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This page gathers short reflections born directly from daily practice: moments of listening, doubt, surprise, resistance, clarity. They are not methods, exercises, or finished ideas—but small observations that often change how we practice more than any long plan.
Each reflection starts from a concrete experience: a sound that wouldn’t settle, a breath that arrived too late, a tempo that suddenly made sense, a mental shift that unlocked a passage. From there, it opens a question rather than offering a solution. You can browse them by theme—listening, sound, time, mindset, technique, performance—or simply follow your curiosity. Read one before practicing, after practicing, or right in the middle. They’re meant to be light, reusable, and quietly practical: something to carry into the room with you, not something to solve before you begin. |
Do Baroque Flutists Need a Metronome?
A metronome can build pulse. The ear turns pulse into living rhythm.
Practising Without the Flute
When you cannot play, silence can still train hearing, breath, fingering, and musical intention.
Practising in the Dark
When vision steps back, listening often becomes more precise, more physical, and more honest.
The Magic of the First Note
The first note carries the full weight of intention. When it is shaped consciously, the phrase already knows its direction.
Do Baroque Flutists Need a Metronome?
A metronome is one of the most useful tools available to a musician.
It helps us establish a reliable pulse, notice moments where the tempo becomes unstable, and develop greater rhythmic awareness. Used thoughtfully, it can bring clarity and confidence to our practice.
At the same time, anyone who has spent time with a metronome knows that there comes a moment when the music asks for something more.
I noticed this while practising a slow movement. The pulse was steady, every beat was in place, and the rhythm felt secure. When I played the same phrase again without the click, something else became easier to hear. The pulse remained present, yet the phrase seemed to breathe more naturally. Some notes carried a little more meaning, a cadence had time to settle, and the musical line began to feel less like a series of beats and more like a spoken sentence.
Perhaps this is why the great eighteenth-century writers speak so often about speech, dance, character, taste, and expression. Quantz, Hotteterre, Leopold Mozart, and C.P.E. Bach all describe rhythm as something closely connected to movement and rhetoric. A steady pulse forms the foundation, while the shape of the phrase gives the music its life.
The metronome can help us build that foundation. Once it is established, our listening gradually takes over. We begin to hear where a phrase is leading, where it wants to rest, and how the rhythm supports the character of the music.
In this way, the metronome becomes not a guide to follow forever, but a tool that helps us develop an inner pulse—one that remains present even after the click has disappeared.
Choose a short phrase from a sonata, dance movement, or prélude.
- Play it once with the metronome clicking on every beat.
- Listen carefully to the steadiness of the pulse.
- Play it again without the metronome.
- Imagine you are speaking rather than counting.
- Let the phrase breathe naturally while keeping the pulse underneath.
Then experiment:
- Set the metronome to click only on beats 1 and 3.
- Then only on the first beat of each bar.
- Then only every second bar.
- Finally, switch it off completely.
Notice:
- Does the pulse remain stable?
- Does the phrase become more expressive?
- Where does the music naturally lean forward?
- Where does it want to settle?
- Are you following the click, or hearing the pulse internally?
One practical takeaway
Use the metronome to build the pulse, then gradually remove it.
The goal is not to become dependent on the click, but to develop an inner sense of rhythm that allows the music to breathe, dance, and speak. Rhythm should feel alive—not because it ignores the pulse, but because the pulse has become part of your musical thinking.
The magic of the First Note
I was about to begin a Telemann Fantasia. The room was quiet. The flute was ready. Breath prepared.
The first note emerged slightly unfocused. Not incorrect, not unpleasant — simply undefined.
Everything that followed required subtle adjustment. The phrase settled only after two or three notes.
That small instability made something clear: I had practiced the passage, the articulation, the technical transitions — yet I had not practiced the opening itself.
The first note had received no independent attention.
In Baroque performance, the first note establishes the entire environment of the phrase. It determines:
• air speed
• articulation character
• tempo perception
• dynamic space
• emotional atmosphere.
When the first sound carries clear intention, the phrase unfolds with direction. When it is undefined, the line needs time to organize itself.
The opening tone already contains:
• the weight of the affect
• the shape of the vowel
• the level of tension or relaxation
• the implied continuation.
It functions as a declaration.
The stability, focus, and character of this first sound influence everything that follows.
Eighteenth-century writers consistently connect musical execution with rhetorical intention.
Johann Joachim Quantz repeatedly insists that the performer must understand the character and affect of a piece before executing it,
and that sound should follow informed judgment rather than mechanical habit.
In this framework, the first note is not a mechanical starting point. It is the audible manifestation of prior understanding.
Choose the opening note of any piece. Work with that single tone only.
- Hold the flute ready, but delay the sound for a few seconds.
- Decide clearly on the character (dance-like, tender, solemn, intimate).
- Shape the breath silently. Feel the air already moving before tone begins.
- Begin with continuous air — avoid a sudden burst.
- Sustain the tone long enough to observe stability of pitch and color.
Then experiment:
- Start once with slightly firmer articulation.
- Start once with a softer attack.
- Start once imagining a spoken syllable (for example “da” or “la”).
Notice:
- Which version reflects the character most clearly?
- Does the pitch settle immediately?
- Is the throat free?
- Does the air continue naturally after the attack?
Finally, play the complete phrase. Observe whether the line now grows organically from the opening.
One practical takeaway
Practice the first note separately before practicing the piece.
Not once.
Not casually.
Deliberately.
Practising in the Dark: Listening Changes
One evening I switched off the light and kept playing. At first it felt slightly uncomfortable. The flute didn’t seem to sit quite the same in my hands, and even a simple phrase felt less secure. Without seeing anything, I noticed how much I normally rely on small visual checks — fingers, posture, the page. Then, after a few notes, something shifted. The sound came into focus. Not bigger or more beautiful, but clearer. The start of each note was easier to hear. The center of the tone felt more defined. Small irregularities — the ones that usually slip by — became obvious. Without seeing, I heard more.
The absence of visual feedback changed the way the body organized itself. The breath took over. The fingers acted from memory rather than control. The balance of the instrument became something to feel, not to check. The phrase also behaved differently. It moved forward with fewer interruptions. There was less temptation to correct, more need to continue. The musical line depended more directly on inner hearing. This reflects a central idea in eighteenth-century practice: sound must follow intention, guided by the ear rather than by mechanical routine. In the dark, this becomes unavoidable. The traverso feels different like this. Less something you adjust from the outside, more something that responds directly to breath and intention. The darkness does not add anything. It removes what distracts, and reveals what is actually happening.
Choose a simple phrase — even just two or three notes.
- Turn off the light (or close your eyes completely).
- Hold the flute and wait a moment before playing.
- Imagine the sound clearly before it begins.
- Start with continuous air — no sudden attack.
- Let the phrase unfold without interruption.
Then experiment:
- Play once focusing only on air continuity.
- Play once focusing only on the beginning of the first note.
- Play once imagining a spoken syllable (“du”, “ru”).
- Play once focusing on the space between notes.
Notice:
- Does the tone stabilize faster or slower?
- Is the attack clearer or more hesitant?
- Do you feel the instrument differently in your hands?
- Is the phrase more continuous?
- Are you listening more actively?
Then return to the light and observe what remains stable, what changes, and what becomes clearer.
One practical takeaway
Practice regularly without visual input, even briefly.
Not to improve something abstract, but to verify that sound is guided by listening, not by habit.
Practicing Without the Flute
Some of the best practice happens when we cannot play at all.
On a train. In a hotel room late at night. Between rehearsals. During travel. Or simply when the embouchure is tired and silence is better than another repetition.
At first, it feels like lost time.
No flute. No sound. No “real” practice.
But the real problems are often still there.
We still do not know where the phrase is going. We still rush the cadence. We still breathe in the wrong place. We still articulate before deciding what we actually want to say.
One flutist on TPN said it beautifully:
“I recommend not only practising with your flute but also without it… Everything you could think of, first has to start in your head.”
Baroque music begins before sound. Before breath comes intention. Before fingers move, rhetoric already exists.
Practicing without the flute means working on what really shapes the phrase:
• harmonic direction
• cadential weight
• rhetorical punctuation
• implied breath.
Even silent fingering can reveal a lot. If the fingers hesitate without sound, the issue is often not speed, but uncertainty.
Mental playing can be surprisingly powerful too: hearing the opening breath, imagining the color of the sound, feeling the cadence arrive before a note is played.
When you return to the instrument, something changes. The phrase feels clearer, the breathing becomes simpler, and the fingers move less.
Many technical problems turn out to be musical decisions not yet made.
Choose one short phrase you often repeat but never feel fully settled — an opening of a sonata, a Bach sequence in 16ths, a slow cadence, a recitative line.
Leave the flute in the case.
- Find the note the phrase is truly moving toward — not the loudest note, but the real destination.
- Mark the strongest cadence. Where does the tension actually resolve?
- Decide the breath. Where must you breathe? Where would breathing break the rhetoric?
- Finger the passage silently once. Notice where the fingers hesitate without sound.
- Hear it internally before playing. Imagine the breath, articulation, and arrival of the cadence.
Then, when you can, take the flute.
Play it only once — not to “practise” it, but to check whether the musical idea is now clearer.
Notice:
- Does the phrase feel more inevitable?
- Is the breathing simpler?
- Do the fingers move with less tension?
- Is there less need to repeat the passage?
If yes, the problem was probably not technical first. It was musical.
One practical takeaway
If you cannot play, you can still practice.
Sometimes the real work begins before the first note.
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