Sometimes my flute students wonder where to breathe in Mexican Hat Dance. Here's a short lesson on the piece for you to help you play it musically and with ease!

Knowing where to breathe in Mexican Hat Dance (on flute)

You can download the sheet music for this piece for free here: https://www.flutetunes.com/tunes.php?id=68

This is the famous Mexican hat dance by Rubio. Welcome to flute school. I'm Jane Cavanagh. And at the end of this piece, after I play it for you, I'm going to give you a teaching tip that will make breathing easier. And we'll make this piece sound much more musical and not slow down when you play it.

How to improve your flute tone

So the teaching tip. Firstly, if you want to improve your tone and improve your tone, instantly join me at www.flute.school/free. And I'll teach you how to instantly improve your time.

The reason I said that just now is because if you improve your tone, it will help your breathing improve. Your tone helps you get through longer phrases. It's directly related.

Taking breaths on the flute 

Now the tip that I want to tell you about making this piece sound more musical and help you breathe in this piece, particularly so that it doesn't slow down as you play it. A lot of people, if you have a look at the first title note, if you print out the music from the link that I've put below this video, have a look at the first tied note. It's a G.

Perfect places to breathe when playing the flute

Now, this is a perfect spot to breathe after this G and every time you have a tied note. So a couple of bars later, you'll see there's a tied D. Breathe after that note, every time you see a tied note in this piece, breathe after it. And the trick to doing this is to make that tied note shorter, and it will give you time to breathe like this.

See how perfectly musical that sounded? The phrases were great. It didn't slow down. And the reason for that is because we shortened that tied note and gave you space to breathe. We gave you time to breathe.

So there you go. Try that and see if that improves your rendition of Mexican Hat Dance. I apologise to any Spanish-speaking people. I don't speak Spanish. I don't know how to pronounce the title. If you can give me a beautiful little, uh, phonetic version, type it into the comments below and teach me how to say Mexican Hat Dance in Spanish, and I'd be very happy to learn.

See you in the free flute mini-course! Good luck!