About the Book

Praise for the Workbook...

"I'm so impressed by Nicole's attention to detail and dedication to helping all flutists reach [their] musical potential...I recommend this book to all teachers and students who are at this point in their studies and musical journey." -- Barbara Siesel, The Flute View

From the Introduction...

I have clung steadfastly to my worn copy of Marcel Moyse’s De La Sonorite for decades now, and you should, too—there is no better work-out plan than one designed by a seasoned virtuoso flutist to target every specific challenge on the instrument. But as a teacher, I have often experienced this scenario: Student A starts each lesson with the assigned Moyse tone exercises and shows great improvement every week. And every week as we move on from Moyse to anything else in the pile—etude, orchestral excerpt, or solo repertoire—Student A’s tone is noticeably tighter, less resonant, and less in tune with itself while striving to conquer all of those sixteenth notes on the page. And here’s another, equally common problem: while said student may be making a beautiful sound, there is no sense of phrasing, which continues to be a problem as we work through etude, excerpt, and repertoire. We spend so much time compartmentalizing what we do into finite tasks (play in tune, with clear tone, impeccable technique, etc.) that we can lose sight of the very purpose of all this acquired control over the instrument: to create sonic art. I do not think we should disregard these tasks in an effort to spend more time “making music”. I still feel best when I have had a proper workout session including various aspects of tone, technique, and strictly mechanical woodshedding in my repertoire. But I do think we should make a much more concerted effort to make music out of each of these separate parts.

The following exercises are not mean to replace your workout routine (see the Practice Triad of Triumph below if you’re looking to revise yours), but to supplement that routine, and perhaps to wake up the musical part of your brain a little earlier in your daily practice sessions. All of the musical examples are taken from 19^th and early 20^th century vocal exercise books and can be used as a blank slate for your own musical ideas. They are simple tunes, unfamiliar to us as flutists, and therefore carry with them no emotional baggage about the “right” way to play them, a concept promoted by competitions and orchestral auditions the world ‘round which I find absolutely stultifying. Now, I have made some marks with accompanying text to get you started, but don’t let my mere suggestions limit you; there are bare copies of each vocalise for you to mark as you see fit, and continue to change over and over again as you see fit, as well. I encourage you to use this workbook to explore what expressive effect your various articulations, dynamics, tempi, etc. impose on the notes, and in so doing you will also be expanding your control over the instrument in order to clearly communicate each of these musical ideas to your audience. Start with a good tone warm up and then dive into some of these tunes each day, and commit to keeping that musical part of your brain turned fully “on” for the remainder of your musical work.

The first two sections offer simple vocalises in this way: you have an unadulterated copy, which you should practice first to get to know the tune. Then you have one or two sets of my musical markings with brief text attempting to explore how those markings change the character of the tune, etc. Then you can return to that blank copy, which you should heavily mark in your own unique ways as you experiment with ever more creative applications of your expressive markings.

The third section of this workbook comprises four lovely vocal duets to play with friends, and hopefully to continue expanding your expressive horizons. Study the text, think about what you’ve learned from your experiments with the vocalises, and make beautiful, expressive music!

—Nicole Riner, July 2017

Join the group!

Click on sample pages below.