Fit for the flute
A successful collection of breathing and physical exercises for lessons and your own playing.
The book came about, as the author writes at the beginning, because she herself felt that her flute playing was too tense. She then began to study the processes in the body while playing. Angela Buer-Meinschien, who teaches flute and piano and has trained in eutony, focuses on body tension when making music, which can be either too strong or too weak, and the conscious use of the diaphragm. The first chapter, "Arriving", presents various exercises to loosen up, such as leg swings, arm swings and body tapping, as well as exercises from kinesiology, such as the cross-over exercise. In the second chapter, the author focuses on straightening up and ground contact in order to give flute playing a stable foundation. She also focuses on loosening the muscles of the neck, shoulders, face and throat.
The "Breathing" chapter begins with the stimulation of breathing through sniffing and sniffing and the pressure point exercise by the well-known breathing therapist Ilse Middendorf. This is followed by exercises to expand the inhalation capacity for abdominal, rib-flank and chest breathing and how these can be combined in a breathing cycle to achieve full breathing, as well as how to improve exhalation control. She describes the fundamental topic of breath support as the linking of diaphragmatic tension and full breathing and illustrates this with further exercises. At the end, the topics of "strong tone" and "lean tone" are briefly examined. In summary, the author offers various exercise programs for the "Tired Tone" and the "Restless Tone" as preparation for playing the flute.
The book provides a versatile overview of the various breathing exercises that can be used to strengthen body awareness while playing and balance tension. Which of the 60 exercises will benefit your own playing the most is something that everyone can try out for themselves.
Angela Buer-Meinschien, Get fit for playing the flute! 60 physical exercises for breathing technique, posture and relaxation, UE 36 389, 34 p., € 9.95, Universal Edition, Vienna 2015
