May has been relatively less productive as far as my goals for Healthy Living go, although I suppose that has at least partially to do with my having achieved my goal. Now, I am pondering creating a new goal. Perhaps I could log my work in a future activity I may end up doing next year, however, I will look at what sorts of activities fall under “healthy living goals” and see from there.
As for what I have been doing, I have done more work outside of the orchestra. Namely, I have been concentrating more on relaxing my body more as I play, as this allows for greater reverberation of sound. To do this, I’ve been trying to “slump”, or forcefully relax parts of my body one at a time. A problem area is the fingers, however, as I notice that they get very tight when I encounter difficult music.
Aside from this, I’ve been working more on understanding and following music notation. Before, I would mostly ignore music notation and judge from listening to other sections what I should do as to the lightness or emphasis of my sound. However, now I try to consult dictionaries to see what they are, and remember them by example. When it comes to dynamic markings, one part of the process has been practising so that I can actually play all the different notes at different loudnesses. This is a legitimate issue, as I have many notes that I cannot play too loudly (e.g. low C) or too quietly (e.g. high F) or they will slip an octave higher or lower. To combat this, I go through various scales and play all the notes like so:
What this translates to is me gradually increasing the volume of the air flowing into the flute, while trying to maintain an even tone. This has been helpful in spotting problem areas and getting them right in an artificial setting so that I have a chance at them while playing a piece normally.
I hope to continue to improve at reading notes accurately (I still have to write out all notes above high E), and moving my fingers quickly enough to play what are essentially speedy scales in pieces.