I woke up with a strong urge to play a few tunes and realized I haven't paid you any attention for quite some time already. I am sorry. Life can get too distracting at times.
Anyway, thank you for providing me the outlet to pour out my emotions and I feel much better already. Thank you flute. I shall name you Flutina no matter how corny it sounds. Just know you have an elder sister Eterna the piano who is now long lost and adopted by another family.
A Saturday morning pix with Flutina, my first and only flute:
I haven't touched my flute for almost 2 months. The bag was collecting a fair bit of dust but of course my baby is still in pristine condition. After all she is less than a year old and already she's being neglected! Sorry dear!
I still can blow some sound out, oh
I still remember the basics and the almost 'gruelling' four months of classes - although I am quickly out of breath as I am out of practice. Haha.
I make a mental note to at least practice 10 mins on a weekly basis, let's start from that and we will see if we can increase the time/frequency.
Some pix of my baby (and the case), all sparkly and dust never settled on them:
I have put a stop to my classes after four months (4 classes a month).
There are several reasons:
1. Work/travelling schedule
2. Lack of practice means little progress week by week hence I feel that forking out over a Hundred bucks a month with so little progress has gotta stop until I can pick it up again, with more time to practice.
Hubby gloats and said "as expected"... hey, I'm not stopping forever! Wait till mid-year, I may just pick it up again!!!
My flute teacher said my yellow tone on my flute is too 'yellow', meaning, it's supposed to be soft tone, but mine is too soft, it lacks energy, I blame lack of practice for that lack of energy.
Planning to devote more time to practise my flute in January next year after the series of deadlines are over! I'll have two full months of somewhat free time to do leisurely things! *glee* In the meanwhile, just gotta bear with the lack of energy (lack of breath).
There is another reason of me taking up flute as my second musical instrument. To de-stress.
I feel kinda stressed in real life, and I miss my piano (which my parents sold off the moment I got engaged to my then-bf, now my hubby), so I decided to start playing a 'lighter' and more mobile musical instrument, mostly to de-stress and rediscover the passion of letting myself lose myself in music again. It's been more than a decade, actually more than a dozen years after I completed my Grade 8 in piano and almost as long to abandon serious music playing since the turn of the millennium.
The box of my then-brand-new flute, got this for myself end Sept just before my birthday in this year, 2011, this is the Yamaha YFL-211 model, fork up some extra money for the Split-E mechanism and I read enough to tell me that it will be worth it when I hit the high 'E' once I get better in the future. I guess emotions are as fragile as the sign on the box.
Yamaha YFL-211 model is my choice of student flute. It comes with a nice bag with an optional sling strap for easier/more convenient mobility. Oh, I'm NOT selling it, btw, I teach copywriting/writing for a living, hence my descriptive product introduction here, lol.
Anyway, I digress. Now, I have trouble in de-stressing. It's a vicious circle. You play music to de-stress and you need to de-stress before you can fully enjoy playing the music.. it's like a chicken and egg situation. When you are stressed, the air/energy flow within just isn't the same as when you are more relaxed, hence when you are blowing the flute, the space within, the embouchure, I think, isn't exactly ideal for the perfect tone. Arggh. I need to loosen up and cheer up. Funny how all the positive terms tend to have the word 'up' in them. I have to buck up then!!!
I thought I've blogged about my flute lessons or more specifically my flute instructor, as I first referred to him previously, but it seemed that any mention of my flute teacher was mostly on fb, and he isn't my fb friend up to this point, so here's a little post about him.
Let me recap what I blogged about him in my first ever post in my other blog.
He is a gentleman, very polite and cautious when body/skin contact has to occur, and he even asked for permission and apologised in the few instances he needed to touch my fingers or wrist to adjust my posture, and my jaw, to allow the air to be blown in the correct way, and the numerous tensed movements I tend to make.
Okay, that's my No.1 problem during my lessons, I tend to be tensed and couldn't leave my worries and 'stress' at the doorsteps and brought all that into my lessons, I think he's as frustrated as I was. Music is infectious, so is stress. Try being cooped up in a small enclosure for more than 15 minutes with a stressed out person, one-on-one... sure infected by the frustration and the negative vibe one.
Each week, he'll say relax, don't be so stressed, relax, or else you'll have no 'energy' or 'support' from within to play the flute, etc.etc, and each week I give the same feedback to my husband, and THREE months on, after my weekly class, I told my husband my teacher asked me to relax more and my hubby said: "I think that's very consistent" and he almost rolled his eyes.
Anyway, my teacher is oh so very young! He's at least 10 years younger than me. Fresh out from his first Diploma, and taking on a specialised Diploma in Flute with hopes to further his music studies overseas in two years time. Good to have a passion in life to follow through! We do chit chat a bit during the short breaks and also at the end of the lesson while cleaning and polishing our flutes.
Well, there are three reasons why I wanted to take up flute as my second musical instrument:
1. I've always wanted to learn to play the flute since I was a schoolgirl in my early teens.
2. I want to take my mind off my state of childlessness and the 'stress' of not having something I cannot have YET, so instead of stressing myself out over something I cannot control, it's better I learn a new skill that at least I can master and control and it is a good distraction, albeit an expensive one. :-)
3. I love the oboe and flute, especially after listening to "Gabriel's Oboe", and its variations, Nella Fantasia (popularised by Sarah Brightman), and the recent "Whispers in the Wind" by Hayley Westernra.
Oh, I love the song so much (point no.3 above)!
Sarah Brightman's version in Italian, Nella Fantasia:
Hayley Westenra's version (2011) with the original composer helping her
with her newest album, English title of the song becomes Whispers in
the Dream:
Flute (originally composed as Gabriel's Oboe): - This kid from HK has
his own flute video channel on youtube and he's a really hardworking
kid:
I've been telling my teacher Gabriel's Oboe/Nella Fantasia/Whispers in the Wind is the song that motivates me to play the flute and he was like !!??!! then he paused and said: Good, have a high aim.
So good luck to me and to him too for having this 'too adult' student, a term I coined for being 'too much of an adult' by overthinking every time I wanna play the flute and fail to relax, lol.
