--- James Jennings <jennings@megaseattle.com> wrote:
> At 9:36 AM -0600 5/12/05, Peter Ross wrote:
>
>
> >1) Always sing internally what you are playing
>
> I've tried singing the note just before I play it,
> and keep the
> internal feeling the same as I play.
Hi.
Robert Dick has a flute book with a title something
like "Tone Development Through Extended Technique".
His first exercises are about singing WHILE you play
to open the throat. He gives flute exercises and
suggests playing an 8 note pattern, then singing the
same pattern, then playing and singing simultaneously.
I do not like these exercises because singing in my
range makes a little puff of air every herz of the
note I am singing, giving a flutter tongue effect. I
find my consciousness fragmented by the experience, so
I do not do it. But once I got the feeling of opening
the throat, I was able to do it at will.
Opening the throat improves the air flow (less
turbulence in a wide channel). There is a lot of
magical thinking claiming that the resonant cavities
of the body add resonance to the note. This requires
belief that a frequency travels up the air stream to
the body, is amplified by the body and then
simultaneously with sounds traveling up stream, the
sound travels down stream to the open air, or again
into the flute.
In fact, the resonance is in the flute, in the
standing waves in the air chamber of the flute. This
is what you feel in the fingers covering holes on the
shakuhachi.
I am against poetic imagery with respect to sound
quality. I had a flute instruction once to "fill your
fingers with air." I already have enough garbage in
my mind. I do not want to add to it.
Regards,
John Baker
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