This video shows you how to make your playing of Over the Rainbow sound beautifully musical!

Flute breathing and phrasing

Watch it here to learn a tip about breathing and phrasing that makes a huge difference to your musicality of the piece.

You can download the sheet music for this piece here: https://www.flutetunes.com/tunes.php?id=147

Jane x

Over the Rainbow for flute

This is Over the Rainbow by Arlen. Welcome to Flute School with me. I'm Jane Cavanagh. At the end of this piece, I'm going to give you a tip, a teaching tip that will make this piece sound so much more musical than what it does when you play it at the moment.

Musical phrasing when playing flute

Okay. So the teaching tip, the clue is in the words of the song. So the clue is in the lyrics.  Have a listen to the first sentence of the song. Now, disclaimer, I am not a singer.  Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. World premiere of Jane singing and sort of public. That sentence that I sang, it gives you a clue as to where the phrase of the music is, which is 4 bars. Now, if you can do those 4 bars in one breath, and generally in this piece, two 4 bar phrases. So 4 bars in one breath, as much as you can, it's going to sound so much more musical. Here's an example. This is 4 bars in one breath. This is the most musical version.

Okay. Now, if I do 2 bars in one breath, it doesn't sound quite so musical. Now, if  breathe even more frequently than that, it doesn't sound anywhere near as musical as the other two versions.

Breathing on flute

So you can see what a difference breathing in long phrases makes. And in this piece, 4 bars is what you're aiming for. Now. If you have trouble getting through 4 bars of this piece in one breath, or even if you have trouble getting through 2 bars, I have the solution for you. What you need to do is improve your tone. You might be thinking well, what's tone got to do with getting through a longer phrase. And the answer is everything. It is directly related. If you improve your tone, you will improve how far you can get through a note or a phrase in one breath.

How to instantly improve your tone on the flute

I suggest that you join me in a free mini-course to get you exactly what I was just talking about. Instantly improving your tone, www.flute.school/free. It is free. I will teach you how to instantly improve your sound on the flute. It's going to do wonders for your sound and it will do wonders for how far through a note or through a phrase you can get. I'll see you there.