B. Take a big breath in and hold a g e o. Now take a deep breath in and play a Oh, now take a deep breath in and play. See, Now I'm gonna do the same thing. Using the click track, you're gonna play G for four beats, take four beats, rest play a for four beats, take four beats rest and then play. Be for four beats. 12 ready? Go G 11234 Theo arrest 123 four p 234 Let's do the same thing again on two. Ready g e o Rest 1234 a Rest. One, 234 34 Now we're going to do the same thing using half notes so G will get two beats. Will rest for two beats a will get two beats. Arrest for two beats and be will get two beats and rest for two beats. 12 Ready. Begin Teoh to the 02 to the same thing again. 12 Ready. Go Rest to a rest. To Theo to Now we're gonna do the same thing and take the rests out so each note will get two beats. 12 Ready? Begin, Teoh, Let's try it again. 12 Ready? Begins. Try one more time. 12 Ready. Begin to now. We're gonna play quarter notes, so each note is going to get one Beat 12 Ready? Go. 12 Ready? Go! 12 Ready? Go! 12 Ready. Go! Now we're in. Try going up and down. 12 Ready? Begin Thing again. 12 Ready? Go! Same thing again. 12 Ready? Go! One Last time. One, two Ready? Go! 10. In this lesson you will learn how to play all the notes in the G major scale: back to flute lessons in music today, we're gonna be working on learning the rest of the notes in the G major scale. The G major scale is that scale that we're gonna be using throughout the entire program. All of the scale patterns, the bass notes for the harmony parts and the melodies that you're gonna learn are all part of this scale. Now, if you're unfamiliar with what major scales mean or how the musical alphabet works, there some videos that go before the course that air animated that will help explain all of these things to you. All right. Just as a quick review our notes from last week where G A and B and we're gonna start by adding, See which you're gonna take your thumb off the back and the on Li ke you're gonna be pushing down is the Seiki and it sounds like this. Then we're going to go into the second octave to play D. Now, this is a big switch of fingers. You're gonna put everything down and explain all that. So like a G in the top hand in your bottom hand, you're gonna play these three keys so the first key is is controlled by other things. So you're gonna skip over that first key and play the F key, the E key and the D key. So you have three fingers in the top, plus your thumb and three fingers in the bottom Now on a flute. One thing that's a little different is we're gonna let up your pointer finger, and this helps that no play more in tune. So it's gonna look like this now, at first because we're in a different active. It could be a little tricky to get the note to speak. So remember to try and roll back and forth if you're having trouble getting the note. Exactly. Perfect. Now our next note is gonna b e for this. We're gonna put your pointer finger back down, lift up your ring finger in your right hand, and we're also gonna play something new, which is the E flat key now in the flu. This does a couple of things. It gives you a little more balance and grip on the instrument because we're kind of balancing it all the time, and it also helps the tuning. It helps the note play a little more in tune. Uh, you can hear when I take the key on and off, it makes it go a little bit flat. So we're gonna use that key. Uh, now our next note is going to be f sharp. So you're gonna lift up your pointer finger. And now what we've got is three fingers in the top in the thumb, the middle singer in the right hand and the e flat key. And our last note is gonna be the high G, which is the same as the low gi, except we keep the pinky finger on the E flat. Kiefer, balance. Once again, our new notes are See de uh, sure, uh g. And also remember this week to really work on the deep breathing, make sure to do the breathing exercise part of the practice video. And another thing I wanted to mention with all of the practice videos is if your shoulders getting tired or your face starts to get tired, you can always pause it and take a little break. You can take little breaks to stand up or move around, take a drink of water, sit back town. You don't have to play it all the way through in real time. All right, great work and I'll see in the practice videos. 11. Flute week 2 practice: you're now gonna learn how to play whole tones on the next three notes of our scale. The notes are C, D and E. Take a big breath in and play, see, take a big breath in and played. Take a big breath in and play. Now we're gonna do the same thing with whole notes using the click track. Each note will get four beats and they'll before beats rest in between 12 Ready, Theo Rest. 234 Day 234 Rest 234 to 34 Now we're gonna do the same thing without the rest between the notes. 12 Ready? Go! Seo to three. Try it again. 23 Theo 34 to three four. We're not gonna play the Final Three notes that make up the G major scale. They r e f Sharp and G. We're going to use the same technique, starting with a long tone on E now play along tone on F Scher. Now play along tone on the high G. Now we're gonna play them asshole Notes with four beats. Rest in between them. 12 Ready? Go. 23 Rest. 234 Rest 234 Now we're gonna play them without the rests. 1234 e to 3434 234 Now let's try that again. 12 Ready? Go! Three for 234 G to 34 Now let's play E f Sharp and G as half notes with two clicks for each note and two clicks in between each note. 12 Ready? Go! Ah, to rest too. Rest too. Rest to let's try it again. 12 Ready? Go, Teoh. Rest to rest, too to now. Let's try it without the rest in between. 12 Ready? Go! Try it again. 12 Ready? Go! T o Now, let's play E f Sharp and G as quarter notes. One click for each note. 12 Ready? Go! I mean, sure. 12 Ready? Go! 12 Ready? Go Way! We're now gonna play the entire G major scale as whole notes. One, two Ready? Go! Theo To three for 23 for 234 234 Now we're gonna play it as half notes. 12 Ready! Go! T O Theo! Way The notes descending as half notes. 12 Ready! Go! T o 12. Learn the first melody for music coach song: Theo, You're gonna take notes that you learned in the scale and put them into our first melody. Now the song we're gonna play is gonna have to sections And we're gonna call the first section the A section and the second section will be called the B section. So this is the A section melody. Now, here is what the melody sounds like now because the melody goes in a circle, it's going to sound like it doesn't have a break in it. But the ending note in the beginning Notre that gonna be the same. So here the notes going to start by playing be and they were played be again then C then d Then we're gonna go up and play the high G. Remember to use your e flat feet for balance. Half sharp. Mm. Then he again Hi, g AP Sharp half sharp again. June half sharp. Mm d You hear the notes again? Be B c d June half sure e e g app shirt, half Scher G f sharp e d. And like always take things slow If you need to pause the video in the practice room, Teoh get comfortable with a section Try it again. And the goal at the end of this week is to be able to play the A section, milady, all the way through, along with the track. All right, keep up the great work, and I'll see in the practice video. 13. Flute week 3 practice: you're now gonna learn the melody that makes up the a section of our song. First, you're gonna play the melody without the click track. One note at a time. B B C d G e g g. Let's try that again. B B. She Sure Now let's try it with the click track one two. Ready? Go G. Let's try the same thing again. 12 Ready? Go now let's try playing the melody along with the track. 12 Ready? Go Now let's try the same thing again. 12 Ready? Go, Theo! 14. Learn how to play the G major scale ascending and descending (up and down): Welcome back to Week four Flute lessons. This'll week We're gonna work on a few new things to add. It's a new track that you gonna roll on. We're gonna be working a little more on the G major scale, both ass ending, which means going up and descending, which means coming down now, getting used to the fingering going in one direction and the other direction is a little bit different. So it's important to work on going in both directions. I want to talk for a moment about articulation, which is how we use our tongue and our breath to start and stop notes. Think for a second about a tap like in your bathroom or your kitchen so you can turn the water on and off, which completely stops the flow. Or you can leave the water on and run your hand underneath to stop the flow for a little tiny bit of time. Using your tongue to do long tongue ing, which is like the da da das sound is like running your hand underneath the water and using the toss sound we're stopping the breath completely is like turning the tap all the way on or off for now, I want you to try and use the DOS sound to try and break up the notes. This is sort of what it sounds like. The tot sound is more were totally stopping the sound in between. You're also gonna work on learning the bass notes that make up the harmony underneath the A section. Those notes are E which you can play up the octave like where we're used to playing it. Or you can use the same fingering and take off the E flat key and get a loan Me, which sounds like this. The second base note is G, which I recommend using the low GI the next base notice. See, the final one is D. So those notes again R e June C and D Now they're always gonna take up one bar each so they'll always get account of four. Later on the program. We're gonna play them more than once inside each Barbara. For now, they're going to be whole notes. And again, if you don't know what a whole note and half notes and quarter notes mean, you can go back to the pre course information and there's a video that talks about rhythm, about how, what quarter notes, whole notes and half notes are. And finally, we're gonna get started on one of my favorite things about music, which is improvising now. The beginning, baby steps and improvising is just to simply make your own choice about what notes you're gonna play where, instead of me telling you Now play G. Now play A I want you along with the track to freely just move from note to note in the scale you can play them. Sometimes in order, you can randomly start on a G and play a C and then play on a I was going to give you an example of This is this is improvising. I'm just randomly picking notes and at the beginning, just like when you learn to speak a new language, it can feel a little bit like you don't have a lot to say or you have trouble forming the thoughts that you want to express. But just remember, it took time for you to learn how to communicate in English or whatever other languages you can speak, and music is a language, so the way you get better at it is by actually speaking it. We'll try not to censor yourself or have too much judgment about what comes out. Just try and do the exercise. All right, excellent work, and I'll see in the practice video. 15. Flute week 4 practice: you're now gonna play the entire G major scale using half notes and then quarter notes with the click track. We're going to start by going ass ending, which is up starting on the low g to the high G playing half notes 12 ready? Go to Let's try that again. 12 Ready? Go! Great. Let's try using quarter notes. 12 ready? Go! Let's try that again. One to ready. Now we're gonna play the G major scale descending Starting on the high G going down using half notes. 12 Ready? Go! Let's write again, Teoh. Ready? Go to Okay, Teoh. Now let's try using quarter notes. One to ready. Threat again. 12 Ready? Go! T o. Now we're gonna play the scale both ascending and descending using half notes and then quarter notes. First half notes. 12 Ready thing now descending and g Sure way. Now we're gonna go ask sending and descending using quarter notes. 12 ready, Theo, Try that one more time. 12 ready. You're now gonna play the notes that make up the bass part for the a section of our song. The notes are E G C and D. They're gonna be played, asshole notes. So each will get four beats. 12 ready? Go to to 34 Let's try that again. 12 Ready? Go, Theo to four. Now you're gonna take your first steps towards improvising by playing the notes of the G major scale out of order along with the track. Simply put, move in a non sequential order, for example. You could start on G and then play See and then play F Sharp or D, for example. Just try it out. 12 Ready? Go Now let's play the melody along with track 12 Ready? Go Now let's play the bass notes along with the track. 12 ready? Go thing. 16. Learn how to play the bass notes for the B section of the song: back to five left in the music thing way we're gonna learn bass notes that make up the B section of our song. They all come from the G major scale. We're just gonna play them in a different order. This is a very common thing used in popular song We're going to stay inside the key we're in. We're just gonna play the harmony in a different order. So the notes are g de mm and see, I'm gonna play it seeking here All of the notes in the B section in the bass part take up four beats just like in the a section. But in this week's practice video, we're going to start working on dividing up the bar into different groups of notes. So what that means is, some of the time we're gonna be holding a note for all four beats in the bar. Sometimes we're going playing to half notes, which means we have to play two beats of the note and then we have to play two more beats of the note so it takes up the right amount of space. If you're unfamiliar with some of this basic math that goes along with notes of divisions. Check out the rhythm pre course video. It's gonna explain this with a lot of animation and make it really clear you're gonna work on playing notes, asshole notes. Which means they take up four beats half notes, which means to beats and then two beats to Philip the bar and coordinates, which means we play the note four times in the bar. You're also going to get to work on playing this along with the track. A little note about breathing because you can't breathe for an unlimited amount of time. So if you need to take a breath, take it wherever you need to, and then try and start the next note at the beginning of the next bar. But one last thing. The flute is probably the quietest instrument in the orchestra, mostly because a lot of your air is just blowing right over the top of the mouthpiece. So you're gonna have to get used to having a lot of power and playing as loud as you can most of the time. Whereas if you play a different instrument in this program, are in a band like the drums, for example, the challenge is learning how to play quieter so that you're not drowning out the other instruments around you. So try and keep that in mind that the breathing exercises and whenever you're practicing something played at full volume. So you develop the strength and the endurance to be able to play the instrument that allowed you can are a great work, and I'll see in the practice video. 17. Flute week 5 practice: you're not gonna learn the order. The notes go in to make up the B section of our base part. The notes are G de e and C. Let's try them slowly without the click track G E o D e See his whole notes with the click track 12 Ready, Theo three. For now, let's try each note as to half notes. 12 Ready? Go to to Teoh. Let's try it again. Ready? Go! I mean to To To to Teoh. Now let's try them. Is 4/4 notes. One to ready Go de t team. Theo Straight again. 12 Ready? Go, Gene G Team. Now we're gonna mix up the rhythm by playing G is a whole note de as to half notes E as 4/4 notes and see is 4/4 notes. 12 Ready? Go Keen to Let's try it again. Two. Ready? Go to to Theo. Now you're gonna try the Bass notes section with the backing track as whole notes. Theo Way. Now let's try it with 2/2 notes for each base note way 18. Learn how to play the melody for the B section of the song: welcome back to six Flute lessons, Music Thing way we're gonna learn with B section melody Now like the a section melody All of the notes come from the G major scale. But what makes this melody a little bit different is that we're gonna enter in a pickup bar . What that means is, instead of the melody beginning right at the beginning of the bar, it's gonna begin just before it. And in the practice video, there's gonna be a wayto work on how toe get in on right in on that entrance. Now, here are the notes. I'm gonna play e ap shirt. Ju g g ap Sharp June That sharp being do the mm. We're gonna play it one time for you. Now, one thing about this melody that's also a little tricky is switching between E and D quickly. One thing to watch out for is to get used to moving your fingers as one thing. Now your hand is not created equal. Not all of the fingers move at the same speed or have the same power. And there's a difference in power between whichever hand your dominant with. So whether you're right handed or left handed. Ah, lot of playing. Any musical instrument is learning how to even out the speed and the force with which your fingers move so that they're working as one unit altogether. And this is a good skill that's gonna help you with so many other motor skill activities. But try and imagine evening things out. Rather than thinking of playing things faster. You're trying to play them more evenly. And one of the thing when you're playing in the practice video with the melody Remember like we talked about before. You can stop whenever you need to. If your face is getting tired, you need a break. One other thing about entering the melody in the pickup bar is music has a lot to do with anticipation. So good analogy that I like to use is if you're throwing a ball to someone who's running, you have to throw the ball to where they're gonna be, not where they are when you let it go. And in a musical sense, this is, uh, takes the form of anticipating what's coming. So what? As the countin is happening, make sure to breathe before you need to play and be ready to deliver the note in the air through the instrument in the moment where the note is taking place. If you wait and think, I'm gonna breathe in and breathe out in the same moment You're always gonna be behind. So just keep that in mind as you're working on this tricky entrance to the B section. Melody. All right, great work. And I'll see in the practice video. 19. Flute week 6 practice: we're now gonna learn the notes that make up the B section of er melody First, let's try them without the click track e f Sharp Gene G g g e Try that one more time. E f shirt Jean G g G E d. Now the second melody could be difficult to enter because it begins on the third beat of the bar. So, for example, we're gonna count four beats and then three more and then begin the melody like this. 1234123 Let's try that one more time. So one bar 1234123 Now let's try playing our whole melody with the count in 1234123 Now we're gonna enter with just the three beats in the pickup bar along with the track 123 Way. Now let's try it one more time. 123 20. Learn how to change your role during the B section from lead to accompaniment.: I am. Welcome back. This is Week seven. Flute lessons in the music This'll Week. You're going to get into working on doing different things in different parts of the form. So if we back all the way out, the entire song is going to be made up of a section, a section B, section B section, and eventually you're going to be able to do different things in each one of those parts. See my plane, the melody you might be playing the bass notes You might not be playing at all while someone else takes a solo, depending on the size of your group and what you're doing. And in this video, we're only going to use the B section and you're gonna work on playing the melody and then playing the bass notes. And then at the end, you're gonna work on playing the melody by yourself. So without it being played on the accompanying the track, now this part you may have to work on a bunch because getting used to playing the melody solo at the Salt Lick on your own. It's a little bit like walking across a tight war tightrope with no net under you. When the Net is there, you'll inevitably be more confident because, you know, if I slip and fall, it's not really gonna be that bad. Not that it's gonna be bad if you play the melody wrong or make a mistake, but psychologically you're gonna feel a difference when there's isn't the track being played with you. So really, try that section many times over the week and really see if you can feel totally confident with it when you enter. Um, you kind of have to get psyched up a little bit to be out in front, playing the melody, and it's a really important skill. All right, excellent work, and I'll see in the practice video. 21. Flute week 7 practice: we're now gonna work on doing different things over the form of the song. We're going to start by playing the melody for the B section of the song, followed by the bass notes for the B section of the song And then the melody for the B section again at the end. Ready way now you're gonna play the bass notes for the B section of the song Go now you're gonna try playing the melody for the B section on your own way 22. Learn how to change your role during the entire song from lead to accompaniment.: This'll Week, we're gonna expand on what we were doing last week and be doing more things over the form of the entire song. So in this week's practice video, you're gonna be switching between playing the A section melody and the A section chords and then playing the B section melody and the B section chords in different orders. Now, when you're doing this at first it could be a little tricky because the track is not going to stop if you make a mistake or if you get lost in the form. And the form is what we call the entire A BB structure. And this is a really good practice, because in real life with real musicians, the song doesn't stop. If you get lost, which will happen, it happens to even the professional musicians you just don't notice because they're good at knowing how to jump back. In the analogy I like to use with this, it's like if you're standing next to a river and your hat falls in, you can't reach down where you dropped it because it's gone. It's down the river. If you want your hat back, you gotta run down the river and figure out where you can pick it back up again. And because music is always flowing in real time. If you get lost in the melody, see if you can work on listening for where the beginning of the next section is the same thing. When you're playing the bass parts, the other thing you're gonna be doing is some improvising at the end over the entire form. And I want you to just keep expanding, keep trying this out. And remember, you're developing language and the ability to express more in the moment in your own way. This is where a lot of the real juice and playing music comes from. Just be patient. Don't worry about whether you're sounding good or not. It's kind of not a relevant question to ask whether it's your making good music or not Good music. It's just about expressing and speaking. And in some of the next videos, we're gonna work on learning some scale patterns to expand the vocabulary you can use when you're actually improvising. All right, keep up the great work, and I'll see in the practice video 23. Flute week 8 practice: you're now gonna practice playing the melody, the bass notes and taking a solo all the same time with the backing track. The first form you gonna play is the a melody once than the a section cords than the B section melody once than the B section melody courts 12 Ready? Go, Theo Theo way now you're gonna play the A melody twice the B melody twice and then improvise over a B B 12 Ready? Go way Now you're ready to be. 24. Learn how to play your first scale pattern: Welcome back to week nine of flute lessons for the music Coach thinks week you're gonna learn your first scale pattern now scale patterns air simply a way of playing us any kind of scale in a different order. And the reason why this is such as an important thing is it gets different muscle memory into your fingers so that you can approach moving higher or lower or ascending and descending in a different way than always playing the notes. G a B C D In order the scale pattern we're gonna learn this week is called thirds. What's gonna happen is you're going to start on G. But instead of going up to A, we're going to skip over it and go to be so the pattern's gonna be g skip up to be thing. Go backwards to a then skip up to see, then go backwards to be, then skip up to D and then backwards to see skip up t e backwards to d skip up to f sharp backwards t e skip up to G backwards to f sharp, play app sharp again and then cheat. And here's what it sounds like. So here those notes again. Slowly, One more time, G be a see thing. Hmm? Seeing um Hmm? I am sure. Hmm. G shar. Yeah, sure, Yeah, sure shoe. You're also going to be playing this scale descending in thirds, which means starting on the high G and going down to the low GI. Now the pattern is the same, but flipped upside down. So we're going to start on the high G and skipped down t e go up to F sharp and then skipped down to D. Then go up t e skip down to see up to d skip down to be up to see, skip down to a up to be skip down to G up to a hey again and then g And here's what that sounds like. And remember, breathe where you need to and try and keep the flow going. So if you need to breathe and skip over a note, just go into the next out are a great work, and I'll see in the practice video 25. Flute week 9 practice: we're now gonna play the G major scale ass ending in thirds using half notes. 12 Ready? Go, Theo! Yeah, sure, Sure, sure, Chain. Now we're gonna try the same thing using quarter notes. 12 Ready? Go! Theo, Let's try the same thing again. 12 Ready? Go, Theo. Now we're gonna play the G major scale descending in thirds using half notes. 12 Ready? Go sharp. E seen T Now let's try it. Using quarter notes. 12 Ready? Go! Thats tried again. 12 Ready? Go! Sure, Dean. Now let's weigh the scales. Ascending and descending using half notes. 12 Ready? Go see? Yeah, sure. Jeanne? Sure. G Sure. Now let's try it. Asks ending in. Descending using quarter notes. 12 Ready? Go, Theo. Sure. 26. Learn how to play your second scale pattern: Welcome back. Week 10 Flute Lessons with music This'll Week You're gonna learn your second scale pattern . The second scale pattern is more of ah, Cascade where we're gonna walk up four steps and them back one on walk up and back. It's a little bit of a switching back shape and it's gonna be the same going up and then coming down it's gonna be the same idea, but in reverse, we're going to step down and then back up and then stepped down and then back up. Here's what it's gonna sound like Theo. Now the notes are ju a the sea and then go down to a B C Hmm B c in c d mm ap sharp Um mm. Half sharp soon. Mm F sharp soon. Sure, Jeanne. And here's what it sounds like. Descending way. And here the notes for descending starting G half sharp. Mm de Yeah. Sure thing. Hmm. See? Hmm. See? Mm. Do you see Mm. A See the A. She be okay. A Okay. And just remember the scale patterns air, helping you learn some new vocabulary for your improvising, which you're going to be doing more of as we get towards the end of the program and scale patterns are a great way to get from one place to another and thinking about if I want to move higher in energy or in the scale that I'm using. A scale pattern is an interesting route to take to get. There are a great work and I'll see in the practice room. 27. Flute week 10 practice: We're now going to play the second scale pattern. We're going to begin by playing it ass ending as half notes. One, two. Ready? Go see. I mean, I mean sure, Dean, You sure? Sure have shirt T. Now we're going to try the same pattern again. Using quarter notes. 12 Ready. Go, Theo! Seeing sure he we're now going to try the scale descending. Starting on the high G using half notes. One, two. Ready? Go! Sure. See P pain. See E. Okay, we're now gonna play the notes Descending as quarter notes. 12 ready? Go! Sure. E g. Now we're gonna play the notes. Ass ending and descending as half notes. 12 Ready? Go! Okay, cap shirt. Sure, Teen. Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure, sure. See, De now we're gonna play ass ending and descending as quarter notes. 12 Ready! Go! Theo! 28. Learn how to play embellish the melody as part of your solo: I think a week. 11 flu Theo. They were going to get into one of the earliest forms of improvising, which is embellishing or playing off the main melody. In the early days of jazz music, improvising took the shape of people taking liberties or putting their own stamp on the melody of the song that was already happening. And this is a really great way to begin your journey or take it a little step further. In terms of improvising as a language, the melody is always running throughout the song, and any time you want to reconnect with it, it's It really establishes the music in a very solid way because it's connected so deeply to the harmony that's underneath it again with the image of the train that we're using, The rhythm is always running the harmony Rail is always on the go in the melody. Rail, even when it's not being played, is still there inside the music. So let me give you an example of gonna play the a section melody one time and then the second time through I'm gonna embellish it, make it a little different way. Theo! Theo! So one of the ways you can do this is by approaching the main melody note from right below or right above holding notes longer or cutting them a little shorter and just generally feeling the essence of the melody in your own personal way. Here's an example of it with the B section melody. I'm gonna do the same thing and play it once regularly, and then the second time I'm gonna embellish it a little bit way. Theo. So I really encourage you in the practice video this week. Toe. Take some risks and try out some different things. Whenever you've seen a professional musician playing live, what you're un aren't able to see is how many hours of practice went into what they're doing and how many chances they took that didn't work out. So when the practice video is really go for a tried to try to do new things and experiment with new sounds and really make it your own thing, all right, great work and I'll see in the practice video 29. Flute week 11 practice: you're now going to improvise off the main melodies to start with. Play the A melody regularly once and then the second time through improvised around the main melody. One two. Ready? Go Now you're going to do the same thing with the B section of our melody. Play the melody once normally, and then improvise around the melody the second time way. Now try improvising freely over both sections, choosing to either use some of the melody or make up your own part completely. 12 ready go. 30. Learn how to put all the skills together, melody, solo, and accompaniment: welcome to Week 12. Flute lessons in the music program made it here we are at the end of the program. I want to congratulate you on doing a great job and following through and getting all the way to the end. This week, we're gonna work on putting together all of the skills that you've built through the entire program, playing the melodies for both sections, being able to play the bass notes for both sections, being with improvised by using your scale patterns and embellishing the melody. The last news thing we're gonna work on is the building of your solo. Part of what makes a solo so dynamic when it's being improvised is it has the ability to truly change the shape of the song in real time, meaning at the beginning of someone solo. No one really knows how it's gonna go, including the person playing it so it can build an energy. It can pull back. It could be played higher and louder and where it can be played softer and lower. So playing with these shapes is, ah is a great way to add energy and interest in your solo. So when you're practicing along the practice video. Try and think about directions that you want to go in by starting low and finishing high. We're starting high and finishing low, and you can also begin your solo by embellishing the melody or endure solo by embellishing the melody or both. It can be a great Q for other people in your band that you're finished taking your solo when you play the melody at the end. You've not just added a great musical skill by getting to the end of the program. It's a great life skill to be able to follow through with something all the way to the end . And my hat is off to you if I even have Anna great work and we'll see in the practice video . 31. Flute week 12 practice: Now we're gonna try putting together all of the pieces we have playing the melodies, playing the bass note patterns and improvising. To begin with, I want you to play the melody in the first a section, followed by the bass notes In the second, a section in the B section We're going to use the same pattern. We're gonna play the melody on the first B and the court notes on the second Be 12 Ready? Go, - Theo Way. Now you're gonna work on building your solo by thinking about starting low and ending high and starting with a quiet sound and ending with a loud sound. Try this out with the practice video and see if you can build your solo across the whole form. 12 ready. Go. Finally. See if you can make up your own arrangement of how to play along with the track. 12 ready, Go 32. Jam Room 60bpm: 33. Jam Room 80bpm: 34. Jam Room 100bpm: 35. Welcome to the Music Coach Duo Series: either. It's taught the music coach, and I'm so excited to invite in my good friend and colleague Kenny Kirkwood to come into the music coach studio to help with the special duo Siri's. Now. You may not know this. Makeni was one of my first music teachers, and he's been a mentor and I've taught at his music school. He played gigs and recordings together, and I'm so excited to have thanks a lot for having me. And that's Boston to be here. And, you know, I'm really proud of everything you've done. I think music coaches a great program, so so many of the lessons that I've worked on a year over the years. You've already got done here. So, you know, thanks for having me for the duo sessions, especially because for me, I remember starting out practicing solo for a long time. But there's nothing like getting to the duo century, actually making other people. So enjoy the program. Call up a friend, and no matter what levels your you'll be able to work it out 36. Flute Piano 1: Theo. - So when you're playing into wet with a piano player when you're on the flute, you only really need to know a few notes just to get started and to begin moving around this scale. What we were just playing is in the key of G major. So where the flute and the piano are in the same key, so I could talk to the piano player. We're using the same notes when I say I'm gonna play G or be than the pamper, explained exact scene notes In terms of the range and where you play. This is a great duet because the flute is kind of a soft instrument, and when you're beginning, playing in the lower part of the instrument is gonna be a little easier to play and the pound leaving lots of space where some of things that you think about playing well, he asked me to play piano behind the flute. I think that first of all, you're playing a wind instrument, so I feel like I should be play. I play. I think about playing a little bit like how you're playing. So I make sure that I'm sitting with good posh in. I'm breathing as well, Andi. And just even if I'm playing one note, breathe out when I play it so that I can relate a little bit how you're feeling. And then when I hear you come to the end of your breath studio, then I might start moving a little bit so that you've moved and I have moved in. It sounds like I'm responding to you as if we're having a conversation. That's a couple of things. I'm thinking about the breath and listening to each other as if we're talking and music. Yeah. Now, if you were, somebody was watching this and their feelings a little afraid like, how did he even get started? Cause we didn't really say much as going one place so we can start is we could just both decide to start on the same note. Or we could pick two different notes from the scale, and we'll just do this right now. We really sure. So we're in the key of G, and I'm gonna start on a G and what you pick and just pick one up from the scale and make sure you tell everybody what? Which one you're playing. Sure, I'll start with D. OK, so And what we're gonna do is I'm gonna move around the notes that I'm starting on, so I'm starting on a G, and I'm just gonna get started tentatively. And I'm gonna go, you know, up to a baby back to G. And Kenny's gonna kind of do the same thing. So this is kind of how it sounds in terms of how you start, it doesn't really matter who you have accounted in or anything. You can just make a sound and get started. Notice that at the beginning of the last video, I watched the player I'm with so I can see when they're about to start. Start with. Yeah. So I Q So we're going to this tryout, Ariel Simple. Just started a place and move around. I was thinking that to mention that the pattern that I came up with on the last improvisation was a structure it's really like to building blocks is if I got to Lego blocks and I'm just using those two as a pattern back and forth. What I played for those of you have done a little bit of pianos is the G chord, which is and then I played that for a while, and then I moved every note up a step, too. That's accord that's in the G scale family, but it just moves away. So it sounds like a Ziff were in a spaceship when we've traveled from Planet G to the moon Teoh a minor move and then we go back way back to the G. So I kept going back and forth on that. Gives music a sense of motion that were traveling on a voyage or on a coach, perhaps. 37. Flute Piano 2: weren't do the fun . Yeah, it was fun. Eso In this one, we've introduced a little bit off time, intent in the sense of rhythm and pacing. So we were going for something that's a little bit of a medium speed. This is a good next step is to add in a bit of rhythm into the plane. The other aspect that we added Waas, adding a structure harmonically so a predictable pattern of courts. And in this, the simplest thing we can add is a to court pattern. So anyone you talk a little bit about the Corp. Sure. Well, we picked a G C court pattern, meaning that the chords G for was two bars and then see for two bars back to G and back to see. And and you'll hear lots of this in music because to court songs air mostly what we learned when we were little kids. You know, many songs or just one have one chord that our Children's song because it gives them a smaller range Teoh learn, but to card songs are perfect for the intermediate player, So I just started with a simple voicing for a G chord. I put a G in the booth on I'm thinking of my left hand like the base player, so really as it a zoo. A piano player who likes Teoh. Think about the rules. You want to think about the bass notes, providing the tracks. You know, like the track so that the train's going on, you know? And so it's I close my eyes and move my body a little bit, which is another part of off music that really helps me is that once, once you get practicing to the intermediate level, you should be thinking about the notes as well in the structure, so you can stay together with all the people on the train. You don't be jumping off the train. That could be dangerous, but you know, once year, you know, if you're nervous about getting on the train, well, that's normal. Everyone is. But once the train gets going Clickety clack, you know that it's gonna be OK. Remember to sit up tall and do that breathing so you feel connected and that you're enjoying yourself because music is a should be as fun is tagged as far as I'm concerned, you know. So So Todd and I have been doing this for years, so we always crack each other. But anyway, that's that's how I think of the bass player role in setting the tracks. And that's also the harm the the the And then in the right hand is the Harmony rail eyes just like that, playing the chords here in the right hand. And I'm just trying to keep the beat Holland play the harmony. So I'm doing the ties and the Harmony track, and Todd is doing the melody track. So that's how we're. That's how we're creating the tracks for our trip. And now something that will probably happen is you get playing and eyes. You may lose the form like, you know, Kenny might go to the C chord, and I'm still thinking I'm on the G chord and that stuff is gonna happen and it's totally fine and don't get thrown by you know it came derail. We actually talked about this in bands like when the song goes off the rails. It's not the worst thing, especially when you're just practicing. You can stop start again. You can try it a different tempo. Things like that Now one of the thing is is one of the great things that we try, try and teach in the music coaches. Even though I'm playing the flute, it doesn't mean that I can't be the accompanist I can't support. Okay, So in this example, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hold down the court structure and Ken, he's just gonna take a solo in his right hand, which is, might be where you're at as a player. If you're intermediate, you may have trouble improvising with the right hand and holding the left hand at the same time. So we're gonna go with the same tempo. So I'm going to keep playing the bass notes in my left hand cause that's the bass player g and C. So which Cortona are you gonna pick to outline the court? I'm gonna play just the route, so I'm gonna play the DJIA and the sea. All right, so we're gonna go one, and will I play improv? I want you to just improvise, but don't even kind of left hand goddess they not be able to do so. I switch my bass player hand to my court and then I'm gonna play melodies, right? So I want to be so I don't sell my body go up there at the end. But that was after I made what I thought was a mistake. And then I remembered toe laugh because a teacher that taught and I both have learned a lot from, you know, really got us into laughing at mistakes. Which is which is, uh, it's something. It's kind of like when you're playing tag and you fall down, you know, well, you might hurt yourself, but you still get back up cause you're having so much fun, you know, And for a long time, as beginner musicians, I know most, most musicians and go through this experience of Oh, I made a mistake. That's bad. That's wrong. And I feel really bad inside. So when we laugh, we actually, uh, you let some air ago and it reminds you to be connected back to your breath, right? Hes just music. It's just a game. Not hurt anybody. One of my favorite quotes it all the time is from Miles Davis, who's talked about a mistake is just an opportunity. And if you really can feel that way, like sometimes you end up in a place you weren't expecting. It's just like life. It's what you do when you get there that makes it. It makes it the experience that it iss. 38. Flute piano 3: 212 Scooby Doo Way Great. So in this video we're having a look at doing some a little bit more advanced techniques. So we've created Ah, four chord structure instead of a to court structure. And simply all that is is we're just expanding on how much language we have to work with. And we're playing it a bit of a faster tempo. And we added in more more element, which is sort of trading. Who's leading the melody now? In this case, we're just improvising the duets, so there isn't a melody that we've learned, but we're just working inside of a key. So we started out by I was playing a melody, and Kenny was playing the accompany this rule, and then in the middle of it, you may have caught it. I kind of looked over him and gave him in the old nod, Your turn to go on. I switched over and was playing the court tones, and then Kenny was taking a solo, and then at the end, we switched back. And these little cues, they don't have to be big jumping up and down like a kind of thing. If you're If you're listening and looking, you can kind of just give a quick little nod, and the next time you're watching a concert, either on video or in person, you'll you'll catch it. You'll see that musicians were looking at each other and kind of nodding. The trick is you got to know what the nods mean. So maybe talk a little bit about There's only a few things that were killing. It's not like make me a sandwich. It's right. There's a few things that we're looking for and you'll notice that in part of it there's some periods where I'm able to close my eyes and just feel it and go deeper. And a lot of people, when they start improvising, Ah, lot of us will close our eyes and actually because we're listening deeper and the Eid a lot big part of our brain is used up for for what we're looking at. So by closing our eyes were able to go deeper as musicians. I think that what I learned as a zey younger player was to not always keep my eyes closed because then someone might be trying to say, Hey, we got to stop the song because, you know, I gotta go to the bathroom or something. Or we could stop the song because you know, I'm late for dinner and Mom's making turkey tonight or something. So having your eyes open is it's very much like being an actor on stage. Actors can't close your eyes on stage. You're constantly queuing each other. So are we. So in the middle of the song, when Todd was kind of done his little storytelling on his solo, you know, he kind of gave me the eyebrows up and looked and I was looking over. So then that's a That's a switch, another kind of Q that we're looking for really important cues or the beginnings and endings because, just like telling a story beginning, middle end, the beginning and endings are critical. So if I'm gonna be the one counting on the song before I start, I feel the beat. And then I actually before I even feel the beat, I check in with the players in my bed. It was just taught us. Does he look ready? Is he watching me, or is he like getting a simple water still? And if you have a bigger band. You want to see that? Every you got eye contact with every player. Then I'm feeling the beat, then accounting it in and I'm moving my body. Several can see the dance that I'm feeling so that we know. Hey, this is the speed of this train on this track that ties air this far apart or this far apart. How fast we're going, Right? So those are a couple of things beginning at the ending as well. Sometimes, you know, train comes slow into the station so you can do so much with you in your body, how you're leaning into gravity, that that's really how you see how we signal to each other. How much are you slowing down? How fast are you slowing down? You know, and confidence is such a big part of it. And what could be challenging when you're starting out is it's all going to feel like you got a lot of balls in the air. But the only way to really get good and confident at leading either in a duo are in a band is by doing it and to be quite honest, having having it not go perfect every time you learn things that work and don't work. So we're for the purposes video we're getting going and playing, and everything kind of works out. But when you're on your own, if you're practicing, if you try counting in the song and it kind of feels wobbly, you can stop and start again and try it. And absolutely, I've had toe count in songs many times to get them to feel really comfortable. There's a thing that happens where you get lost like you notice. When I took my solo, I went from the G chord and and then I went to the D chord right away instead of the C chord, right? So again, that used to make me really panic. But really, what it's like now is is it is a ziff. My car of the train went off onto a side track for a while, and Todd stayed on the main track. He you know, and he knew that. Hey, that's supposed to be a secret. I know what track I'm on on, but this other cat went to the wrong chord and you know it. And I knew it in the instant that it happened. So no need to worry, right? As long as you know in your head where you're supposed to be, your fingers can catch up later. And if you're if you're ever like totally in panic, just stop playing. Let your mates keep, keep the structure together, and then when you're ready and your fingers have caught up with, you know with the pattern, then come back in but never never need to worry. Sometimes that's could be a point of conflict in bands where someone says, Hey, you were in the wrong place or you were in the wrong place And then people started arguing about it. It just takes time and practice and patients with each other. You know, say, let's start it again from from the beginning, you know, and also noticing the difference between some mistakes happen every now and again. If it's happening in the same place every time, you can only stop and go. Hey, what's happening here? Like, I think we're supposed to be on this court, but notice the difference because we all make mistakes. But if there's a structural problem than you always want to stop this sort of that 39. Sax Flute: - Theo . Way, way, Theo. Way, way. So with this combination of instruments, the flu, it is obviously a lot quieter than saxophones. What creates, ah, riel challenge and opportunity for this actual player to play quietly to match it and also a flute player? It's a great opportunity to really playing with a full, full, full sound all the way through. And most of the air on a flute travels right past the top of the horn. So it's a really good strength practice to play duets with other other instruments that Larry, what were some of things you were thinking? Wow, as as I was playing the, uh, it sure you say about the flu, you know, they I don't play much flu. But my my saxophone flute playing friends like you have told me that it will make me a better Saxon party because you do lose so much of the air going off the instrument, you have become really efficient about how much air you're putting in. So as a saxophone player playing with a quieter instrument, one of the one of the beginner, one of the not beginner, one of the first tricks that I used Teoh play quieter is just take a smaller bite on the mouthpiece so and share my Keith being sort of halfway up right where the read splits away from the mouthpieces about where I would angle my tips. I'm going back to about 1/2 inch off, and that is an easy way to quickly play quietly e put back in place. Ah, uh, already the sound is that, uh, I'm allowing the reed has more room to vibrate. So of course, the sound will be louder and harder to control as well. Ideally, you want to be able to practice in the same set position and be able to play at all dynamic ranges and especially for a lot of us living in cities or anywhere you live saxophone could be ah, allowed instrument to practice, and you're involved with neighbors. So one of the things is one of my teachers and always said you should be able to play everything that you can play now at. At a normal volume, you should be able to play it acquired. A blonde, of course, sometimes are reads give us trouble or so depending on the community. Just sometimes, you know you have those days where the Sachin doesn't seem to speak and you don't have control over the over the over the volume at all. Everything just seems to come out loud. So that's when that little take a smaller bite trick and couldn't can really play. It could be a great thing. 40. 7 key steps to starting a band: I'm Todd, the music coach. And right now we're going to talk about how to start a band with either your friends or family. Playing music with other people is truly the richest experience you can have in music. So it's a great goal when you're just starting to learn an instrument to try and bring more people in. It's the same. If you play a sport you're gonna wanna do with your friends, you're gonna wanna do with your family and social time, a way to really express yourself. So unfortunately, for a lot of people they have no experience with how to put a band together, how to make it function properly. In a way, a bands no matter who's in it, is like a little mini tribe. And there are dynamics between people and how people communicate to each other that are important. There's also some accountability which is great to learn in terms of if you're deciding on some goals, like we're gonna learn the songs, everybody has to go out on their own and learn their own thing and come back and be accountable to the group that they're in. The first step is to choose what instruments and what kind of banded is you'd like to have. Some big decisions that you're going to want to make right away is, what do you want to have a drum kit, for example, depending on the style you want to play. Now, a drum kit is an amazing instrument, but you may not have the physical space or the ability in terms of volume to play music that loud. And a full drum kit also influences. For example, if you're gonna play an acoustic guitar with a drum kit, it's very limited how loud you can play on the drum kit without having to have the guitar amp through a guitar, through an amplifier. So that's sort of 1 first big decision you have to make. Then beyond that, you might want to think about what kind of style of music you're moved by and what kind of instruments maybe are already in that style of music. So if your favorite band is made up of, you know, electric guitars and bass and drums. And it's big and it's allowed us raucous, and that's what you wanna do. Then you probably want to organize yourself in a way where those instruments are part of the picture. But if on the other hand, you're like, I really like, you know, classical woodwind instruments. You know, I like flute and clarinet and oboe. And so those are things to think about and finding friends and family who can share a common vision of what kind of music you want to do is your first step. Once you're into choosing instruments, it's important to make sure that they're divided up in a way that will allow you to make good music and have everybody's voice be clearly heard. So you may find out that you've got two people who really want to play guitar and you might be able to make that work. What has to happen then is you have to adjust what parts everybody's playing so you can hear each other properly. But you may decide that, you know, somebody else really wants to play the guitar and I kinda wanna play the guitar, but I've always thought about playing the bass or I've always thought about playing the saxophone. And it's a chance to challenge yourself and move into new instruments. The great thing about learning second, third instruments, if you already know one, is that all of the musical knowledge that you've gained on the first instrument comes with you to the second one. So it's never really like starting over. And the more instruments you learn, the easier they get to learn, because you're just taking more and more information with you to the next experience. Just like with your own personal practice habits. Having goals as a band is really important. And every band has different goals, even professional ones. So if you may have a goal where you say, I really want to be able to play at a talent show at my school in a year. Like we, that's our, that's our goal, that's what we wanna do. Or I want to be able to play at this fundraiser or maybe the goal is I just want us to be able to once a month get together and perform just for ourselves and the songs that we really, really like. Or we want to be able to play together on holidays. Or there's certain colony music we really want to be able to play whatever those goals are. It's important to just have them be clear and have everyone understand what they are so that everyone can draw their focus and attention towards getting yourself to those goals. It's also important to make time to reset your goals when you get to where you wanna go, don't just stop. Go. Well, now that we're here, where do we wanna go next? Whether you're in an amateur band or professional band, it doesn't really matter. Scheduling time for your own practice is equally important as scheduling time for the bands practice. One of my teachers has a great saying that I love. He always told me, said, a rehearsal is not where you go to learn your part. It's where you go to learn everyone else's part. So in that sense, when you come into a rehearsal, you should already know the parts that you're going to play, at least to a general level so that you can see how they plug in and go together. And for that to happen, you'll need to schedule time on your own to practice. And generally speaking, the ratio of rehearsal time to practice time is somewhere around two to one. So if you're planning on having a half an hour rehearsal, you're probably going to need a half an hour to an hour of total practice time to make yourself ready for that rehearsal. And change a little bit depending on, you know, you might choose a song that you actually really know. So you don't really need to do too much to get ready. But as a general rule, you want to keep that in mind. Scheduling time for the band to rehearse, and also picking a place for that to happen is the next key step. The location is really important because you're going to want to be in a place where you can make the amount of noise that your band is going to be making comfortably so that you're not disturbing your neighbors or other people who aren't involved in your musical project. So a couple options are, you've heard of the classic ones. You know, garages can be great if you have one because it's usually a separate from the house enough that you can make a little more noise of the bothering people. Basements tend to be pretty good for the same reason because most of it is underground. If you are in an urban area, it can be very challenging because so many apartments and buildings are close together. But there are rehearsal rooms that you can rent by the hour, and they often have everything you need in them to play. They'll have a full drum kit. They'll have guitar amps, base amps, they'll have keyboards, even they'll have a sound system with microphones if you want to sing. And you pay by the hour. So you sometimes pay about $15 an hour and you just walk in and you play as loud as you want. They're usually soundproofed and made in a way that you can play as loud as you want. So it's a good option. And if you have three or four people together, if everybody chips in a little bit of money and you're doing it once a week or once every two weeks. It's not that expensive and it's a nice option. Scheduling the time for rehearsal is similar to scheduling your own practice time. You're going to want to check in with everybody about what their schedules are and when ideal times r. And depending on what stage of life you're in, this is going to have a huge difference if you're planning on starting a band with a bunch of 16 year-olds like year 16 and all your friends are that age. You have different schedules than somebody who's in their forties or fifties. So you want to think about when it's going to make the most sense for everybody and when it can be convenient, where everybody can be present and focused and enjoy the process and not be waking up too early, going to bed too late, trying to rush there in a real hurry. Inevitably, in any kind of tribal situation or band situation, there are gonna be conflicts. People have strong opinions about music and about their own parts, and about how the music should go and should fit together. So it's good to have a plan in place for how to resolve those conflicts. And when he combined this plan with a general sense of an agreement between people about how to communicate in conflict, this can alleviate a lot of unnecessary tension. A really simple example I'll give you is, if you're playing a part that I don't like and I communicate to you in a way that implies that I'm also not liking you at the same time. You're going to feel defensive as soon as I talk, even if my eyes, even if you agree with the idea, you're probably going to defend yourself because you're like, Hey, you're telling me you don't like me. And this is just primal human to human stuff. So learning how to talk about the music without talking about the person is a really important skill. And if you think about the language you're using, you can really become skilled at this and say, I'm feeling like the part that you're playing isn't fitting together with this other part over here. As opposed to, I don't like what you're playing because it's not working with this. So I'm talking about the same thing, but you can probably feel even through the video, there's a different energy to it. And how everyone communicates has to be carefully negotiated so that everyone feels safe and they can really express themselves clearly. Because ultimately you got to remember that making music together as a very vulnerable experience. And people need to feel like they can take chances and that it's safe. And one last thing, also, remember to take the time to really cheer each other on, makes a huge difference if somebody speaks up about something that you're doing in a positive way, this doesn't have to be manufactured or phony. But if you hear someone playing something and you're really digging in and it's like you're feeling it may start to tell them like that's a great, you're like you're playing that amazing and like what you came up with his sounds great. And I'm really digging in. This kind of positive real reinforcement just creates this sense of everybody is rowing the boat together in the same direction, which is part of what makes playing in a band feel so amazing. You feel like you're part of a team and everybody's working together towards the same goal. So learning how to do that is also important. You may come from a cultural background or a family background where there just wasn't a lot of encouragement. So I know you have to use something that sometimes you have to cultivate and learn how to do. But it's really important and it makes a huge difference in the sense of togetherness that you have in a band. 41. General gear guide: Music coach. And this is a bonus feature where I'm going to talk about some general tools that every instrumentalist should have with them. They're not very expensive, but they're gonna make a huge difference to the quality of your practice. And also if you're rehearsing with other musicians, the things I got in front of me are two different music stands and a tuner and a metronome. So first, let's talk about the music stands. There are two basic types. This one is a solid music stand. It does fold up. They're a little bit more expensive, but there are a lot more practical to use, especially if they're just going to live at your house. I'd recommend spending a little more money getting something that's a little more durable. Because the other option are these wire foldable stands, which are great for traveling with. But because they're not solid, things can fall through the screws and everything on them are usually a little bit cheap and it'll sometimes bend easily. So the difference in price, these wire ones are going to be sort of 20 to $30. These are going to be closer to a $100. But in the long run, I recommend getting a good solid music stand. If you're going to be in one location. A chromatic tuner. If you're playing an instrument where pitch is going to be an issue, which is almost every single instrument, with the exception of the drum kit and the piano. You're gonna need to know whether you're playing sharp or flat and how to make adjustments. And the only real way to do that is with a chromatic tuner. These will cost you around $30 and they have basic functionality. They take a AAA battery. One nice thing that's happened in the last few years is most apps stores for smart phones have some kind of a free tuner. And even for like a dollar or two, you can buy a more advanced version. So if you don't feel like having a physical one, I have owned these for a long time, so I've got them. You can download something to your smart phone and make sure to use it to be constantly checking in to see where you're at or you playing sharp or flat and certain registers. And a note for guitar players, you might think that a guitar tuner, which is something that's sold in stores, would be the right thing for a guitar or bass. And in fact, the guitar tuner isn't really useful at all because it's always checking to see what string you're on. It's trying to figure out, are you on the sixth string, on the fourth string. And we actually want us to be able to know is that string I'm playing, playing the right note. The other reason this is important is if your guitar gets really at a tune, a guitar tuner won't really give you a relative sense of where you are. You'll have to get a close before it's even usable. So I don't even recommend ever even buying a guitar tuner. Metronomes track time. And this one looks like the same as the chromatic tuner, but it basically is set, you can set it to how many beats per minute. Which a simple way to think of it as 60 beats per minute is like the second hand on a clock, because it's 60 clicks in a minute. And if you had a 120 beats per minute, you'd have two clicks for every second. A good metronome, we'll have a couple of important features. You want to make sure you get one that has the ability to plug headphones into it. Especially if you're a drummer, because the speaker on this is never going to be loud enough for you to hear it while you're playing drums or even to be honest, playing most instruments. So you want something with a headphone adapter and you also wanna make sure that you have something where you can easily change the tempo. So they all have the ability to change the tempo, but some of them will go up in increments of three or four. Just make sure it's something that you can adjust the tempo evenly. And last but not least, it's important to have one that you can clearly, visually see as well, that it's easy to see the display because sometimes when you're playing, you're going to want to just check and check on visually where you're at in terms of the time. And much like the tuner, you can download these off of most apps stores, there's almost always a free one. Sometimes they're not great. But for a dollar or two, you can upgrade and get a more advanced metronome, which will work great. And this is going to cost you about $30. So a dollar or two on an app store to upgrade the free version is often what I recommend for my students. 42. How to create a furtile musical home: I'm Todd, the music coach, and welcome to this video where we're going to talk about how to create a fertile ground for a musical home to grow. I'm sure that you've had the experience of walking into someone else's house for a party or a holiday. And it seems like everyone is musical, like people picking up guitars and sitting at pianos and singing along. And it just seems like it's all natural and it's happening and it's really beautiful. And you may have wondered like, how does that happen? How do those homes happen? And unfortunately, you might think, well, those people are, that's a musical family. And their, their musical, and I'm not, and that's the reason why we don't have that. And that's a complete and total lie. The truth behind it is that those people found a way to create a fertile ground for people to feel safe and express themselves and challenge themselves and set goals so that they could play music together. And they probably did all of this without even really knowing that that's what they were doing. So I'm going to lay it out free, explain how this actually happens. So in my family home, there were no musicians. My parents loved music, but they didn't play. I didn't grow up watching people play. And both my brother and I ended up being professional musicians. So you might go, How did that happen? And there were a lot of things that my parents did that I think they didn't even realize that they were doing. One really simple thing is we listened to music and we talked about what we liked about it. And hearing them share that with me was really invaluable. And we took long car rides. We would listen to, I know that my parents, there was an oldies stations that they really liked, which was like fifties and sixties rock. And we had dialogues about like who is that artists and when did you first hear that? And they would share stories with me about where they were when they heard that song or what kind of meaning it had to them. So a great way to set this up for yourself is in your own home, you can initiate it. And a great way to do it is to allow everyone a chance, even if you've got little people in your life to share a piece of music that they feel moved by. And feeling moved by music can be all sorts of different feelings. It doesn't have to just make B the song makes me feel happy. It can be this song makes me feel sad or the song makes me feel like agitated, or it's just what you're looking for, something that makes you feel something. And a good forum for that is to go to the living room and decide that we're going to we're going to spend a half an hour doing this and everybody gets to pick one song. You might wanna set some ground rules where, you know there's not gonna be any songs with any swearing editor inappropriate, whatever for your family, you feel as appropriate. And then while you put your song on, everybody agrees to be in silence and really listening. And this just developed so much good ability, not just for music, but just the ability to sit for three to five minutes at a time and really listen to what's going on around you is such an important life skill that will really have a huge impact on everyone. And you might want to set some other very simple ground rules, which is, it's like the everything I learned, I learned in kindergarten, which is if you don't have anything nice to say, you don't have to say anything. It's better not to say something really negative. Because. People are sharing something that means something to them. And learning how to have that dialogue is important to be able to say, it's not to my taste, instead of it's socks or I don't like that song or it's the same way that we teach each other how someone prepares a beautiful meal for you and it's something you don't like to eat. You can talk to them about that in a way that's not going to hurt their feelings in music is the same way. You can then expand on this game by adding in some other artistic elements. One really fun one that I like to do is do the same thing, put on a piece of music. Everyone gets to bring something that they feel moved by. And everybody just takes a piece of paper and during that time, they just draw or sketch something that they feel is connected to their experience of that music. And then everybody can share that with each other and talk about, well, I shaded this thing this way because it made me feel good to think of a cloud, or it made me think of a tree, or it made me think of this or that. And again, it's, it's an exercise in not being critical. It's just expressing yourself through art while listening at the same time. And another variation of it can be to do the same thing of having a listening circle and have everyone write down an idea for a short story. Something that they either through the lyrics, if it has that kind of thing in it or if it's instrumental, just talk about ice. You know, I'm seeing a story about somebody walking their dog in the woods when I hear this. And again, as long as no one is being harsh with each other about it, it's a really neat window into how we all experience music differently. Making time to watch movies that are about famous musicians are famous music is also another great way to help get a really fertile ground for music going in your own home. There are tons of great documentaries about all sorts of things, about the backup musicians in Motown or you know, even about famous composers like Mozart and Johnny Cash and Ray Charles. You can watch and discuss and talk about what their music, the music of that artist, or what the story of that musician, how it, what you thought about it and what it meant to you. The more you share your own experience with other people about how music moves you, the more it grows inside of you and more passion that you have for it with all of us traveling and car so much these days. Another great musical fertilization that you can do is to plan on having music on car trips and really having people listen for a lot of us. Actually, the best stereo that you're going to own is going to be in your car. Car stereos are usually quite high-quality, So it's a great way to experience music. One thing that's happened, unfortunately, as we've gotten into more individual devices of smartphones and mean it started with Walkmans and CD players and things like that is we tend to experience music isolated. Each person will have earphones in and be in their own world experiencing music, which in a way is great. It's nice to have some personal time with music. But one of the things we've really lost is the connection and the sharing of our joy with each other. So trying to set that up on, on travel, times together with your family can be great or with your friends and just talking about and sharing it and letting everybody have a turn with the stereo and okay. 43. How to create a sucessfull practice routine: Hi, I'm Todd, the music coach. And in this video, I'm going to be talking about how to set yourself up for long-term success when you're practicing music and learning an instrument. The biggest challenge I've found, not only for me personally, but for most of my students. It's not the technical requirements of whatever instrument they are playing, or even how much innate ability that they have when they start. The biggest challenge people have with consistently making progress in music has to do with their practice habits. And for most of us, we have a negative reaction to that idea. Even practice habits, discipline these things. We feel like we get tense about it. And adjusting your relationship to those ideas will open you up to being able to fully embrace all of your abilities and really take giant leaps forward in your playing. I know for me personally, I realized early on I had to change my relationship to what I thought practicing meant, how it worked, what I thought discipline meant. And I had to really re-frame in my mind what it meant to play an instrument. This has a lot to do with where the way we're, we're perceive learning a musical instrument and society unfortunately is largely negative. You've probably seen this mostly what you get fed in the outer surroundings is that some people have talent and some people don't have talent. And when you go to a concert and you watch someone play, you think, well, they're just have it. And that's why they sound amazing. And this doesn't in any way reflect reality. It may be that they had some natural ability, but there's thousands of hours that went into what you're seeing when you see someone performing in a professional context. Then the question becomes, well, how did they get from not playing it all to having the discipline and the patients and learning the right things to get all the way through that process. And although musicians will give you a variety of different answers, I think the best way to do it is to find a healthy way that's realistic and is repeatable. So what first key to having real success in your practicing is to set goals. Because like anything else in life, if you have an idea of where you wanna go, It's a lot easier to tell where you are in that journey. Rather than just a loose idea of like, I want to learn how to play this instrument. And if you have that thought and it just sort of dissipates out into the air. When things get difficult, you're more likely to quit because it's like, where am I in the middle of that journey? As opposed to you could say, my goal is I want to, for example, I want to play the piano and I want to learn how to play these three songs in the next year. And he may have no idea how you're gonna do it, but even just having that goal is going to help propel you along. And when you hit rough patches, you can check in with yourself and your goals and you go, Am I doing the things that I need to get to my goal? A good goal to think about when you're playing a musical instrument is how to get to a place where you can make music with other people. Music throughout human history has always been a community event. It's only in the last few 100 years that it's sort of moved into conservatories and into school settings. And we've isolated from each other. And somehow we've lost the idea that the point of it is that you can actually make music with another real life human being. So my suggestion, if you're not quite sure what goal to set, I'd pick a goal that involves eventually playing with other people. Whether that's joining a band or just playing with a friend and going like my friend also plays the guitar and I want to be able to play the same song so we can play together. Another really big key to long-term success with practicing is finding a consistent time of day that you're the best frame of mind and being to practice in. And this is different for everybody and which is why there is no one answer of everyone should practice like at five o'clock or I mean, that's not helpful for anybody. We all have different lives and different schedules and commitments. I suggest you experiment around with it a bit. I found for me personally, I feel the best practicing early in the morning. And for me it's just I find my mind is very clear and relaxed and I haven't been sort of inundated with emails and phone calls and other commitments. And I set aside a small amount of time, not every day of the week, but four or five days a week. Because I'm a professional musician, I have to work on a lot of things, but for you it might be one or two times a week and I block off that time and when I'm there, I'm as present as I can be and I'm working on my goals to get me closer to where I wanna go next. Some things to think about, about when the time of day is going to be, when you're gonna practice, are make sure you have had enough sleep. So waking up too early if you're going to bed too late is not going to be ideal. Make sure that you've had something to eat. If you're really hungry, like if you get home from work or school and you're starving, it's not going to be ideal for your nervous system in your body to be in a calm place. So make sure that you've had something to eat. But you also may find you don't want to play right after you eat something because you might feel a bit full. So these are things to think about about where in your day you're going to plan to have your practice time. When it comes to practicing, quality is so much more important than quantity. Unfortunately, you may have even already heard from other music teachers that you gotta practice for an hour every day or half an hour every day or so many hours per week. And this information isn't really helpful because the quality of the time you're putting in is what's really important. If you were to take the same approach to eating food and say, well, the way you get nourishment and your body is you sit at the dinner table for 45 minutes. It's missing so much of the point. There are so many other factors. Are you eating too much or you are not eating healthy foods? Are united eating at all? Are you just sitting there and practicing music is the same. You can sit down with your instrument for an hour and not only make no progress, you can actually regress because if you're reinforcing bad habits, then you're not actually you actually making your playing worse. So what I like to tell my students is focus on the quality. Five minutes of really focused practice can change your life forever. I know for me it's that way. I had this. I had to start out by getting the routine working first rather than trying to figure out what I was going to even practice. So picking a small thing and being consistent with it. And when you're there, challenging yourself to do a little more of it each time is the best way to go. Now in life, things are gonna come up. You're gonna get sick. You're going to have to travel places. You're going to have holidays, all of these things. And it's important to be flexible with your practice routine and to think a little bit into the future. And so for me, for example, when I'm planning, when I'm going to be practicing, i'm taking into account some of those factors, the ones that I can control anyway. So like if I know that I've got family coming to visit and I'm going to be busy entertaining people and doing things. I will suddenly is put my practice routine on hold to give my full attention to that. Knowing that when the time is right, I'm going to come back and be fully focused rather than trying to ram in practice time when you're distracted with other things. The same can be true of getting sick, having a cold and flu, something like that. I would say it's good to have a break from things. And always when you're practicing, you want to be in a good frame of mind and being. Because you're not just practicing musical information, you're training your body to have a relationship with the gaining of musical language. And if your body is in a frenetic state, every time you do that, when you go to touch your instrument, it literally will reset your brain to feel anxious and upset. Now the other side of that is that if you can train yourself to be calm and presence every time you're with your instrument. Pretty soon after a while, you'll just go over and pick it up and your body will come into a calm place. Before I practice, I like to take a moment and before I even touched the instrument or put it together and just see if I can get myself. I sometimes close my eyes and take a few deep breaths and try and get myself into a very calm place because I want to reinforce that with everything that I'm learning. If you don't have any experience with meditation, I highly recommend that through whatever form you can find, you find a good practice that's small and to the point where you can get yourself into a calm and relaxed place before you start. Another key element to actually getting towards your goals is to make sure to always be challenging yourself. There's this fine line when you're learning new things between going over what you already know and challenging yourself to do something new. And the balance, you might think, well, once I learned how to do a few things, I'm only just going to ever wanna do those things over and over again. But what will happen is you'll start to get bored with what you can already do. And a good thing I like to tell my students is you should always be feeling a little bit uncomfortable when you're practicing. And I don't mean like nervous and agitated, but you should be doing things where you're not getting it right all the time. Because you want to be that's a sign that you are actually working on something that's making you better. It's the whole point of practicing in the first place. I work on things on my own so that when I go play with other people, I can have more things that I can express. Not so that I can just repeat the same things that I already know how to do over and over again. 44. Flute tuning: Hello, my name is Todd border, the founder, the music coach. And in this short video, I'm going to show you how to tune your flutes. Now, the flute is made up of three different sections, and the bottom piece is always going to be fit as snugly is it can against the middle section of the flu, where you can adjust the pitch on a flute is with the head joint, how it fits into the body. In a very basic sense, to make the flute goes sharper. We're going to shorten the length of the whole instrument by screwing the head joint as foreign as possible. And to make it flatter will do the opposite, which is to screw that had joined out. And if you're not quite sure which sharpened flat means, basically, when a note is sharp or it is too high in pitch, and when a node is flat, it's going to be too low in pitch. And on the tuner, you're gonna see the notice to sharp is going to be the needles Give Me too far to the right. And when it's flat, it's going to be too far to the left. You're going to need a chromatic tuner, and there are two ways that you can get them. The easiest way is to go to the app store of a mobile phone or a tablet, download, either a free tuner or you can sometimes play one or $2 to get a more advanced one. And these are, these are great and they often will have all the features that you're going to need. If you live near a music store, you can also get a physical tuner, which is like the one we're using in this video here. They all basically do the same thing. When you turn the tuner on. The first thing I want you to notice is somewhere it's going to say on the display 440. And that number is really important because it's the calibration of the tuner. And they're all set to be. The default is 440, but they, most tuners have the ability to change that. And for now you're not really going to need to ever do that, but I just want you to be aware of it to make sure that number always says 440. And if it doesn't, if it says for 38 or 4045, I want to use the calibration buttons to get it to be 440. And that way you're always going to be tuning to the standard tuning of North America and Europe. The next thing we want you to do is to warm up the instrument a little bit. If you just put the flute together and turn on the tuner and go because the instruments cold, you won't get a very accurate reading. So make sure to play for a minute or two. You can just play long tones or play whatever you want. Just make sure there's a lot of air that's gone through the instrument to warm up the metal. Once you're ready to actually use the tuner, you're going to make sure that it's on. And what I want you to do is to play a note that's in the middle of the instrument. So in this example, we're going to use a G. If you choose a really low note or a really high note, it's going to give you a less accurate reading of where the middle of the instrument is, because no instruments are perfectly in tune on every single notes. We're just gonna kinda use the middle to get it as close as we can. Now when you play your note, I don't want you to look right at the tuner, play the note and get it established, and then look at the tuner. And that'll give you a sense of where it is because I don't want you to make adjustments. I want you to actually see whether the thing is in tune or not. Here we going to play a G. So it's pretty well in tune. It's never going to stay right on the needle the whole time. So don't worry about it if it's moving a little bit this way or that way. But in this example, I'm going to make the instrument flat. I've pulled the head joined out. And here's what it sounds like. I'm gonna get it closer to the middle. So I'm going to screw the head joint back in to make the instrument shorter. And there it is. Another thing I recommend is tune a note in another register. So I'm going to tune the middle D to also hear how that sounding. And there you have it. Remember to head on over to your music coach.com for a free beginner flute lesson. Thanks for stopping by and I look forward to seeing you soon. 45. MC breathing Exercise: We're now going to do a reading exercise. You're going to inhale to the count of four, hold to the count of eight, and exhale to the count of eight. And we're gonna do it four times. 12. Ready? Begin, inhale 1234, hold 12345678, exhale 12345678, inhale 1234 hold 12345678, exhale 12345678, inhale 1234 hold 12345678, exhale 12345678, inhale one, 234 hold 12345678, exhale 12345678.