Greetings and welcome to a new Flute Friday/Sunday. So far, my New Year’s Resolution to post Flute Fridays actually ON Friday has bombed. Better luck next week.
Happy New Year! During this time each year, I typically post a blog about goal setting or action plans to improve your flute playing in the new year. For 2018, however, I have become fascinated by the idea of the 30-day challenge. This is a great way to set a single, focused, achievable goal to completely transform one area of your life, or in this case, your flute playing, over the course of a month. You may have seen videos on Facebook or YouTube documenting 30-day challenges such as the 30-day push-up challenge or a 30-day clean eating challenge. The results are incredible! Experts say that it takes approximately 21 days to develop a new habit. A 30-day challenge not only works to achieve a specific goal, but also helps to develop lasting, healthy habits that you can take with you beyond the 30-day mark.
If there is one daily practice habit that we could all use a bit more encouragement to develop, it is playing through our scale exercises. Therefore, in the spirit of the season, I have developed the following 30-Day Taffanel & Gaubert Exercise #4 Challenge. All of the below articulation are to practiced using Exercise #4 from Taffanel and Gaubert’s Exercices Journaliers de Mecanisme Flute (available for purchase on Amazon: 17 Big Daily Finger Exercises / 17 Grands Exercises Jounaliers de Mecanisme / 17 Grandes Ejercicios Diarios de Mechanismo By Paul Taffanel & Philippe … Chinese, English, Spanish and French Edition)
Make January 2018 your month of scale and articulation mastery! Enjoy this 30-day challenge and please comment below with your progress, challenges, and successes as you complete this challenge.
Happy practicing!
30-DAY TAFFANEL & GAUBERT EXERCISE #4 CHALLENGE
Play through Exercise #4 using a single articulation each day as indicated below. At the completion of the challenge, you may use the below articulation list to challenge yourself to another 30-day challenge using any exercise from Taffanel and Gaubert’s Exercices Journaliers de Mecanisme Flute.
DAY 1 Slur all
DAY 2 Single tongue all (legato)
DAY 3 Single tongue all (marcato)
DAY 4 Single tongue all (staccato)
DAY 5 Single tongue all using the “coo” syllable (articulating from the back of the tongue)
DAY 6 Double tongue all (syllables of your choice)
DAY 7 Double tongue all using “uka-tucka” syllables
DAY 8 Chirp all (syllable-less articulation that uses short puffs of air)
DAY 9 Flutter-tongue ascending passages, slur descending passages
DAY 10 Slur ascending passages, flutter descending passages
DAY 11 Swing all notes (slurred)
DAY 12 Swing all notes (single-tongued)
DAY 13 Two articulated (single-tongued) eighth notes on each pitch
DAY 14 Four articulated (double-tongued) 16th notes on each pitch
DAY 15 Three articulated (sing-tongued) eighth notes on each pitch
DAY 16 Six articulated (tripled-tongued) 16th notes on each pitch
DAY 17 Slur two, single-tongue two
DAY 18 Double-tongue two, slur two
DAY 19 Slur three, single-tongue one
DAY 20 Single-tongue one, slur three
DAY 21 Slur two, slur two
DAY 22 16th note, eighth note figure on each pitch
DAY 23 Eighth note, two 16th note figure on each pitch
DAY 24 Two 16th notes, eighth note figure on each pitch
DAY 25 Articulated quintuplets on each pitch (TKTTK)
DAY 26 Articulated septuplets on each pitch (TKTKTKT)
DAY 27 Single-tongue two, slur six
DAY 28 Double-tongue four (using duc-ky syllables), slur four
DAY 29 Single-tongue three, slur five
DAY 30 Slur all, playing as quickly, and fluidly as possible
CHALLENGE COMPLETE!
Happy fluting!
Rachel Taylor Geier 
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