progress – Lynette Lewis Flute Studio

End of Semester Thoughts

May 14, 2025 utahfluteteacher

As this flute semester is drawing to a close, I’m pausing to reflect on my students’ development. I’m really pleased with how they have grown with tone, vibrato, dynamics, and rhythms, to name a few. Beyond their flute abilities, and perhaps even more important, is how they have grown in their confidence, their patience, and their dedication.

We finished our flute festivals a couple of weeks ago and all of my students received Superior ratings (again)!! Woohoo!! Way to go everyone!! However, for me, the recognition of their hard work by receiving Superior ratings is not the end goal. I believe that what is more important is what they’ve learned and how they’ve grown this past semester. Festival is a way to help push flute students to polish songs and really focus on improving certain aspects of their playing. In fact, I had one student who ended up being sick and wasn’t able to participate in festival, but I rejoice in the progress she made in preparation for the event, even though she wasn’t able to participate.

And so in music, as well as in life, we should periodically pause to reflect on the progress we’ve made since the new year and pause to reflect on what steps we can now take to continue our improvement and progression. Choose one thing you can do to strengthen your skills as a flute player. And choose one thing you can do improve yourself as a person.

Flute, Practicing

Practice Makes Progess

July 12, 2023 utahfluteteacher

Perfectionism vs. Progress

Perfectionism is a terrible disease. I suffer from it as I know many others do. Especially as a flute player or musician or artist, perfectionism can be helpful or it can be detrimental. Yes, we should always strive to have all the correct notes, correct rhythms, correct dynamics, breaths, style, interpretation, vibrato, tone colors, phrasing, etc.

Can you see why perfectionism is an ongoing struggle?

In music and in sports, you often hear the phrase Practice makes Perfect. I prefer to use the phrase Practice makes Progress. Here I thought I was so brilliant in coming up with this, but when searching for a photo to use, I found that I wasn’t as brilliant as I thought I was – haha.

The picture above says it all. If you don’t practice, you can’t expect progress.

Practicing is a developmental process to learn what methods are helpful to you. As a teacher I can attest that every student is different. What works for some doesn’t always work for others. That’s one of the things that makes teaching so fun. Finding and creating new ways to affectively teach each music student.

If you want to become a better flute player – or better at anything for that matter – you have to spend time working on that skill.

The more you practice, the better your flute playing habits will be whether those are good habits or bad habits. Hence the need for a private flute teacher to ensure you are practicing good habits.

The more you practice, the more confidence you can achieve with your tone, scales, songs and flute playing. It’s fun to really know a piece well and be confident with it, especially when preparing for a performance. That is impossible to achieve unless you are practicing smart. (That will be another post for another day.)

The main point is this: If you expect to improve as a flute player or anything else in life, you should practice consistently and regularly. That’s all there is to it.

“Practice makes ~~Perfect~~ Progress”.

Flute

Get Started

April 20, 2021 utahfluteteacher

I’m sure you have heard of “writer’s block”. It’s when a writer can’t think of what to write, how to start the story, what character development should take place or where to take the story next. Well, I’ve come up with a new term – “human block”. I’ve decided this means that as human’s we get stuck and have a hard time getting started, don’t know how to proceed, or where things should lead.

My advice to that is GET STARTED!! The popular sports slogan for Nike is “Just Do It.” That can apply to so many things. Sometimes half the battle is simply getting started.

The legendary, masterful Irish flutist, James Galway, is credited to say,

“THE QUICKEST WAY TO UNLOCK YOUR TALENT IS TO TAKE THE FLUTE OUT OF THE BOX.”

Getting your flute out of its case. Sitting down at the piano bench. Opening your textbook or your laptop to do homework. Walking down the stairs to get to the treadmill. Pressing the Reply button on a computer. These are all first steps to progress.

Don’t be lazy. Don’t be sidetracked. Don’t procrastinate.