Today’s flute practice tips will focus on the piece ‘Take 5’ from the grade 3 AMEB flute syllabus.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Today i’m going to give you some practice tips on how to play the piece take 5 from the Australian music examinations board flute syllabus for grade 3. So in this video i’m going to cover how to switch from a classical feel into the more relaxed jazz feel that this piece requires. I’ll also cover slower practice speeds and specific areas where mistakes are made and how to iron them out and i’ll cover the four/ five feel and what to listen for in the piano, and i’ll also cover how to break the piece into different sections so you’re not trying to tackle the whole piece all at once so i’ll play the piece first and then i’ll go into the practice tips.
[Music]
Okay so the first tip i’m going to cover is how to switch from a classical feel to a jazz fill so the first thing you want to do when you approach this piece is take the swing out of it so you’re just going to learn the notes and play the quavers straight so i like to use my metronome and put it on 90 but you could put it on slower or faster if you like but for me i’ll start with 90. and i’m just going to play the beginning with just this easy straight feel.
[Music]
So you want to keep it really straight really boring and just be really clear about exactly what the rhythm is now to introduce the swing i would practice just on a d so in in jazz we want to emphasise the second note of each quaver group so if we say we had eight quaver groups which sounded like this if we switch it into a jazz field we’re going to emphasise the second uh quaver which sounds like this all right but then we’re going to elongate the first part of the the first quaver and shorten the second quaver which is accented so it will sound like this so once you get the hang of that you might need to practice that a few time i would stick on the metronome and try and then once you’ve got that then just start to play the opening phrase.
[Music]
and a section that is really good to practice this bit on is in bar uh 12 13 where you’ve got that little run-up[Music]
So next i want to talk about areas where mistakes are often made and this has to do with the sequence of notes that are chroma some are chromatic in nature meaning small steps and others are not chromatic meaning tones as opposed to semitones so basically from bar 10 and bar 11 and bar 12 13. Um you want to just isolate the quaver areas so we’ve got and then bar 11 bar 12 and then 13. so if you can just sort the notes out for this section um this is going to help you really learn the piece faster so i would again put my metronome on and i wouldn’t worry about the other notes just the quaver bits and i actually would probably put this the metronome down to 70 slower just so your brain can take in the actual notes and just do it straight and not in the swing fill so let’s do that three times so you can play along with me if you like one two
[Music]
so let’s do that again from bar ten one
[Music]
and the third time but one two three
[Music]
so after you’ve practiced that a few times at a slower pace uh without swinging it now you can add in the swing so again we put on our metronome crochet equals 70 and we’ll do the same spot but with a swing fill so one two
[Music]
so you might do that three times for example and then maybe bump it up bump it up to say 90 depending on how accurately you’re playing the notes so let’s do it together one two one
[Music]
next i want to talk about the four or five feel this can feel a bit strange to play because we’re usually used to playing in four four or three four or two four or six eight so five four is that uneven number that can throw you sometimes in this piece but there is an easy way to know where you are in the bar and that comes from the piano part for example if we just listen to the piano part by itself four five four five four five so the piano has that um so if you’re not sure where you are in the bar just listen for the four five four five four five and that’ll tell you where you are so let’s listen to the piano now four five four five four five
[Music]
and the last step i want to talk about is the end of the piece now for examination purposes you don’t need to play the repeats in this piece um but just to iron out any um uncertainty about what the rhythm actually is from bar 19 onwards think of it like this one two three one two three one two three one and just keeps continuing like that so and right at the end there um in the second last bar just if you if you’re lost at that point you can just listen to the piano in the second last bar again play the same figure and so it’s that four or five that you’re listening to before you play the downbeat of the next bar so i hope that was helpful for you if you liked this video please give it a thumbs up and if you haven’t subscribed to my channel yet please do so for more videos like this and also you might be interested to check out some of the original music i’ve written for flute of which you can purchase the sheet music i’ll leave the links below in the description so you can check it out if you like.
Bye for now!
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