This month’s warmup focuses on tone. I have found that the best way to improve one’s tone is to play beautiful melodies. Standard tunes from the Great American Songbook (works by Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Duke Ellington, etc.) and solos from the orchestral repertoire offer an abundance of wonderful melodic solos to choose Continue reading →
Tag: Flute Warmups
The attached arpeggio exercise was one that I became acquainted with several years ago in an edition of Flute Talk. The great French flutist/teacher Michel Debost, who recently passed away on 5/2/26, produced a monthly column of thoughts on all aspects of flute playing and I have found this exercise to be a useful part Continue reading →
The flute warmup for April, 2026 is excerpted from Daily Exercises For The Flute by André Maquarre, principal flute of The Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1893-1918. This book of scale-derived studies is more harmonically challenging than the typical scale study text. It was a required purchase for students of William Kincaid, the former principal flute of the Philadelphia Continue reading →
Paul Taffanel and his prize pupil, Philippe Gaubert, created the most important pedagogical method for flute–Méthode Complète de Flûte. Initially published over 100 years ago, it remains the gold standard for all woodwind methods. The exercises that I have cited below are excerpted from #7 of the 17 Daily Exercises that comprise Part IV of Continue reading →
This month’s flute warmup is borrowed from the many wonderful exercises compiled by the renowned English flutist and teacher, Paul Edmund-Davies. After a long career as principal flute with many of London’s greatest orchestras and a first-call studio recording artist, Paul has in recent years increasingly dedicated himself to teaching and as such, has created the Continue reading →
This flute warmup is one that flutist/conductor/educator Sam Baron (1925-1997) often shared with his students. I have found it particularly useful for finding the low register at the beginning of one’s practice session. Each succeeding measure differs by only one note from the previous one so that it’s quite easy to memorize. Every 5-note grouping Continue reading →