You've probably tried this, but if you want an instant ego boost, just go into a bathroom and play! You'll sound amazing!

Playing flute in a bathroom

But it's not all sunshines and rainbows...

In this week's short lesson, I explain the pros and cons of practicing in resonant rooms like churches, bathrooms, and mirror mazes (!) vs practicing in "dead" rooms like carpeted, curtained bedrooms.

There's good and bad of both. Watch the video above!

Jane xx

Practising flute in a resonant room

I got an email the other day from someone who said, Jane, should I practice in a resonant room or a dead room? And I had the most entertaining time replying to this because there are pros and cons to both. A dead room, which is full of cushions and carpet and bedding and beds and sofas and a resonant room, like a bathroom.

I'm going to show you the pros and cons of both in a moment. But first, my name is Jane Cavanagh. My business shows flute students and flute players, adult flute players, how to quickly improve their playing by making tiny little changes to their technique.

Flute technique

Basically, it's learning the fundamental, the correct fundamental techniques of flute playing. I'll show you more about these tiny little changes that you can make in particular to your sound at the end of this video, I've created a minicourse and you can do it for free. I'll show you at the end.

Okay. Back to the resonant room and the dead room. Let's start with the dead room. An example of a dead room is a room that's full of soft things, full of carpet, sofas, and all soft services that soak up the sound. A resonant room - the ultimate of a resonant room is a bathroom. So it's full of shiny surfaces.

So hard floors, tiles, mirrors, windows, things like that. And the sound bounces off those surfaces. I wrote the funniest little checklist. I think I've gotta read this so that I get it right. So in a shiny resonant room, like a bathroom, your ego will be boosted.

Sounding amazing on the flute

You will sound amazing with all of your flaws in your playing. Well, maybe not all of them, but most of your flaws will be hidden and you'll just go, whoa, I sound great. I have students that discover playing in bathrooms for the first time and they come into a lesson and they're like, I sounded amazing.

And you're like, yeah, that's true. You do. So if you wanna feel good about your playing, play in a bathroom. But because your faults are hidden, you don't get to work on them because you don't get to learn what they are. So there's a downside to playing in such a shiny room.

Flute practice in shiny room

Okay. The pros and cons of playing in a dead room.

So if you take your, for example, a bedroom, you'll feel pretty terrible about your playing because none of your flaws gets hidden. They are all exposed on a show for you to hear and to feel bad about. However, the good side to that is that you get to work on them because you know what they are.

But you don't wanna feel terrible forever, but you do get to work on your faults. Mm. So it's like pros and cons of both.

Resonant room for flute practice

A nice little analogy would be, a resonant room would be an example in life, of always being told how magnificent you are. Even when you do bad things, you're like, it doesn't matter. You're amazing. You can do anything. So too much of that is really not going to create such a great human.

So the opposite to that would be playing in a dead room would be like being told that you are always terrible your whole life, even when you do an amazing job, they're like, yeah, you know, it's not really that good. So you can pretty much work out now that you wanna balance between these two things.

So you want some truth. Sometimes you wanna see your faults so that you know what they are, this is in your flute playing now, but probably like personality too.

Feel good about your flute playing

But you also want to feel good about yourself and your playing, which is quite easy to arrange because you don't have to go and find the perfect room that's in between exactly the two because most rooms in a house are a bit of a combination of those two rooms.

Playing flute in bathroom

For fun go now and go and play it in your bathroom and you'll see what I mean and just compare that to your bedroom, and it will sound totally different.

Now I need to point this out. When you perform, you really wanna perform in a resonant room. A great example of a common resonant performance room is a church, with lots of timber, lots of hard surfaces, and lots of bouncy surfaces for the sound to bounce off. You always wanna perform in a resonant room because the audience doesn't want to hear your faults.

You want them to make you think that you are better than you are. That you're just generally good. Having said that if you do a little performance in your lounge room, your living room and there's soft services, people will still think you're amazing, like up close, when they can see what you're doing and they know that they can't do it themselves.

They'll be impressed.

Flute in resonant rooms like bathrooms

So there you go. That's a little rundown of resonant rooms versus dead rooms for practising and performing. Now onto that 3-day mini-course that I mentioned.

Instantly improve your flute sound

If you want to quickly improve your sound on the flute, I'm gonna teach you 3 tiny little techniques, a little one every day for 3 days, you can sign up here at www.flute.school/free. See you there otherwise see you next week for another video.