Exercise Books

With the Flute there are many different things to learn. How to make a good sound, perfecting articulation, moving from one octave to another with ease.

It is challenging to properly express yourself on the flute without good technique. If you have the right technique you will be able to better express yourself in your playing.

In Flute playing you never know what you'll get as a piece. It may have a lot of tricky articulations , different rhythms (triplets, fifths, or sixths) it may have a lot of challenging dynamics. You want to have a way to practise these techniques before attempting a piece and then play.

The best way to do that is to look at the piece , see what challenges it may have, go to the exercise book and practise the techniques separately. This will help you isolate any difficult spots and get good at how to play it.

Much like a dancer will work on their turns and jumps before putting the whole routine together. OR a ball player does drills to practice each skill a Flute player must do the same with exercises.

We as flute players are lucky to have a few REALLY good books that can show you what to practise and how to practise each exercise. In the short list below shows a very good combination of books to have. There are plenty of other exercise books out there that are VERY good as well but these three are probably the most popular to the Flute community.

Book #1

In this first book by Marcel Moyse you will find exercises that will help with sound quality. There are long tone exercises that you MUST do every day to increase not only a better quality sound but also helps you with breath support. It is a very good exercise book for flute players and very easy to comprehend.

Book #2

This is also a very good book to have. It is very challenging however so NOT for a beginner flute player more for intermediate to advanced. It has exercises to help you with scales and arpeggios. It also helps with rhythm and works on some different articulation.

Book #3

In this final book (Taffanel Exercises) this will focus on articulation. It is also a fairly advanced book but can also be used for a beginner *(if done properly). You will pick each line and go over the articulation indicated.

I do hope this can help you with some challenges you may be having and help isolate each problem skill. Each book is a very good breakdown of the most challenging skills a Flute player may have to learn. Again there definitely are other books out there and a lot of other skills to learn but these are the top three MUST haves to start.

Happy Flute Practise !!