How can I keep my skills without my flute?

Question

My flute has a pretty bad injury and has to go to the repair shop for about two weeks!!! How can I still work on my skills. By the way, I'm not sure if this would effect how much of my skills, but I practice 2 hours a day. Please help.

Answer 1

You ask the shop for a loaner.

Answer 2

To keep up with your articulation abilities, I'd go around the house or wherever making patterns with my tongue. You know, the whole "ta-ka, ta-ka" thing? Increase from quarter notes to sixteenths as you go, but make sure the tempo stays at a rate where you can do this evenly. Sometimes I use a pencil when I don't have my flute to finger the notes.

Answer 3

wow. you're really dedicated.

you could try to rent one for the time.

Answer 4

I dont think it can harm you THAT much.(if at all) I've played flute for 6 years and I've gone without practicing for weeks at a time during the summer and nothing bad has happened =]

Answer 5

If it is your tongue skill you need to practice, you should do dome tongue exercises. and if it is fingering practice, you should grab a pencil or a long stick and practice your scales! I have done that when i don't have my flute and need to practice for scale testing! Hope it helps. Remember that practice makes PERMANENT NOT PERFECT!!!!

Answer 6

Hello Jessica.  Sorry to hear about your flute :(  Unfortunately you cannot do anything to keep up your skills with out it.  That is like... not practicing for two weeks.   But if you love the flute, and it sounds like you do.... you can try finding some great flute music to motivate you for when it gets back.   I am thinking James Galway or Rampal...  they have CD's out with gorgeous flute music.   Another thing you can do is visit the music store and look for a really good flute Etude book...  Looking through it and deciding which you would like to play when you get your flute back will be fun and helpful.   Something else you can do which will help is to write out all of the basic major scales... along with their minors,  minor harmonics and minor melodics.  (my daughter did that and it was time consuming but helped her alot)...  Write them out as letters...  like CDEFGABC two octaves and then the minor ABCDEFGA two octaves and so on.    As mentioned,  you could rent one or ask a friend if you could borrow their marching flute... so they would still have their concert flute to practice on.   That is all I can think of... except one thing...   You could just take a nice vacation from it and be more ready to work as hard as you can when you get it back.   All of us need a break once in a while, as it makes us appreciate what was missing much more.   Hope my suggestion can help.   Thanks for reading.