Greetings and welcome to a new Flute Friday! I’ve discussed perfectionism a lot on this platform in several past blog posts. Performing musicians are often tasked with somehow achieving excellence/near perfection in our performances, whether that objective is self-imposed or demanded by a conductor or well-meaning teacher. On the path to perfection (which, let’s be honest doesn’t exist as the definition of “perfect” is really based on different perspectives), we often meet perfection’s annoying little sister, criticism. Before I launch into today’s discussion, I just want to offer the disclaim ..read more

Greetings and welcome new a new, yet belated, Flute “Friday.” I had a completely different topic planned for this week until I attended a meeting yesterday where we discussed how best to prepare for grad school interviews. I was reminded that my experience outside of music at a day job in HR, coupled with my background as a mentor in a University staff mentoring program, and my personal climb up the staff payroll ladder over the past decade, has left me with a bit of expertise when it comes to interviewing. Interviewing is a skill required for entry into numerous industries, including teaching ..read more

Greetings and welcome to a new Flute Friday! Some of you may have noticed that I vanished from the internet for the past several weeks. The holiday chaos and a nasty cough (that lasted over a month!) forced me to take a step back and focus on healing and reflection. My own body begged me to take a break! I had indeed been doing too much in the last half of 2023 and reached a breaking point. Normally during the first couple of weeks in January, I, like many, create an impressively long list of New Years Resolutions, both in my flute and personal lives. And then I roll up my sleeves and get to w ..read more

Greetings and welcome to a new Flute Friday. Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com As we round the corner into The Holiday Break, I find myself reminiscing on the past year. I don’t know about you, but I’ve learned a lot about the person that I am and the person that I want to be. I’ve also learned a lot about the teacher I want to be. Some of these lessons have been introduced through super awesome sessions with my students and others through observations in various other environments. One of the biggest puzzles I’ve struggled with is the value of being “direct.” Today I am sharing some o ..read more

Greetings and welcome to a brand-new Flute Friday. Each year around this time I publish a list of great flute-based gift ideas for those of you shopping for the flutist in your life (or for you to hand to various family members searching for fun gifts). This year’s list will also include a few fun items to hand out to your students. If you have other recommendations for flute gifts, please comment below! Happy shopping! Photo by George Dolgikh on Pexels.com Dr. G’s Annual Flute Gift Guide Flute Hats. These are all the rage with my students! You can purchase some great basic flute hats at the C ..read more

Greetings and welcome to a new Flute Friday! A few weeks ago, one of my new beginning flute students asked me about the correct way to align her foot joint with the body of the flute, a topic we had discussed at our first lesson. I showed her my own instrument and explained that the rod on the foot joint is typically lined up with the middle of the bottom key on the body of the flute, which she already had aligned correctly on her own flute. She explained to me that her band director at school had told the class to instead align the rods on both the body of the flute and the foot joint. We wil ..read more

Greetings and welcome to a new Flute Friday! A large section of my flute studio is comprised of beginning flute students. There is a certain magic in learning the flute from the ground up. Everything is new and interesting. There are achievable challenges and brand-new goals with each lesson. The newness of learning the first few notes often masks the frustration that some students face when the learning process is slow-going. We teachers know that learning an instrument takes time, patience, and practice. How, then, do we keep students engaged while they are still developing basic skills? Ga ..read more

Greetings and welcome to a new, albeit late, Flute Friday/Saturday! AI, or artificial intelligence, is a hot topic these days among us writers. Programs like Chat GPT have made it possible for anyone with a phone and a basic topic to request on-demand blog posts, articles, papers, and so much more with a single click. Yet, the substance of these Frankenstein-style writings is often questionable, and at the very least canned, boring, and lifeless. Okay, maybe I am biased as a writer, married to a writing instructor, but I know we can do better! This week I decided to put Chat GPT to the Flute F ..read more

Greetings and welcome to a new Flute Friday! While I was at the National Flute Association Convention this year, I noticed something rather interesting about the way flutists introduced themselves to each other. Many of us tend to use two major things as descriptive calling cards that only folks in the flutist community would understand: 1.) Who we studied with, and 2.) Where we got our degrees. Yet, this seems to suggest that who we are as flutists is based heavily on formulas, which I don’t think is quite true. Yes, some of our approaches may be derived from who we studied with, but our post ..read more

Greetings and welcome to a new Flute Friday! Photo by Charles Parker on Pexels.com Happy September! As we dive head-first into a new school year (with Iced Pumpkin-Spiced Lattes in hand, of course), many of us will be welcoming new students into our flute studios. Some of these students may be sporting shiny new instruments while others may be borrowing their aunt’s old Bundy models from the 1970s (I was definitely in the second group myself when I began learning to play the flute). Both types of instruments can run into major and minor repair needs as students begin to practice more often, so ..read more