Song Choice for Flute

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Song Choice for Flute

 

“Song Choice”.  For some reason I feel like American Idol is coining this phrase.  But, I’ve been using it for years.

When choosing a piece to practice or perform, where should we turn?  Well, it depends on if the choice is ours or our teacher’s.  For the sake of this article, the choice will be ours only.

I have students who consistently bring Disney Music books to the lesson after Christmas Holiday.  They are so excited to learn something from Beauty and the Beast or The Little Mermaid.  .. that is until I teach them one of those songs and it turns out to be pretty darn hard for beginners to learn, or very (yawn) boring because the melody just keeps repeating over and over and over.

 

Flutists have the luxury of beautiful melodies.

“A “Song” is just that – it has lyrics and is meant to be sung.  We flute players cannot sing while playing and our audience cannot hear the lyrics.  So we learn to choose our performance pieces carefully.

Flutists have the luxury of finding beautiful melodies.  It’s really fun to close our eyes and savor the melody.  Playing familiar “songs” is really fun as long as the melody is interesting  enough to hold its own.

Think about this next time you find yourself humming a tune from pop radio.  It doesn’t take much thought.  The melody happens dozens of times.  Fun to hum or sing, but usually really boring after a few minutes on a well played instrument.

Not sure if a song is right for you?

Have any questions? Comment below and I will help you out.

Rebecca FullerRebecca Fuller
Get Flutie with us! Learn and enjoy every musical minute.

5 thoughts on “Song Choice for Flute”

  1. There is another option with pop songs. It’s obviously not going to work in some circumstances but I’ve successfully applied it When asked to purform for a fundraiser.

    I played a flute & accoustic guitar version of nothing else matters by metallica. (No vocal) play the melody for a while improvise for a while, helps if you improvise a bit both on and off the melody, etc, even come back and play the melody straight for a while, etc.

    Good to record yourself and listen back to fine tune the novelity levels right…

  2. wow, you are so right! I recently turned on the radio and tried to play along with some of my favorite songs, but it just didn’t work…. for flute!
    Are the Star Wars and Lord of The Rings “songs” (they dont have words) ok?
    thanks for all your time!

    1. Yah pop songs just are kind of strange without the lyrics. Movie soundtracks actually have loads of choices that are great on flute. You can find many favorite melodies from movies. Love them! ~Rebecca

  3. Do you think it is ok to practice songs other than the ones we are learning for a module providing that the songs include only the things that we have already learned up to where we are in the modules?

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