I grew up in Hong Kong, but the flute brought me to Amsterdam, where I met Marten Root and started my baroque flute journey. Later I continued with Karl Kaiser and Daniela Lieb in Frankfurt Germany, where I ended up living now.
I am mostly interested in conical flute ranging from 18th to 20th century, for which I wrote an article for German Flute Society's magazine. I was lucky to witness first-handedly music making of many inspiring musicians and different period ensembles and orchestras in Europe and Asia. The times with Freiburger Baroque Orchestra and Les Musiciens du Prince’s Wagner opera production were most unforgettable.
My biggest music achievement would be helping my students to enjoy flute playing and music with love and satisfaction. I admire Bach’s music so much that I made a transcription of his fifth Cello Suite for traverso. I am happy I will be able to share the publication through Edition Walhall with everyone very soon! Besides music, photography has also led me to even more wonderful people and cities in the world.
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Yat Ho's website and YouTube channel
The first thing you do when you pick up your traverso to start the practice day, and why?
For an efficient practice, it is important to limit the variables of the traverso to a minimum. The wood interacts daily with the environment. Changes can be sudden and huge. The first thing I like to do is to observe my traverso and check if the bore of my flute is not too dry, the tenons are not too tight or loose, the keys are all closing well (especially on keyed flutes), and the cork is in right position relative to how much the head-joint is pulled out. After knowing that my traverso is happy, only then I can continue and focus working on my mind, body and the music. This may seem obvious, but often neglected.
Any recurring piece to play every day, and why?​
There are some pieces I am always happy to play from time to time, though not every day. One of them is the J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite n.5, as I find it both technically and musically challenging to play on the traverso. I have always loved this music since I started learning music as a teenager.
Do you have a daily routine?​
I find practicing with a specific focus helpful, and this focus should change from day to day. The focus could be on the current pieces I need to learn; or the different techniques I want to brush up on; or getting used to change between types of flute for coming projects; or learning new repertoire for fun.
What kind of goals do you set for your practice?​
I see flute playing as a closed chain of relations between my mind, body, the flute, and the music. Like all relationships in life, each relation between these chain-links requires certain amount of time to nurture and regular work to maintain. It is an evolving and lifelong process. There is too little time to cover too many things. That is why it is important to practice consciously and efficiently, observe each change with a clear purpose.
Do you do any systematic warm-up?
I would say, warm-up is remembering. Everyone has his/her own pace of remembering things.
I would start by recalling the physical feelings in my body when I breath in and out, which I could do without the flute – starting from my foot, my legs, my hip, my abdominal muscle, my ribs, my back, my shoulders, my neck, my tongue, my teeth and my lips. I cannot say that I am an expert in it because I still have my own problems. But for now, I find the following keywords helpful: round space; engaged but not stiff muscles; sustained and balanced air flow; and my favourite, enough-is-enough, don’t overdo things.
Then I would improvise some simple melodies with some fast notes in it to activate my fingers.
Do you have a specific structure for warm-up and practice sessions?
From my experience, the end of a practice session is also very important. It is the distilled result of a whole day’s work. I would make notes on what I discovered and understood, either in my head or write them down. So that, next day when I warm-up, I can remember them faster.
Any distinctive characteristics of baroque flute daily practice vs. modern flute or other instruments?​
There are more limitations and playing techniques on the baroque flute than the modern flute. And each baroque flute has its unique character. I find myself spending a lot of time learning, understanding and accepting(!) the limitations and characteristics of different flutes. And even more time to search for ways to utilise them into music. On the modern flute, things are more straightforward, which allow us to spend more time and energy on other aspects of music-making.
If one’s situation allows, I find it very helpful to switch and practice on different types (modern, baroque, keyed) or models of flute. The switch between flutes is like a magnifying glass. It shows the problems and sometimes the solutions.
What are the key elements and unmissable points of daily practice?
I think it would be helpful to cover three elements in each practice, depends on the time available. They are remembering (warm-up), eliminating doubts, and trying out new ideas.
When I need to learn a new piece, the first step I take is usually to eliminate any doubt that I may have about the music and technique – the correct notes, rhythms, fingerings, articulations, etc.
Once I can play the notes, the next step is to try and understand what the music is really about. I often ask my students, if it was a piece of film music, what happens during this scene? Who are they? Where are they? What is their relation? What are they doing? Etc. It is often surprising to hear their fantasies. The story itself does not really matter, but to tell a story rather than playing the notes is what matters.
The next step would be to experiment different ideas that may help to tell the story better - tempo, rubato, ornaments, dynamics, or articulations, etc. Of course, as a “H.I.P.-py”, the choices should be justified with historical references.
How long and distributed should warm-up and practice be?
Like learning and speaking a language, it doesn’t have to be perfect. The ultimate goal of different exercises is for us to communicate with other people. Practice and warm-up as much as you feel comfortable, but, please, make it efficient, enjoyable, don’t hurt your muscles, focus on the overall growth and development instead of one problem, and remember that the traverso does not like to be soaked for a long time in moisture/water.
Any  specific tip to address difficult technical passages during daily practice?
I am not a natural flutist. I had (and still have) my own technical problems and very frustrating times. But my lack of talent forced me to observe, rethink and understand about how the flute and my body work together. If there would be a key word that I can always hold onto, it would be efficiency – getting the best outcome with the least effort.
Some tips I find worth repeating:
  • Be patient. One small improvement at a time.
  • Sometimes when I face a technical problem, I tend to keep repeating the passage blindly, and forget that, in order to improve, I need to make changes consciously. It could be just a tiny muscle movement, a little timing, my manner of speaking, or, most importantly, my way of thinking.
  • Resonance needs two conditions to occur. To resonate a system, a steady rate of input of the right amount of energy is also necessary.
  • We can only play as fast as: 1. physically, the slowest finger can move. (Luckily muscles can be trained); 2. mentally, our brain can name the notes; 3. what we hear matches what we have in mind.
  • Practicing slowly is only useful when one observes actively and objectively what movements are happening, what the problems are and what changes should be made to address those problems. Once, after enough conscious repetitions, the brain understands and is used to these new changes, then the muscles can repeat the movements automatically without over-controlling.
  • When there is a lack of coordination in my fingers, I find it helpful to think that some fingers are moving too fast, instead of some too slow, and adjust the faster ones according to the slower ones.
  • And if the fingers are not moving as freely as they should be, it may have to do with tension in the wrists or shoulders, which may be due to nervousness or how one holds the flute. Relax the left thumb. It is not for holding the flute.
  • I find it useful to think that did’ll is an alternation of tone colors.
  • Composing helps one to develop his ornamentation skills and understanding of music.
  • From time to time, practice to play uncomfortably without warm up but only with mental preparation. The sound will be bad, and there will be a lot of mistakes, but those are the places where one has to focus on later when practicing. And, hopefully, next time when one repeats the process again, the sound would be better, the mistakes will be less, and know how to adjust quicker when problems arise.
I like to see playing different style of music as talking with different accents.
Are there any tools that are particularly useful for practicing?
Besides a tuner, a metronome, a full-body mirror and a sound recorder(!), I think a sound analysis app could also be helpful. It visualises tone colors into frequency graphs. One can see how strong different overtones are.
Any other general advice, suggestion, tip?
The flute, especially the traverso, is a very clear mirror that reflects our mind. Besides the body and techniques, we should not forget to work on facing our own ego and work with the imperfect self.
How do you advise your students as far as structuring their daily practice?
For now, it would be 1 teaspoon of note learning; 1 tablespoon of sound and intonation; 500g of loving and understanding the music; mixed with 250g of research; and 250g of finely chopped feelings.
Do you suggest or teach a warm-up routine?​
I check my flute. Warm it up. Check my body. Remember the physical feelings of breathing in and out. What comes afterwards should be a part of practicing.
Are there any specific pieces particularly beneficial to be played regularly in daily practice?
Recently I enjoy a lot playing the suites from Schickhardt’s L'alphabet de la musique, Op.30. They are lovely music originally written for recorder but work perfectly fine on the traverso. It is a fun and musical way to practice different tonalities.