Todays flute practice tips will focus on Eliza Aria from the Grade 3 AMEB flute syllabus.
Feel free to comment below if you have any questions.
Video Transcript:
Hi I am Liz from Flutesoundscapes.com and today i’m going to give you some tips on how to practice Eliza Aria from the Australian Music Examinations Board’s Grade 3 flute syllabus. So in this video i’m going to cover what to listen for in the piano part to help you navigate where you are in the piece because the piece moves fairly quickly. I’ll also point out what what harmonic structure to listen for in the flute part, as well as anchor points in the piece where you are in unison with a piano to help you know if you’re in the right place. I’ll also cover rhythm practice.
So I’ll play the piece first and then i’ll go into the practice tips.
[Music]
So the first thing I want to talk about with this piece is just to give you a sense of where you are in connection to the piano. You want to establish fairly early on what this crotchet beat is and then convert that also to the minum feel, but let’s start with the crotchet beats, and you’ll hear it straight away in the piano- and the line goes like this
[Music]
So straight away that’s giving you your crotchet beat in 4/4 time. Now, because this piece moves quite fast you want to convert it into a minim feel rather than crotchets. So, [Music] that’s your minimum feel that you can latch on to and then when after you come in-the piano has this crotchet moving figure. So it’s one two four, one two four, one two four, one two so on and again that is an anchor point that you can latch on to to keep you moving.
Basically in the flute part there is a harmonic structure that descends and so if you think of the quavers as like decorations and these main crotchets notes as the anchor points. So for example, at the beginning you can hear
[Music]
That’s the downbeat of every bar so think of this these quavers as like little decorative notes.
What I’ve noticed after teaching this piece to a few students is sometimes students struggle with the the rhythm of the beginning of this and what usually happens is either the student rushes or they’re a little late so you want to slow down your practice. If you put your metronome on say maybe 60, and that’ll be your minimum beat, now to get used to this rhythm just play the rhythm on one note let’s say-rather than focusing on the quaver notes – focus on where you’re landing on the beat as opposed to off the beat after the quaver rest.
Then once you’ve you’re feeling secure in that rhythm just on one note then you can start practicing it with the actual notes that are written . It’s also worth practicing this rhythm with the metronome on crotchets as opposed to minims so if we double 60 we get 120, so then what you’re aiming for in the quavers is the anchor point of the downbeat. You you can accent where the notes fall on the beat just for practice purposes not in performance . But just circle or mark where the notes are on the beat and accent them at a slower speed and that’ll help iron out the the rhythm in this section if you’re struggling with it .
Another thing I want to point out is in bar 45 it can feel a little bit strange to come in at this point because the piano seems a little bit unpredictable but the one way you’re going to know if you’ve come in at the right place is because the piano has exactly the same melody line as you- it does have a strange harmonic feel at that point so just listen to the piano a couple of times and and you’ll know if you’re in the right spot.
In bar 49 the piano also has unison with you and this is a really good place to practice the the rhythm as well. So you could again, practice- if you haven’t quite learnt all the notes yet-just practice it on the note d or another note and play along with the piano ensuring that you’ve got the same rhythm.
So that’s it for today! If you like this video please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing to my channel for more practice tips like this, and also you might be interested in checking out some of the original music that I’ve written for flute of which you can purchase the sheet music if you like it. I’ll leave the links down below in the description so you can check it out if you like. Thanks for listening and bye for now!
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