How to learn Etudes

How to work on Etudes: by Jennifer Cluff

FIND THE SCALE & KEY OF THE ETUDE:

1. Decide which scale your study or etude is in. Play the scale first in the low octave, and then slowly, using longtones in the high octave. Play with full, rich, free and ringing tone. Correct any fingering difficulties by listening carefully for "blips" or too rough finger changes, take the flute down and WATCH the fingers if necessary, and smooth the blip area, and finally practice the scale, all slurred, two octaves, remembering to add breath support (crescendo going up and down too!). This clears up any inherent difficulty you may have with the scale before the problem then bungles your etude up. :>)
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AQUAINT YOURSELF WITH THE THEMATIC MATERIAL:
2. Play or better yet, sing or mentally "hear" the rhythm and style of your study to establish the musical ideas that are in it.
Have a look at the tempo marking (Allegretto, Presto, Moderato) to ascertain the character of the music.
Don't worry about how fast you can play it at first, but use "outlining" to establish the etude correctly in your mind.
(for more on the technique of outlining use the search box on the right of this screen and type in outlining.)
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OUTLINE THE STUDY AND USE AN EASY BREATHING METHOD:
3. Allow yourself to play through a rough outline of the study, pausing on downbeats of any bar where you feel you're just beginning to run low on air. [See notes below on how to breathe when learning a study at slower tempos]. Don't bother getting all breathless and tight as you're first discovering the music of a study. Instead, play tiny little sections beautifully and perfectly, and especially MUSICALLY, even your first or second time through. This is very good as a sight-reading exercise, and also begins imprinting the musicality of the study before you've even fully learned the notes.
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BREATHING in ETUDES:
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Since many studies have impossible expectations concerning breath marks and ease of breathing
The study of an etude can begin with super-slowed-down renderings of etudes with the permission to stop and pause on the downbeat of any bar . You have permission to pause on any downbeat WELL before running out of air completely. I especially recommend that you stop and pause as soon as you feel like you’re running out of air.

This method of breathing naturally works great during the period of preparation when you’re doing the slowest practice of the etude with the metronome.

The pause-note is then replayed as the beginning of the next section, bar or phrase, so as not to lose melodic and harmonic continuity.

The frequency of these "fake" pauses relies on just how slowly the study is being played and allows the student to begin to comprehend how much air to take in, and how to conserve it through repetition and
experimentation.

This means that the flutist can continue to play in a slow tempo without becoming tight lipped, breathless or tense, and can find ways of working the study as accurately as possible EXCEPT for the final
breath planning. The tone will always be full and rich, and the body free to relax.

As the metronome climbs in speed, these pauses are naturally eliminated since the air use is gradually improved and the "fake" pauses tend to appear every four or eight bars, as opposed to every one or two.

As the tempo increases further, over several days work, and the etude becomes closer to perfect in terms of dynamics, finger agility, articulation (tonguing) and phrasing, the final planning of the breaths is then worked on, using pencil markings to add to those breath marks already present in the edition.

This method eliminates the student's frustration with long and difficult studies that seem to ask the flutist to breathe only every four or five lines, which we all know is impossible except at breakneck speeds; speeds that may never be reached in the earlier years of study.
It also allows the full attention to be given to producing a gorgeous, brilliant and rich tone; a factor that should NEVER be sacrificed when learning new music.
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TONE:
4. Play in a manner that allows you to focus on your tone at all times. If a leap to a high note sounds with poor tone, stop and do slow and careful longtones up to the highnote, memorizing the sensation of wind-speed and embouchure that you have when that particular high note sounds well, when approached by step.
Next, with the sensations memorized, leap to that same high note and assume the same airspeed and embouchure position. If you do this the first or second time you ever approach this passage of music in the study, you'll be already training yourself to land each note of the work with fabulous tone. That will put you much farther ahead than "splatting" your tone on certain notes, and then having to discover later that you've taught yourself to "splatt" on those notes.
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CIRCLE THE HARD PARTS FOR SPECIAL ATTENTION:

5. Gradually circle the toughest fingerings etc. that you find in the study or etude, so that you're well aware of which parts will require more work. Come back to the etude after a rest and make longtones out of the tough parts, first playing only two notes in a row, then a different two notes, and linking them together into groups of three, four, five and six notes.
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FULLY EXPLORE DYNAMICS:
6. Always play with dynamics and experiment with their parameters in your etudes and studies. If your production of dynamics has not yet been practiced that day, take a break at this point to do some of Fiona Wilkinson's vowel-dynamics as outlined in my file by that title. Then, return to the study and ease the dynamics into it.
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NEAT TONGUING:
7. Pay special attention in one or more of your study-practice sessions on clear and concise articulations. If your tonguing has not yet had a buff-up session on a given day, spend some time tonguing repeated patterns on a single note, that relate to the articulation patterns in the particular study you're working on. For example, if the study has a staccato high E3 that seems difficult to articulate clearly, try four staccatos on each note starting on B2 and chromatically ascending to high E3 and above. If you take 4 minutes to do this, and then return to the staccato high E in your study, your body will have already perfected the correct embouchure, tongue strike and air-speed to assure you of a good E3.
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RETURN TO CIRCLED AREAS EACH SESSION:
8. Each practice session that you return to the study work on the circled (difficult) bits first as longtones, and then proceed to speed them up slightly. Then when you start the tuneful opening of the study, you're much more likely to fly straight into the tougher sections without hesitations. Remember that at this stage you're able to speed up the tempo gradually, and can still pause on downbeats, gather your breath and faculties, and soar into the next section. Keep all sections musical, even though there are still pauses between them.
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ADD SPEED USING THE METRONOME:
9. As the study begins to be familiar and easy, click the metronome up one notch each time you run through it, and study the rise and fall of the phrases. Do not allow yourself to speed through at tempos that are simply too fast for accuracy (you'll only teach yourself how to repeat bad tone or mistakes, and that's not a good idea.) Sometimes you'll have to stay at a metronome speed for a few days until your body adjusts to the new techniques. Don't worry. You'll soon experience a quantum leap as your body learns and adjusts.
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CREATE A FINISHED AND POLISHED ETUDE:
10. Finally, as you approach the tempo you feel is most musical for the study, start erasing any unecessary markings or breaths, so that you're left with the true number of breaths and "fakey pauses" that you can manage. Eventually the goal is to eliminate almost all the fakey pauses, but in the meantime you can remind yourself to take deeper breaths at certain points by marking those places with a double-breath sign if you like. Go over extra-long phrases several times to see just how much breath you should have taken in to make it all the way through the phrase. If you need to reduce the out-going air, or reduce the dynamics from ffff to mf in order to conserve breath, mark this also.

The goal, remember, is to make real music out of the study. Record your final version and listen back to it, pretending it's a magnificent concert solo, and you were to make the most gorgeous presentation out of it.
If you've done this to the best of your ability, move to the next study in the book (you can proceed in any order, actually) and begin it by playing ITS scale, and perfecting the tone and fingering of that scale (recommence at no. 1 above.)

A general graded list of basic flute etudes can be found here.

Hope this helps,
Best,
Jen