Learning to Play the Flute

7/29/2019 Learning to Play the Flute

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Learning to Play the Flute

It is about seven weeks since I began to play a borrowed flute. I have worked at it for at least anhour each day, with the exception of one week about three weeks after the start when I did not

touch it at all. Since I have worked entirely on my own, except for a few points from the flute's

owner (which could not be regarded as in any sense equivalent to 'lessons'), I do not know how

much of what I have learned to do would be regarded as correct by an expert. But my subjective

experience tells me that I now know all the problems that I still have to solve to play the

instrument fluently and accurately.

I brought to the initial confrontation an ability to play the piano and to sing. In both cases I have

always performed from written music. I can use my voice to reproduce a heard melody but I

have never developed the skill to 'learn' music by this method. I cannot, for example, learn how

to reproduce a base line in four-part harmony merely from listening to the whole thing inperformance (as certain of my friends can). As for the piano, I have never made any progress in

learning to play anything 'by ear' and have always needed written music to play from. I would

probably be classed as a fairly good 'sight reader' in both activities.

I brought, too, to my encounter with the flute a general awareness of its characteristic tone colour

and flexibility from having listened to concertos, chamber music and the like, and from sessions

in which I accompanied a good flautist. I also knew "how it worked', in the sense of knowing

that the fingers are used to alter the length of the vibrating air column by blowing across the

mouthpiece as one blows the top of a bottle or a test-tube to produce a sound.

The first few minutes of holding and blowing the flute showed me that all that I brought with mein the way of experience and expectation was quite unusable. I knew that I had to adapt myself to

the instrument since it could not adapt itself to me, but in the first few minutes I obtained no

indications at all to give me any clues as to what I had to do with myself to meet it on its own

terms. (I was quite shocked to discover that when I held the flute and tried to blow across the

hole I had eliminated any place for my eyes, as I could see neither the hole nor my fingers. For a

few moments I stood in front of a mirror but soon abandoned this. I must have known that this

attempt to rehabilitate the role of sight was an interference with the dialogue that had to take

place.)

But after about half an hour of search within the limited area defined by holding the flute in my

hands and blowing at it near the mouthpiece, I made a recognisable sound and this gave me the

first tenuous link between all that I already knew and what I wanted to be able to do. It gave me

something tangible to work on and I was able to move in several directions: to modify the lip

movements and mouth position in an endeavour to 'clean up' the sound (which was whistling and

hollow) until it approximated more closely to what my ear told me was a more appropriate flute-

like sound, to remove the flute from my mouth and replace it and try to reproduce what I had

already produced, to alter the number of stopped holes with my fingers and try to produce a

different sound. I do not know how I would have behaved if the first note had not appeared soon;


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presumably I only persevered for half an hour because I knew that other people played flutes and

that it was unlikely to be beyond my powers to do the same thing. Whether this certainty would

have been motivation enough if the first note had not come for several days (as can happen in the

case of the flute) I just don't know. But the first note seemed to me to be the first of a number of

'breakthroughs' each of which was a necessary stage in the development of the skill.

The use of the word 'breakthrough' requires some qualification. It suggests points of advance

known in the consciousness. But I realise the term has relativistic and subjective elements in my

use of it. I could have chosen to say that the first breakthrough occurred when I first detected a

defined pitch as a result of blowing rather than delaying its application to the point when the

flute 'spoke' with something like its proper voice. I have also made advances in breathing and

sequential fingering, for example, which I not associate with particular moments of conquest: to

talk of breakthrough in these connections would be to be wise after the event. Nevertheless the

world expresses something about my conscious awareness of certain precise moments of

progress and I have to leave unsettled the question why my consciousness selects some to

emphasise rather than others.

The psychological reality of a breakthrough is not that it shows one has achieved a particular

mastery but rather that it demonstrates concretely what is masterable. The progressive mastery of

a complex skill can be measured roughly by the breakthroughs that have been forgotten because

they no longer seem significant. Present awareness of a breakthrough focuses attention and

mobilises the will to direct all the aspects of the self that are involved in the next stage of

mastery. So that when, for example, I experience the breakthrough of being able, for the first

time, to adjust my lip position and lip muscle tone while still blowing, rather than having to

remove the mouth from the flute and begin again, I had not conquered that particular task (it

could not be recaptured, in fact, on the next occasion that I picked up the flute), but I knew that it

was the next skill for me to work on and that I would, in principle, be able to attain it.

A breakthrough is simultaneously an encouragement and a frustration. It encourages by giving

one the evidence of having achieved something once that can never be achieved again; it

frustrates because it defines a problem that is not yet mastered and which one may not have

known even existed until the breakthrough made it apparent to the consciousness. All this

suggests, of course, that a 'breakthrough' is not a direct description of some mastery of the task

but a particular 'breakthrough into consciousness' of some aspect of the demand made by the

task on the self.

I chose deliberately not to have a teacher to give me any instruction; I did not even get a

fingering chart until about three weeks had elapsed. By the time I had already worked out how to

finger the lower two octaves (which is not such an achievement as it sounds as with two

exceptions the two octaves are fingered in the same way) and could play simple melodies. But

from the start I used written music to play from music which was much too difficult for me to

realise (Handel sonatas, a Mozart concerto, for instance). This was, for me, a technique dictated

by the desire to relate as directly as possible what I was now working on to what I already knew.

It also gave me the occasional moments of sheer joy when I managed to play a bar or a short

phrase well enough to demonstrate to my ear that what I was able to do was recognisably related

to my experience of how that tiny extract should sound. This way of working also enabled me to


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meet each new difficulty in context; in fact I was generally working with several difficulties at

once within the total complexity of the demand of the music on the player. Nevertheless I found

myself attending to particular elements at particular times. My first preoccupation was with

producing the right sounds, then with producing them in approximately the right rhythm.

Intonation was of marginal importance at first. It was several weeks before I seriously considered

the problem of breathing - I just took a new breath when I wanted one at the expense of the flowof the music.

By plunging into the full complexity of endeavouring to play, say, a Handel sonata, I gave

myself a learning situation in which there was always something new to attempt. I have not for

one moment been bored with any of this activity and have usually felt sorry that I became tired

or unable to concentrate for more than an hour at a time. I have not played any 'exercises' which

would, I think, have bored me. My experience is that I have had, after the first few days, when I

was really only concerned to blow notes associated with particular arrangement of the fingers,

two or three problems present to my consciousness which I could work on; and that as a degree

of mastery was achieved in one, another appeared, so that I was still presented with a choice, and

each new problem now emerging contained earlier problems among its elements. For example, ifI consider two current preoccupations, phrasing and speed of articulation, they include all the

problems of lip control, amount and direction of breath, breathing, fingering, and so on. So

although I am able to ignore these earlier problems for most of the time, they are always still

there and attract my attention at times when they fail to 'look after themselves', i. e. when my

unconscious control of them falters. This analysis suggests that by immersing myself in the full

complexity I neither took it all on at once nor did I pick a linear path through the elements; but

rather, I worked on a sub complexity of the whole which expanded by stages until it comprised

(will comprise, I should say) the total field.

It may be relevant to add that when I was preoccupied largely with problems of fingering and

blowing at the right octave, as soon as I could play the right notes for a simple folk tune it held

no further interest for me. I can now return to a very simple tune and try to play it with good

phrasing, tone colour and appropriate dynamics. So an element in the situation is the kind of

challenges I can find in it at any given time, and these change and expand as my awareness of the

situation grows.

Although I brought to the start of my learning an aural acquaintance with some flute music

which gave me criteria for judging the sounds I have produced, I find that these criteria have

changed - or at least have become more subtle and exact. Listening to a record of Rampal

playing Telemann now has a quite different effect from listening to it before I started to play.

The fact that I am now awestruck at his skill, whereas before I would have known at once he was

a fine player, suggests that I can now enter into his account of the music from his side, aware of

much (though certainly not all) that he has to do with himself and his instrument to produce such

results. Perhaps this is the point at which I can introduce, almost for the first time, an analytical

approach which will enable me to use what I hear with my new ears to instruct me more

precisely on my own performance. I can now direct my ear to search for better models than the

one I have already acquired unconsciously.


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It is clear to me that I have relied entirely on my own ears to monitor and advise me in my trial,

error, success, refinement. In the process I have educated my hearing as much as I have educated

my fingers, my lips and my diaphragm. If I had used a teacher I would have added another pair

of ears to the situation and obtained feedback of a sort from those as well (mediated by the

teacher's response to what he heard). The advantage would have been a greater certainty that I

was 'on the right road'. It may have been at the cost of delaying my own aural educationconsiderably.

Although I have often presented myself with the idea of learning to play another instrument I

have never gone about it seriously until now. I am surprised to find out how easy it has been and,

by implication, to wonder why I had not embarked before. But I am unable to answer that

question in any other way than to say that my success indicates that I was in some state of

readiness. I mean by that only that I have never been halted by not knowing what to work on at a

particular time. Even after a week's forced abstention I was able to pick up again precisely where

I had left off as if all the relevant bits of myself were still poised waiting to continue. It is this

feeling that gives me the confidence to say that I now know all the problems that I still need to

solve in detail before I can let myself be heard as a flute player by others.

The rapidity of my progress (for such it seems to me) has some relation to my knowing when it

was best to forget and when to remember. If, for instance, I had not been able to let myself forget

in the early stages exactly what good flute tone was like, or how dexterously the instrument can

be played, I would have been discouraged at the distance I had to go. It happened that I was able

to say, with pleased recognition, after four weeks or so, that I had accidentally produced a 'real'

flute sound. I could then let myself recall it more often and even undertake special experiments

to see what I could do to make the sound I was producing even more flute-like.

I was more conscious of an open conflict in the early days between the spontaneous movements

my fingers would sometimes produce when I was looking at written music - these movementsbeing occasional reflexes related to my piano playing - and the movements I had to will them to

make with a flute in my hands. At moments I would find that I was releasing one finger when

depressing the next, or even moving my right hand fingers to the left to get a lower pitch. At an

intellectual level I could easily say to myself that I had to work in basically the contrary direction

to that used on the piano, but when my awareness of my fingers slipped from me, being

preoccupied with, say, my lips at the time, I would get these errant intrusions. (A piece of

behaviour I cannot at all account for is that I found, during the first couple of weeks, that when I

had assembled the flute I had usually managed to get it with the mouthpiece on the right and had

to ludicrously swivel it through 180 degrees before I could begin.

Now, after seven weeks, I can call upon any of my previously existing knowledge, know-how

and sensitivity whenever I feel I can use it. It is no longer an obstacle - I feel, in fact, that I have

absorbed into my flute playing all the previous systems that I had that are still relevant to the new

job. I can use my singing to suggest when a touch of vibrato, or a slight crescendo-decrescendo

on a sustained note, would be suitable, or my piano playing to suggest phrasings of baroque

figurations. It is as if I had to shut off the past (or most of it) until I had come to terms with what

is unique in playing the flute - that is, the new set of muscles I had to become conscious of and

learn to control voluntarily. Once I had done that, even though I had not obtained mastery of


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these muscles, a bridge had been constructed which connected the old and the new systems. I can

say now that playing the flute 'belongs to me' is a part of my set of competencies; it is no longer

detached or tentative. That sounds arrogant, but I make it as an objective observation. It says no

more than that like, say, writing it belongs to me, however far it is from exhibiting the fluency

and power that I would like it to achieve.

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Learning to Play the Flute