Helen Bledsoe

Category: contemporary music

  • Contemporary Music: Where’s the Music?

    Funny how memories work. I am left with the lingering conviction, no doubt untrue, that the esthetic of Arnold Schönberg and the Second Viennese School was motivated by peevishness. Not that I was there to remember, but it is the sense I got from student reading and listening to hip lecturers. (For example, I enjoyed…

  • Polyrthythms IV – Practicing Tempo Modulation

    This is a continuation of my previous post, where I use Taffanel/Gaubert’s Exercises Journaliers no. 1 to practice polyrhythms. Check that out before trying these! It will give you the correct placement in the measure for 4:3 and 4:5, which I have not notated here. In these exercises, the metronome stays the same but the…

  • Polyrhythm III Exercise with Taffanel/Gaubert

    Here is the third of my posts on rhythm. You can read the first post here and the second here. I wouldn’t proceed here unless you can perform the exercises of these previous posts. What I like about using Taffanel/Gaubert no. 1 from Exercices Journaliers is that it is a melodic study. In my first…

  • Polyrhythm II

    To read my first post on how to figure out polyrhythms, click here. To internalize an unfamilar polyrhythm, I suggest the following steps: 1) clap and tap the rhythm away from your instrument 2) play it on your instrument, using a single pitch (no moving notes yet) 3) if it’s a difficult passage, play it…

  • Polyrhythms I

    This is the first of a series about practicing complex rhythms related to a pulse, a.k.a. polyrhythms. Why bother practicing polyrhythms? Some of us have been taught that our metronome is our best friend, but how useful is it really? Do we bother to listen to it? If we do, does it ensure us a…

  • Bass Flute ins and outs II – for composers

    Since my last post about composing for bass flute, I’ve taken note of other questions that pop up with regularity. Q: Should I notate the pitches as sounding or transpose up an octave? A: Please transpose them up an octave. Flutists are not used to reading ledger lines below the staff or reading bass clef.…

  • Air & Percussive Sounds for the Flute

     This entry is cross posted on the musikFabrik blog This video gives a brief demonstration of some common air sounds and percussive effects on the flute. Here are some further tips for players and composers: For players, when doing air sounds, it is not always necessary to use as much air as possible. After a…

  • Small-Interval Multiphonics

    On the occasion of the publication of my article on Kazuo Fukushima’s Shun-San in Flute Talk May/June 2010 and Robert Dick’s upcoming masterclass in Bremen (July 6, 2010), I’d like to elucidate some ideas about multiphonics. Working on Shun-San got me thinking about small-interval multiphonics (those with an interval of an augmented second or less).…