Musicality and hard graft

I want to talk about musicality and hard work!

As a musician it always feel amazing when you hear words like ‘brilliant’, ‘fantastic’ and ‘excellent’. And whilst I am always so grateful to hear complements like this - because after so long away from the flute (my story is coming soon!) this is definitely not a given - there is something that makes me even happier. And this is when I hear my playing described as portraying ’so much spirit and emotion’, ‘a wonderful musical performance’ and ‘it speaks to my soul’. Because this means that I am doing the thing that I love. Making people *feel* the music. When I play, I feel the music to my core. Knowing that I can use my musicality and skills to help other people feel music too, is just amazing.

But feeling music and expressing music isn’t just about musicality and having that gift. It is about having the technique that will allow you to express yourself through music. And that comes from hours, days, weeks, months and years of hard graft. Creating the beautiful mellow tone that you can hear at the beginning of Doppler’s Hungarian Pastoral Fantasy in this clip, comes from sooooooo much time practising things like long notes, doing tone exercises, learning about air speed and direction, diaphragm support, jaw position and embouchure hole size. This stuff might sound natural and fluid, but anyone who can create a sound like this and control it has spent a huge amount of time putting in hard graft. So if you’re reading this and thinking that the things I’ve mentioned don’t sound familiar to you, or you thought some people can ‘just do this’, it’s time to start being inquisitive about what it takes to be able to do it. Start reading. Start finding exercises and books that are about tone colours and exercises. Marcel Moyse and Trevor Wye’s books are a great place to start.

Happy Practising!