Category: practice
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New Work for Piccolo (or any instrument) with Video Score
Last April I had a chance play at the Flute Festival of Krakow’s Academy of Music, organized by the wonderful Wiesiek Suruło. There I premiered a piece of my own, and had the added bonus of sharing the stage with stellar flutists like Wiesiek, Anna Garzuly-Wahlgren and Sarah Louvion. I want to tell a little…
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Contemporary Music Pedagogy, and Benefits of Teaching Extended Techniques
[This is an excerpt from a questionaire sent to me by Lorenzo Diaz for research purposes. The answers represent my opinions only.] Do you think conservatoires and schools of music really attach importance to contemporary music education? My short answer to your question is “not really” because I think a “Comtemporary Music Education” should require…
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Flute/Audio Geek Question
So, looking through spectral analysis of my different flutes, I notice a strange dip around 10K on my alto flute. It’s as if someone ran a notch filter right at that frequency. (It’s an alto with a straight headjoint, not a curved one.) Here are the examples. They are raw, not processed, all recorded on…
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Electro-Flute
Lately I have been more interested in creating and producing sounds than words. It has been difficult to distill my experiences of the last season in to words, so I have not been blogging. Over this blastedly hot summer “vacation”, I decided to take only Anthony Braxton’s Composition no. 133 with me to practice. Having…
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Some Practice Ideas
A few thoughts after some days of intensive practice. My focus has been awareness of tension, since I have a few sore points on my hands due to an old injury. One concept from yoga has helped me. According to what I have learned, the arm structure is considered an open system, whereas the legs…
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Flute or Piccolo? Composer’s Little Helper
It is still a work in progress, but here is a flow chart to help composers familiarize themselves with the characteristics of the piccolo. As with most of my advice, it is applicable mostly to ensemble writing – with solo works one has a lot more freedom.
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Getting Back in the Saddle
I noticed a strange thing about getting back in shape after the last winter break. I was frustrated and, to be honest, a little frightened at how long it took to retrieve my “norm”, and wondered if it was a dire sign of things to come. I decided to blog about it, not only because…
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Pierre Boulez Dialogue de l’Ombre Double for flute/bass flute
Adapting, recording and releasing the flute/bass flute version of Boulez’ Dialogue de l’Ombre Double has been a ten year labor of love (and frustration). The mischievous flutist inside me listened to this clarinet piece and thought, why doesn’t Boulez write for flute this way? Not to disparage his wonderful works for flute, but his Dialogue…