Free Things for TMEA All-State Flute Etudes

I have a new page with free information about the TMEA, All-State Flute Etudes for 2012-2013, available on my website,www.creativeflutist.com or www.jenniferkeeney.com

TMEA: Texas All-State Flute Etudes: (just click on TMEA Flute Etudes on the home page of my website)

Free Practice Parts, Etudes broken down into small parts and many ideas on how to practice them.

Information on each Etude

Metronome Motivation guide

Duets by the composers of the Etudes


Links to other Editions available online of the Etudes for further study

Videos at practice tempo and performance tempo

Links to more information and listening
and more!

Enjoy and let me know what you think :-)

Creative Practice Circles, #9 - Finding your Design... What is next?

What is next? 

Your Design is unique!

Find, get to know and grow and express yourself...

How are all your Circles interconnected, balanced and full of possibility?

I would love to see your Circle Designs. Please send them to me.

Here is one mine that includes the Circles I have written to you about thus far in our Circle Adventure:

Here is another idea:

Start with an idea in the center of your circle.


What are the ripples of this principal idea?

How does this effect the whole of you and your playing?

The ripples are endless and infinite... 

Creative Practice Circles, #8 - Performing

Here is a Circle I created with an idea at the center of each Circle for you to add your own ideas about what performing is to you. 

remember that there may also be things in your Circles that you do NOT want in your Circle. Or, things that not in your Circle that you DO want to bring into your Circles. 

Take a class on Performance Confidence. There are so many wonderful people, blogs, websites that offering classes, workshops and education. 

Here are a few I recommend:

Musicians Way

Bullet Proof Musician

Peak Performance for Musicians

Perform Confidently for Musicians

Practice Ideas for the Whole Musician

Creative Flutist

Creative Circles #7, Technique

Here is another Circle that is included in everyones Practice Circles:

 Technique

What is it and how do we develop, refine and grow it? :-)

The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it... ~ Pablo Picasso                                                         Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion...  ~ Martha Graham

In any work with scales, always practice with a sense of personal search and great integrity....

 Never practice for fingers alone. You must work for sound at the same time.... ~ Alain Marion

If you have a great technique then you have freedom. 

Freedom is gained through the mastery of a great technique. 

This mastery gives the musician the ability to express the music in an artistic way.

Thoroughly explore and improve your technique! Play with it, bring it to life!

Be disciplined, passionate, refined & creative in practicing technical studies. 

Always practice artistically, with awareness of the whole and with great musicianship. 

Remember - all this technical practice is - for the music.

As you play your scales, arpeggios, trills, tonguing patterns, chromatics, thirds...

They are music!  All the parts matter & make up the whole of music.

Always play with your best, most colorful tones. Use your most curious and alert attention.  

  Engage your genuine care for the music and for yourself. 

Activate all of your senses!

Feel the gratitude you have for being given the gift of playing a musical instrument.

Here is a Technique Circle I created:

Creative Practice Circles, #6 - Tone

One aspect of our practice is in creating our Tone, our Voice for making music. I have not yet met a musician that does not have this element in their Circle of Practice.

This is another circle that is full of infinite possibility... and a lifetime of education, listening, play, thought, practice and performing... that go into it's Creation.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique...~ martha graham

Each of us has an individual voice as a person and as a musician.

 Since music asks us to express an infinite variety of sounds and shapes, how do we get to know and develop our unique Voice on the flute? As you explore and enrich your voice consider what each of these words below mean to you? Play with the words below to give them more meaning to you.

Use your imagination, creativity, artistry, curiosity, engaged mind, heart and spirit to find your voice.

Every note resonates inside our body and somewhere in the flute... ~  Rampal                                                                                                A Generous heart creates a beautiful tone ~ Moyse

How you create your tone, your sound is the artist in you. Your heart, mind, body, spirit are unique and whole. So is your tone.  It takes a lot of energy to create and develop your unique tone and it is worth it!

• You have a treasure chest of jewels inside of you waiting to be opened and expressed. Your tone is like this treasure chest, full of multi faceted, beautiful jewels waiting to be discovered and revealed. Invest in your tone practice and reveal your jewels! 

• Get curious about Tone! Educate yourself. What makes a beautiful, whole, exquisite sound? Begin by listening to great flutists, string players and vocalists. You will learn to refine your ear and to define what is is you are hearing and like in great sound. Keep listening in great detail and delight to what you hearing in these great sounds. The next step is to learn how to play what you listening to by these great artists. Also, ask your teacher to help you and to demonstrate what you are trying to emulate.

• Your tone is a one of a kind, piece of art created by you! What kind of art are you making? Know, grow and love your sound!

What do you like about your sound?

What would you like to enhance in your tone?

What would you like to change about your sound?

What are some specific ways you can do this?

What is in your Circle? 


Here is a link from NPR called 50 Great Voices... It is a great place to hear 50 unique, authentic voices~ enjoy!!!

Here is a circle that I created on Tone:

Creative Practice Circles, #5 - Play!

Are you being playful


                     enough in your practice?


There is nothing like play,
                             to light up
                                       all of the brain!!!!

           We do play our instruments!


What are you doing to be more alive and playful in your practice?


Here is a circle of practice based on the ideas from Dr. Stuart Brown's book, Play -  How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination and invigorates the soul. Play

Here is a  TED Talk video by Dr. Stuart:

More ideas on play go to:

The National Institute for Play - http://www.nifplay.org 

Play + Science = Transformation 

Some Thoughts On How The Alexander Technique Can Help Musicians?

How we talk about the Technique is rather important... We could say that lightness and freedom of movement with minimum effort must be a really good objective... ~ Walter Carrington

I have been asked often...

How does the Alexander Technique help musicians?

Here are some ideas that come to mind for me... 

I will write about this in more detail throughout the year as I continue my Alexander teacher training!

Alexander Technique can increase the understanding of  your balance, coordination, poise and freedom of movement throughout your whole self.

Promotes a unified, coordinated and dynamic harmony throughout your whole self.

You can learn to Inhibit habits that interfere with the natural use of your whole self. 

It can teach you to choose how to usefully direct your thoughts and your whole self. 

It is about non- doing, a letting go of any tension and habits that are not necessary for the activity you are doing.

It keeps you in the present!  A good thing for musicians and all people :-).

It helps to prevent injury.

It is a “technique” that teaches how you think and how you are in the present is more important than focusing on the end result or “end- gaining”. That being in the present will get you farther in the end!

The Alexander Technique principals can give you more possibility for potential movement, moment by moment.       It is the opposite of being “locked” into your movement.

Creates and restores conscious connections and choice throughout whole self.  So you can make active choices about your own use, directing your thoughts into a unified awareness. 

Increases consistency and awareness, which can boost self-confidence and help to alleviate performance anxiety. 

Teaches that the Body... Whole Self, All Senses (including your brain)... is the Principal Instrument.

Helps to create balance, poise and an expressive ease of organic movement. Great for practice and essential for a great performance!

Encourages and Restores a trust and freeing into the intrinsic, inherent, original support, the “primary control” of your body’s whole system. 

The head leads up and the whole body responds dynamically, sequentially to any and all movement. 

It helps you to find a good combination of effort, support, ease and balance for playing your instrument, for making music. 

Good use of the whole body helps in creating an ease and fluidity in your breathing.

Health and ease of the body and mind, spirit... interconnection and wholeness. 

It is a gentle, encouraging, restorative, hands on and verbal process that you are active in and also non active. 

It acknowledges and softens your fears offering you another way to think and move into authenticity & integrity.

Here are the Alexander Type of Directions and Active Rest to help you!

www.creativeflutist.com© 2011 Jennifer Keeney

Creative Practice Circles #4, Alexander Technique

So, lets take a Circle from the Body Circles and make another more detailed circle from it. 

How about Alexander Technique as a way into knowing ourself and our whole body. 

First here is some information about F.M. Alexander and the Alexander Technique:

Every single thing we are doing in the work is exactly what is being done in Nature where the conditions are right, the difference being that we are learning to do it consciously...”~F.M. Alexander 

Frederick Matthias Alexander was born in 1869 in Tasmania, and moved to Australia as a young man to pursue a career in Shakespearean recitation. When he encountered difficulties with his voice that threatened to end his new career, he consulted doctors and speech experts to find a cure for his troubles. Not finding any lasting relief from their suggestions, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He reasoned that the cause of his ailment must lie in something he was doing to himself, since there was no disease in his body.
Setting about to discover what he was doing, F.M. Alexander carefully observed himself with mirrors, undertaking a scientific process of observation and experimentation which he continued for over a decade. Besides solving his vocal problem, this process ultimately led him to make many startling discoveries dealing with how an individual’s use of mind and body affects general functioning.


Because he felt that his discoveries were of a vital importance to humanity, Alexander decided to give up his acting career, which had become quite successful as soon as he cured his vocal problems, in order to devote himself to what is now known as the Alexander Technique. He began to teach others through the use of his hands and words, how to improve their own use and functioning. In 1904, Alexander moved to England in order to make his Technique better known.


In addition to teaching, Alexander wrote four important books, my favorite is The Use of The Self, about his discoveries. Alexander started a school for children, where he hoped to make the most impact by preventing misuse of habits at a young age. At the start of World War I, Alexander brought his Technique to the United States and divided the next ten years between teaching there and in London, taking on an assistant teacher in each place. In the last years of his life and until he died in 1955, he ran a training course for teachers in London. The Alexander Technique is now taught by qualified teachers all over the world.


What is the Alexander Technique?


How we talk about the Technique is rather important. It sets our thinking in certain ways, for better or worse. ... the objective of our work is neither health nor posture, but lightness and freedom of movement... ~ Walter Carrington


Alexander Technique is a hundred-year old educational method, Neuromuscular re-education, given in lessons, that increases understanding of our balance, coordination, poise and freedom of movement for the whole self. Just by living we can develop physical and emotional habits that create stress and tension in our body. By enlivening our awareness we can choose to free ourselves from these habits. Alexander lessons will help to re-educate the full potential of your whole self and discover a “lightness and freedom of movement”, an expressive ease of organic movement. An Alexander teacher will facilitate your process through hands-on guidance as well as verbal instruction to enhance your overall awareness. 

Here is a video by Marjorie Barstow,  the first student of F.M. Alexander and a beautiful Alexander teacher, talking about what the Alexander Technique is.:

Creative Circles #3, Body As The Principal Instrument

I consider my body, my Principal Instrument, to which I add the flute and make music. 


So, the Body Circle it is a very important part of my Practice Circles. Let's take just one Element of our Practice Circle at a time and make that into a set of Circles too. We will start with the BODY.  Please remember your Body includes your mind, brain and imagination too! Here are a few ideas to explore in this Circle. 
You could also take each of these Elements of Practice and Create another Circle of more detail and de-light. 


The possibilities are infinite :-).


What is in your Body Circle and how do you activate these during your Practice?


Here are some that are in mine:

Creative Circles - Elements of Practice- #2

Here are some Elements of Practice that are in my Circle. What is in yours?

Let me hear from you and share your Creative Circle.

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1st of 9 posts on Creative Practice Circles, #1

You are your own window into knowing your self, your practice, your musical life. Consider your practice life and how it is a mirror of your musical life. What would you put in your Circle that represents the design of your whole musical life? Write your name in the window and freely write, doodle, draw, the elements of your practice in the circle of your musical life.

Next Post will continue on with more ideas about what is inside your Circle of Practice!

Let me know what you came up with :-)

Here are some ideas about Circles, Communication, Community and Connection:

Creative Practice Circles

Creative Circles              

We acquire the strength we have overcome. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Creative Circles are a way of tapping into the natural flow of our creativity. The brain works in non linear ways and takes an idea, connecting it by associations & images. Creative Circles  is another way to organize your self and to tap into your creative side. Use this for any idea, subject, goal, dream... anything that you are trying to understand, play with, learn bring to life. Here is a creative circle for you to look at that I created. Play with one today to explore your self and dreams... your tone... a musical idea, or ______?

Enjoy, be playful and free!

More Circles soon!

More Ideas: See my book and classes Creative Circles.

Listen: to inspirational music.                                                               CD: make your own play list of music that inspires you.     

 Look : Mandalas