Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

If you have not seen my website or read my bio, you might not know that I am a woodwind tripler: I play clarinet, flute, and saxophone. When I was earning my undergraduate degree in Music Education and Performance at Ithaca College, I was a clarinet major. I studied with two excellent clarinet professors: the late Robert Schmidt and the wonderful Michael Galvan (who is still at Ithaca today).

I learned to play saxophone and flute in high school from my clarinet teacher, Fred Czarnecki, who was a tripler too. I am not sure where he is today, but he was one of the coolest and nicest musicians that I have ever met. He was also an inspiring teacher. He is one of the reasons that I decided to major in music.

When I began teaching at my current school, the Head of School asked if we could begin an after school conservatory. I liked this idea a lot, so I went searching for teachers. On a side note, The Conservatory at FHCDS is now beginning its 7th year! I looked around for flute teachers and found the amazing John McMurtery, who at the time was still finishing his doctorate at Julliard. I studied flute with him for four years and I cannot thank him enough for making me a better flute player and teacher.

All of this background information leads me to today’s blog: flute podcasts.

Last week, David Summer sent me an email describing his website. David is a musician and author. You might have read his numerous music technology articles found in such publications as Electronic Musician and Recording Magazine. He is also a doubler on flute and trumpet. In his email, he described his podcasts of flute duets. If you have ever studied or taught flute, then you are very familiar with the book “Selected Duets.” I know that I have played many of them with my own flute students. David has made a podcast page of him playing the duets and him playing just the 2nd flute part. This is a wonderful tool because you can send your students to this page to listen to the duet that you assigned them to practice. They can also practice with him performing the flute two part. In addition, he allows you to listen to the duets or  to download the duets. If you download the duet (right-click (PC) or ctrl-click (MAC)) as an mp3 file, you could possibly place it in Audacity (freeware) and make the tempo slower or faster without changing the pitch. This is greatly helpful to your students when they need to learn the duet at a slower speed.

I thank David for sharing his podcast and website information with me. I hope that you will go and check it out. Even if you are not a flute player, check out the website to get great ideas or just to listen to some nice flute playing.