Sir James Galway at the Texas Music Educators Association Convention

I had the pleasure of meeting Sir James Galway after an "informal conversation session" at the Texas Music Educators Association Convention yesterday.

He delighted the many attendees with his witty responses, personal stories, and opinions and advice in response to questions on flutes, recording, warm-up routines, and flute pedagogy.

Here are a few of the things I learned:

• Sir James uses top-of-the-line Neumann microphones for all of his audio and video recording.
• In response to a question of maintaining physical flexibility, Sir James proudly announced his age, 68, and suggested shoulder stretches for range of motion, forearm and hand self-massage, and, when nothing else works… just keep playing and enjoy the music!
• He practices studies regularly from the Moyse’s De la Sonorité and advocates practicing scales and patterns always with the best tone and musical expression and style. He pointed out an obvious, but seldom considered, fact: if you practice scales and patterns in a boring, unmusical, way, not only is practicing boring, but you are actually practicing to play boring and unmusical music (music is largely created from these patterns)!
• He also advocates practice of the Boehm Caprices and Andersen Etudes, in particular, to develop a fluid technique and legato while maintaining tone and musical expression.

I encourage you to join to Sir James online forum, Galway Flute Chat (Yahoo group) and to watch the videos posted at http://www.thegalwaynetwork.com/ for access to Sir James’ teaching and thoughts.

Many thanks to Sir James for reminding us that joy and expression give meaning to music-making--and to life!


I also attended the fine Valentine’s Day evening concert performance by Sir James and Lady Jeanne Galway with the San Antonio Symphony. They performed the Cimarosa Concerto in G Major for 2 Flutes and a lively encore, an arrangement of “Rondo Alla Turca” from the Mozart Piano Sonata, K. 331. They clearly had great fun together on stage!

After intermission, Sir James performed “The Pied Piper Fantasy” by John Corigliano, attired in festive costume and joined by dozens of local young flutists performing with Sir James while parading on stage and following him out of the theater. Quite a spectacle!

Sir James’ final encore, Badinerie from the J.S. Bach Suite in B Minor, BWV 1067, brilliantly played, was a rousing ending to an evening celebrating the love of music-making and flute-playing—perfect for Valentine’s Day.

I will post more notes from other clinics and events I attended at the TMEA Convention later this week in the LeGrand Virtual Studio.

Best,
Catherine

Chromatic Exercise

Hello,

Did you ever notice that your chromatic scale is wonderful starting on one pitch, but chromatic scales starting on another pitch or chromatic passages of irregular length in your music are uneven?

I have posted an outline of my Chromatic Exercises in the Articles/Documents section of the LeGrand Virtual Studio.

This exercise will cure that problem!

Soon, you will notice improved evenness in your technical passages, and probably an improved hand position, too!

Best practiced without looking at anything. Use both your ears and both your eyes, and concentrate on good body position and hand postion while working on these exercises.


Best,
Catherine

Scale Exam Cheat Sheets

SHOCKING! Well, it's that time of the semester for college students--"cramming for scale juries" time. I hope these documents (added in the ARTICLES/DOCUMENTS Section as pdf's) are helpful. They are, of course, not intended for use in the exam, but rather to serve as a guide during practice and study time:


Full Range Major Scales (Flutes): This is a road map of start note, highest note, lowest note and ending note for each major scale. Notes in parentheses are optional substitute notes-- dominant of the scale.

Thirds Typed: All 12 Major Scales in Thirds on one page! Print out the document and highlight the scale notes (basically every other pitch) to keep from losing your place. Notes in parentheses are optional substitute notes.

Minor Scale Cheat Sheet: A chart which lists the M/m key names and #6 and #7 notes for each minor scale all on one page.

7th Chords: A chart listing all forms of 7th chords for each root note--all on one page. Bolded note indicates which note changed from the previous chord.

7th chords are triads (3 stacked line or space notes) with an additional 3rd on top creating a 4 note pattern in each octave. It is helpful to review the forms of triads before studying 7th chords.

Triad forms:

• Major triad: Major 3rd (4 half steps) with a minor 3rd (3 half steps) on top
• minor triad: minor 3rd with a Major 3rd on top
• diminished triad: minor 3rd with a minor 3rd on top

Forms of 7th chords:

• MM7--Major triad with Major 7th
• Mm7 (Dominant 7)--Major triad with minor 7th
• mm7--minor triad with minor 7th
• half-diminished 7--diminished triad with Major 3rd on top
• fully diminished 7--diminished triad with minor 3rd on top

May your practice go smoothly and without haste.

Catherine

Navigating minor scales

This post provides a map for navigating half steps in minor scales.

I suggest first practicing only the pairs of notes listed in the chart for each scale, up and down the scale, providing an aural map of the location of the half steps in that scale, then filling in the remaining intervals--which will all be whole steps--to complete the scale.

Also check out the following sites for additional ideas on learning/practicing minor scales:

http://www.musictheory.net/lessons/html/id22_en.html

http://www.teoria.com/exercises/scales.htm

http://www.emusictheory.com/drillScales.html

The following charts are also posted in the ARTICLES/DOCUMENTS section of the Virtual Studio in pdf form.

Happy Navigating!
Catherine