The Fabulous School of Music

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Flute

What is a Flute?

A flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an reedless wind instrument.  A flute produces sound when a stream of air directed across a hole in the instrument creates a vibration of air at the hole.  The air stream across this hole creates a siphon.  This excites the air contained in the usually cylindrical resonant cavity within the flute. The player changes the pitch of the sound produced by opening and closing holes in the body of the instrument, thus changing the effective length of the resonator and its corresponding resonant frequency. By varying the air pressure, a flute player can also change the pitch of a note by causing the air in the flute to resonate at a harmonic other than the fundamental frequency without opening or closing any holes.

Flutes are the earliest known musical instruments, known to date back to about 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. These flutes demonstrate that a developed musical tradition existed from the earliest period of modern human presence in Europe.  The size and placement of tone holes, the key mechanism, and the fingering system used to produce the notes in the flute’s range were evolved from 1832 to 1847 by Theobald Boehm, and greatly improved the instrument’s dynamic range and intonation over its predecessors. 

The standard concert flute is pitched in the key of C and has a range of three octaves starting from middle C. The concert flute is one of the highest common orchestral instruments, with the exception of the piccolo, which plays an octave higher.  Although the main use of the flute is in classical music and the symphony orchestra and woodwind ensembles, the flute is also found in jazz and rock music.  Famous flautists are Jean-Pierre Rampal, Julius Baker,  Herbie Mann, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and Peter Gabriel. 

Source: “Flute.Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Teaching Philosophy

Sean Wright teaches flute students at the Fabulous School of Music starting at age 9.  Teaching methods and materials will vary depending on the age and experience of each student. The overall goal for students is to develop an expressive yet analytic style of playing. Students are encouraged to constantly think and make musical decisions about their playing using all of their senses so that they may develop an independent and responsible approach to listening, analyzing, and also performing their music.

For flute, either classical and/or jazz styles can be taught depending on the student’s preference. There is an emphasis on the fundamental skills necessary to create music that is proficient in sound, technique and creativity.  Every student learns to play the notes, but each student is unique with regard to their own personal sound and expression. Listening helps students to play in a way that is in line with their own personal style. For this reason Sean will use professional flute player CD’s as listening exercises for the student, that he will provide.

Some of Sean’s method books used will include the “Rubank’s Flute Method”, “Indispensable Scales”, “Exercises and Etudes for the Developing Flutist” by D. Gilliam & M. McCaskill, and “Melodious and Progressive Studies” by R. Cavally. More advanced students can learn to play from Real Books (the industry standard of jazz tunes) where they can learn the methods of improvisation, transposition, and jazz musicianship. Each lesson is meant to be a fun learning experience where the student grows as a player, learning to create expressive and unique music built upon the fundamentals.