Scales.  Ugh.  Just the word reminds most of us of the endless hours in the practice room drilling the same patterns over and over again for pages upon pages of scary black notes that seem to go nowhere (or for those of us that have memorized our scales, watching the clock to make sure we get…

In my last blog I discussed the idea of coloring your music to represent the different types of tone colors that you wish to convey in performance.  Color may be also used as a practice tool to differentiate the changing nature of aspects such as dynamics, tempo changes, articulation and so on.  For the visual learners out…

The term “tone color” has varying meanings to different performers.  For some, it simply represents a collection of sounds ranging in quality and contextual relevance.  For others, “tone color” is associated with interpretative mental images connected with a type of phrase or orchestration often used in conjunction with symbolic words such as “flowing,” “edgy” or “bold.”  For myself, and many performers…

Welcome to my blog!  My name is Rachel Taylor Geier and I am a freelance flutist and flute instructor in Davis, California.  I hold a DMA from the University of Minnesota, an MM from San Francisco State University and a BM from DePauw University.  I am not going to bore you here with the details…