When playing the flute, the player should sit or stand about 30" from the music. A good way to check this distance is to place the flute, which is about 28" long, between you and the music stand and then move back another 2". At this distance the fovea takes in an area of notes or information about the size of a quarter. This focus is called a fixation and occurs in about one quarter of a second before the eyemoves on to a new spot. The hop from one fixation to the next happens in about a 20th of a second and no information is taken in during the hop. In music reading, the size of a quarter may take in one measure, four 16ths in simple time or six 16ths in compound time.
    Get a ruler and mark your music in one inch chunks. In two-stave reading, such as in piano playing, the eye does not move in chunks from left to right but in a series of up and down patterns following the structure of the music.

Background
    I first read about this concept in John A. Sloboda’s The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985) in 1985. My immediate thought was that I had been teaching reading incorrectly for the past 33 years, and I should try this new technique with a group of beginners. Because there were no specific materials available then, I had students play a measure in 2/4 time followed by a rest. The 2/4 measure became a  3/4 measure. If the measure was in 4/4 time, then a rest was added after beats 2 and 4, making the measure a  6/4 measure.
    When they advanced to playing 16th notes, we placed a rest after each group of four 16ths. The results were astonishing. Not only did they learn to read and play much faster than any group of beginners I had ever taught, but the quality of their playing, especially in tone and physical control, was spectacular.
    It was a few months later that I learned that physical acts are also learned in chunks. For example, gymnasts learn floor routines as a series of movements made up of smaller chunks. We do this when we read as well. For example, read this sentence:  I am going home to eat some food. We might process it as: I am (chunk #1) going home (#2) to eat (#3) some food (#4). Each of the larger groups (I am), is also made up of a smaller chunk (I & am), which in turn are made up of  individual letters.
    Many of us have watched our children at soccer, basketball, and football practices. Each maneuver with the ball is practiced separately and then put together into a play. A series of plays makes up a game.

Pedagogues
    I have often thought that the best practicers probably use techniques that educational psychologists have yet to discover and analyze. Because musicians think on so many levels when playing a phrase, they should find practice strategies that work, and work quickly.
    To play one note you have to know the note name, the fingering, how to produce a tone, the articulation, the dynamic, the style, the duration etc. Even the most elementary flutist is already an expert in multi-level thinking. Each of these elements, such as producing a tone, is constructed of several individual chunks.
    To produce a tone you have to think about how to take a breath and angle the air against the embouchure hole wall. Another aspect is where to place your tongue and when to use it. There is the placement of the headjoint on your chin and where the embouchure hole touches your skin. These many chunks combine together to make the larger whole of producing a tone.
    Several of my friends studied with Gaston Crunnelle at the Paris Conservatoire. When he asked how they were going to practice an assignment, they replied: “Start with the metronome on 40 and work my way up to performance tempo.” He said: “No, no. Play in small rhythmic units in performance tempo, several times a day for a week and then put it together.” He was advocating the chunking technique long before it had been officially discovered.
   My first teacher, Frances Blaisdell, was known for the words that she sang while students played scales in 2341 or Kincaid note groupings.

 
She sang: I (chunk #1), am going home (chunk #2), to take a bath (chunk #3), to wash the car (chunk #4), to feed the bird (chunk #5) etc. throughout the entire two octave scale­–ascending and descending. She was teaching me to chunk in the late 1950s!

Meadowmount School of Music
    The Meadowmount School of Music for string players was founded by Ivan Galamian, the most famous violin pedagogue of the 20th century. Located in a remote part of the Adirondack Mountains in New York, the facilities are primitive and students have little to distract them from the task at hand, which is learning to play like a concert artist. There is a saying that in the seven weeks you spend there, you will learn a year’s worth of material.  How do they accomplish such a feat? 
    Writer Daniel Coyle visited while doing research for his book The Talent Code (Bantam, 2009) and found that the teachers at Meadowmount take chunking to the extreme. Students photocopy an entire etude or concerto and cut the music, measure by measure, into horizontal strips. These chunks of music are placed in an envelope and pulled out at random. Then the work begins.
    They analyze each segment and break them down into smaller groups by playing the notes in a variety of rhythms or smaller musical units. Each one is dissected until it is thoroughly understood. The dissection not only encompasses the musical elements of reproducing the notes, but also the physical elements used to produce the music. By the time both the musical and physical elements are learned, they have memorized the measure. The memorization is done with understanding and thought, not just mindless repetition. When they have learned the individual measures, they put the etude back together.
    This technique is much like making a quilt. First you make all the patches and then you sew them together. If each of your squares is perfect, the finished quilt will be square too. 
    Another Meadowmount trick is to slow it down. Coyle reports that one teacher he interviewed said: “If a passerby can recognize the song being played, it’s not being practiced correctly.” I recall hearing Julius Baker practicing very slowly, truly at a snail’s pace. However, in performances he stunned us with his beautiful sound, perfect articulation, incredible technique, and fabulous tempos.

Putting Chunking Into Practice
    In learning to read, you must first learn the alphabet. In flute playing, start with one note. Play the one note as well as you can, thinking about the attack, duration, and release. After that one note, rest before trying again. During this rest you can evaluate your performance and prepare for the next note. Think about what you must do physically to produce the one note. Learn how you must be physically set up to play this one note and how to use this process to play efficiently and without tension.
    During the rest there is no hurrying or feeling that you must begin to play before you are ready. In rushing to play, you could teach yourself to play with tension. When you are not as organized as you should be before beginning to play, you make decisions that might be bad ones.
    Sometimes I think that the best motto is: Can you play it really well slowly? If so, then it is easy to speed it up. Actually the trick when playing fast difficult passages easily is to practice every way that you can think of so that in performance, you feel like the passage is going by very slowly. You never feel rushed. You stay in real time.
    Beginners taught with the chunking technique learn more quickly. They also play with better tone production, have more confidence, and have a clearer understanding of what they are trying to accomplish. They are also relaxed, organized players.

A Chunking Project
    The “Preludio in C major” by Anton Bernhard Furstenau (1792-1852) from 26 Exercises, Opus 107, Volume I is short in length and provides plenty of material to use the chunking technique.
 
    A preludio or prelude is a short piece that establishes the pitch for the following piece as in a Prelude and Fugue. In this case, the Preludio is setting up the key of C major for the following C-major etude. Most preludes sound improvisatory through the use of easily executed scales and arpeggios, turns, trills, and fermati.
    They are meant to be played with only a few breaths, much like a Baroque or Classical concerto cadenza. With no barlines or time signatures, their interpretation is left to the performer. This makes them a good choice for our project. We can chunk in many ways and still be correct.
    The tempo marking is Con fuoco. Con means with and fuoco means fire, so the instruction is to play with fire. Already that sounds like fun. I have divided the Preludio into five sections or large chunks. Each large chunk is divided into smaller chunks. Where to chunk is based on melodic contour, rhythmic ideas, and chordal material. There is not one way to do it. You just want to find a way. With time and practice, you will begin to see music in many different ways. This is good. Variety is the spice of life and what separates the artist from the common man.
     The first chunk begins on a second octave C. Because this note is a whole note with a fermata at a f dynamic marking it should be played with brilliance and energy. The note should sparkle and call attention to the fact that you are beginning something important.
     There is a turn at the conclusion of this note that leads into another chord tone, the third octave E. It would be best to end the long C a bit softer so that the turn can start softly leading into the E. Overall in this larger chunk you want to bring out the C, E, and finally the G – arriving at the top with the most energy. 
     So, let’s assign four counts to the whole note C plus one more count for the fermata; that makes a total of five counts. Practice playing this small chunk of one note forte for four counts and then on the fifth count make a diminuendo. Practice this several times until you can execute the note exactly the same way several times in a row.  As you do this be sure that the flute doesn’t roll in toward you as you lift the left-hand thumb for the C. Check the C’s pitch with a tuner. Practice this note until you are sure that you can nail the pitch and tone color every time. A wide stance may help convey the feeling of strength.
     The 32nd notes leading into the E make up the second little bit. While the turn notes lead into the third octave E, you could also look at these first five notes as a gruppetto. Gruppetto is the Italian word for a group of notes as in a turn. Usually the pitch contour of a gruppetto is to begin on a note (C), rise one note higher (D), return to the first note (C), then descend to the lower note (B) before returning to the initial note (C). Practice playing the C and the little notes two ways: as a gruppetto and as a group of notes leading into the E.
     For the first way there will be a silence before the E. In the second one, you will have a silence after the E. The E is a dotted eighth note. A good rule of phrasing is to diminuendo or decay the dynamic to the rhythmic placement of the dot.
     The third little chunk is the 16th note C to G. Play the C softer and crescendo to the G, which is the most important note of the phrase. It is a quarter note with a fermata, which means it is held for about two counts. End the G without tapering to make it more exciting and declamatory.
     To learn the next phrase, play each of these chunks with a silence or rest between them. Make each chunk the best playing that you can muster. When you feel confident that you are playing exactly the way that you want each note to be shaped, with the planned dynamic and vibrato, put the three small chunks or grouplets together as a larger chunk or unit. Practice the unit until you are satisfied that you are doing your best.
     The next chunk is a descending C major arpeggio that lands on a first octave G. Break this into five smaller chunks by using ruler phrasing.
      Ruler phrasing is a term I made up for my students to teach them to follow the contour of a melodic line.  Usually when the contour changes directions you are in a new grouplet.    The ruler helps students see the contour better. It is like connecting the dots in a children’s puzzle.
     I place the ruler to the right of the last note head of a grouplet and ask the student to play until I have to move the ruler. This gives students a good visual on how to direct the air and what to do with the line. In this case you would first play three notes before moving the ruler. Then you could ruler phrase three groups of four notes and finally one group of three notes.
     Practice these chunks with a rest in between until each note has the same timbre or color. Because the line descends, you have a choice of whether to begin softly and crescendo to the bottom or start loudly and diminuendo to the bottom. There is no correct answer. You might want to do it one way one day and a different way the next. Be creative and use your judgment to make the decision. Once each chunk is amazing, put the five chunks together into one unit. Practice this until it meets your goals.
     The third chunk is an ascending G Mm7 chord that lands on the seventh at the top (with another fermata) and descends landing on an first octave A that resolves to a first octave G.

     Apply the same rules from Chunk #1 to the gruppetto here; however, in the end I think you will want to think of these turn notes as a pick-up to the major/minor seventh chord. They should start softer as they lead into the G.
     Decide whether you want to start the first arpeggio softly, make a crescendo to the top and diminuendo back down or whether you want to do the opposite. Practicing both ways will help you develop your embouchure and flexibility. Listen to the timbre of each note to be sure that each has a core or resonance.
     Choose the speed for this material. You might consider starting slowly and accelerate to the top followed by a slowing at the end. There are many possibilities; that is what makes playing preludes fun. If your G Mm7th chord is not facile, break it into chunks of two, three, or four notes. You might also practice the notes with dotted rhythms. Be sure to taper the final G.
     Chunk #4 is composed of arpeggios alternating between the tonic C major and the dominant G major.

The last chord or five notes include an F, which is the seventh degree of the scale. Divide this chunk into eight smaller sections and practice each one until your tone is beautiful and fingering is clean. Remember that there should be silence between each chunk. The silence gives you time to think and prepare. Then put them together.
     The dynamic contour of this phrase should start softly, crescendo to the top, and diminuendo back down to the low E. Then crescendo until the first note of the next large chunk (#5), which is shown below.

If you use a color vibrato (faster, narrower vibrato) on the first note of the slur, you will sound like a more experienced player. The staccato notes should be separated or unglued.
     This final chunk is a C-major arpeggio that concludes on a low C. Divide it into two smaller chunks. The first begins on the third octave E and concludes on the G eighth note. Then make a group that begins on the C and concludes on the low C. Play the contour of these chunks. The ending should sparkle and finish with a strong vibrant low C. 
     After you have learned each of the five larger sections well, practice putting them together. Place silence between each group so that the audience thinks that you are making this prelude up on the spot. At this stage of practice, I have my students face in a different direction at the end of each chunk. This helps them have the confidence to wait and not feel hurried.
     Record yourself and listen for any problem areas. The kinds of things you want to listen for are quality of the attacks, vibrato speed, clear technical maneuvers, great slurs, dramatic dynamics, intonation, and a virtuoso tempo when indicated. Making a video recording of your practice also helps. Ask yourself whether it looks simple and logical when you are performing.
     This theory can help us learn anything if we are patient and break the material into small enough chunks. If you enjoyed this preludio, there are 26 more in this series of etudes. They include all keys.     

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Constructing a Memory Map
    The Memory Map can be useful at any stage of learning, but working out details from the very beginning is advantageous. Simple notations can evolve to more detailed, elaborate ideas as the player gains a greater understanding of the music. There is no right or wrong way to map; what might trigger memory for one flutist wouldn’t necessarily have meaning for another. The map is a compilation of personal study and reflection.
    To begin, write basic information, such as the key, meter, and form in the left margin. Although staff paper or a steno pad works nicely, I like to tape lined and staff paper together to clarify written and musical notations. Rehearsal numbers or letters often work well as landmarks. I often notate fragments of themes and rhythmic patterns on the staff paper.

    As you continue to fill out the map (see below), the elements that form the composer’s intentions become apparent.


    Mozart’s use of 18th-century double-exposition form in the first movement follows convention; however, signature elements of multiple motives, winsome melody and artful appoggiaturas set him apart from everyone else. The possibilities for mapping are limitless.  Descriptive labels, such as “bird-call” bridge and “rocket” at the recapitulation can provide an imaginative trigger for these points. A teacher can nurture a young student’s imagination through these creative words to describe sections that later might be given proper musical terms. Difficulties in memorization occur when the player can’t remember the details of thematic transformation or variation.  
    Works that employ diatonic harmony and conventional forms are a good starting point for mapping, as the Mozart example illustrates. Atonal and unconventional contemporary works, however, pose more difficulty and the task becomes a more significant challenge.

Maps of Debussy’s Syrinx.
    While far from atonal, Debussy’s Syrinx is an iconic 20th-century flute solo that illustrates the move toward the dissolution of diatonic tonality via chromatic, pentatonic, and whole-tone harmony. To set the stage for mapping, certain aspects of this short work deserve special emphasis.
    Composed as incidental music to Gabriel Mourey’s play Psyche, the programmatic piece was dedicated to Louis Fleury, who performed the premiere in 1913. Played offstage, the solo foreshadows the death of Pan. Syrinx remained in Fleury’s possession as a manuscript until 1927, at which time flutist Marcel Moyse added the key signature and barlines for publication. (For a more comprehensive discussion, please see Flute Talk articles: “Performance Guide: Interpreting Syrinx” by Roy Ernst and Douglass Green, Feb. 1991; and “Debussy’s Syrinx” by Laura Ronai, March 2008.)
    It is commonly held that Syrinx is organized into four perceptible sections. Debussy intended an improvisatory nature for the piece, yet he gives precise notations of alternating duple and triple rhythms that sound loose and unhurried. In only 35 measures, the harmonically ambiguous theme is expanded, interpolated, and recapped at a moderate, elastic pace.
    My first map was comprised of the quarter-note skeleton with the underlying rhythm. More details were added as needed.

The restatement of Theme 1 moves onward through thematic extension. In this part of the map, I employ mostly rhythmic stems and skeletal notes.

The rubato section serves as a transition to the love theme and subsequent climaxing cadence.

The final impassioned call leads to a descent, correlating to the death of Pan. With use of the descending half step, long held as a gesture of tearful lamentation, Debussy broadens the rhythmic pace, the tempo and aptly writes perdendosi (gradually dying away).

The map’s short-hand underscores the descent.

More Maps
    The following maps show how mapping can evolve over time. Marco Granados’ playful Hibiee-Jibiees has been a staple for school demonstrations for a decade. The first example is a scribbled map with the barest essentials.

The second version, although a fragment, shows the opposite extreme for detail.

The third and most personal version illustrates a more compact approach. 

My graduate student Jennifer Rodriguez mapped the first movement of Lowell Lieberman’s Flute Concerto,  notated much like those shown on the left, except that her map was three pages long! (Scroll down to see her maps!) However, her final version evolved to a set of flash cards completed for a competition.

    For Jennifer, simple, descriptive words and phrases in colors became effective triggers. (She cut and pasted the corresponding musical sections on the back of each card.) Her efforts paid off; she was a winner!

    Memorization of music is a process of discovery, hard work, and liberation which offers advantages for performance. There are several generally established types of memory work – kinetic, aural, visual, and analytical. The Memory Map combines elements of these four approaches. As the musician condenses a musical work into a visual, written graph during practice, the process leads to more careful study and understanding of the work. I find that it also leads to greater insight into the composer’s intentions. The Memory Map is an excellent pedagogical tool and provides teachers with a tangible means to supervise and evaluate a student’s comprehension and progress. In everything we do musically, expertise comes with deliberate, organized practice. There are limitless ways to construct a map; creative imagination and intensified study of musical elements through mapping sets the stage for more indepth study and understanding of any piece of music. This, in turn leads to enhanced performances.
­­

Leiberman Concerto Map 1 (page 1), mm. 1-50
This map is the written out first portion of each section. Staves 1-3 represent the opening section. The next 7 staves represent the arpeggios before the "playfully annoying" sections.

Lieberman Concerto Map 2 (page 2), mm. 51-135
Staves 1-2 are a continuation of the “playfully annoying” section.
Staves 4-8 are page 3 of the concerto.
Staves 9-10 are the slow F-minor section (page 4 of concerto).

Bibliography
Andreas, Jamie. On Memorizing: Part 2. , accessed June 1, 2008.
Dunsby, Jonathon. Memory and memorizing. Grove Online: , accessed June 14, 2008.
Ernst, Roy and Green, Douglass M. “Performance Guide: Interpreting Syrinx” Flute Talk, February, 1991.
Gandrup, Kimberly. “Creative Memorizing Tips”, Flute Talk, February, 2000.
Garrison, Leonard. “For the Mnenomically Challenged.” ,  accessed June 5, 2009.
Houser, Virginia. “Memorization-An Integral Part of Musicianship at Every Level”,   Accessed June 5,   2007.
Kelly, Robert T. “How to Memorize Music”. , accessed June 1, 2007.
Koenig, Laura. “Debussy’s Syrinx: An Annotated Biography,” The Flutist Quarterly, Winter 1995/6.
Lewis, Martha Beth. “Memory Methods”. , accessed June 14, 2008.
Mishra, Jennifer. A Theoretical Model of Musical Memorization in Psycomusicology, Vol. 19: Spring 2005.”
Rawlins, Robert. “Musical Memory Skills,” The Flutist Quarterly XX/3 (Spring 1995): 51-53.
Ronai, Laura. “Debussy’s Syrinx” in Flute Talk, March 2008.
Shockley, Rebecca Payne. “An Experimental Approach to the Memorization of Piano Music with Implications for Music Reading”. D.M.A. Dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1980.
Mapping Music: Some Simple Strategies to Help Students Learn. American Music Teacher 56:2 (Oct-Nov. 2006), p. The Memory Map ©

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Education
    “I studied with Baker’s students a lot. Mom was my first teacher, but I was a bit rebellious. I started with Thomas Nyfenger when I was in junior high. However, I also wanted to play jazz and rock and roll, and I was really into electronics. Anything that guitar and synthesizer players were using, I wanted to try on the flute – fuzz boxes, octave splitters, ring modulators, etc. I also started doubling on the saxophone about that time, and Nyfenger didn’t really approve. I had a very hard time being a good flutist when I was playing a lot of saxophone.
    "During high school I went to study with Joe Allard in New Jersey. He was the patron saint of saxophone teachers in the U.S. – just a brilliant, French-Canadian gentlemen who showed me how to do my saxophone embouchure differently. That was the key. After that it was much easier to double flute and saxophone. Even then, though, I was spending a significant majority of my time practicing flute.”
    Weiss also studied with the noted New York doubler Al Regni during high school but admits that “I just wasn’t putting in the hours at that point. Al was a great teacher, but I was still too much of a teenager.  When I was about 16, I started studying with Erich Graf, who is now the principal of the Utah Symphony. He was teaching at The Summer Music Program at Bowdoin College in Maine, and something about working with him lit a spark. I started practicing eight hours a day. Bowdoin was sort of like a Juilliard summer school. Everybody practiced all day, so I did too.

Interest in Ethnic Flutes
    “After that I started playing all the time. I actually switched high schools so I didn’t have a big workload. I went to an alternative education high school and that left time for me to play all kinds of music. At age 17 I went down to Soho to hear avant garde jazz. I also studied contemporary flute music and other types of music on top of my main studies in classical and jazz flute.
    “That was when I started getting into world music. In New York, just walking down the street you can hear Latin charanga and salsa, African music, Nigerian drumming, and Brazilian bossa  nova. My parents also had a very eclectic record collection. I remember looking around in the back of funky old music stores to see if they had any old flutes lying around. Most of them were in terrible shape, and it took me a long time to learn how to make them playable. That is how I learned about keyless wood instruments. I love the sound of wood flutes, as well as off-the-beaten-track woodwinds.”
    For college Weiss chose the Manhattan School of Music because he wanted to stay in New York. He planned on working there after graduation, doing Broadway shows, recording, free-lancing, and jazz. He has been employed on Broadway since 1983, and also does lots of studio work.
    “I didn’t see myself sitting in an orchestra, although I love the orchestral repertoire. During conservatory I studied with Andy Lolya and Harold Bennett at Manhattan. I also had several semesters with Harvey Sollberger, who showed me so many unusual and wonderful things. He was a very enthusiastic teacher. 
    “In the early 1980s, I studied flute and saxophone with the noted New York studio musician Harvey Estrin, one of the best moves I ever made.  Harvey was the toughest teacher I ever had in anything, a real drill instructor. Nothing was ever good enough, so it made me work even harder. He may have been my most influencial teacher.”

Broadway
    Weiss’ first Broadway show with wood flutes was Pacific Overtures, a Sondheim show in 1984. “The word got out that I had a bag of flutes. Davey Bag O’ Flutes someone jokingly called me. It’s actually a difficult thing to do – to have all the instruments work, play in tune, and have a certain something that is enjoyable to listen to.
    “I started doing a bit of session work after that. I was still learning, buying instruments, and trying to figure out what I was doing. Miss Saigon in 1991 was a big break through for me. The flute book in that show had a fair amount of wood flute solos, and we were only the second company in the world to do the show after the London premiere. In London they had used different instruments from what I had. I tried sopranino Chinese flutes and a few other Chinese and Indian flutes. The composer really loved the way it sounded. After that, they used those instruments in the subsequent companites. To this day, I am still renting out instruments for that show.

The Lion King
    “In the summer of 1996 I got a call from Michael Keller, a New York music contractor. He told me that Disney was turning the movie Lion King into a musical, and he wanted to know if I would be interested. It meant leaving Miss Saigon, which promised to be a steady job for at least a few more years, but something told me this was going to be big. I said I was interested, and we made a date to talk. I would have to audition in the future. This all leads to a funny story.
    “In October of 1996 I got a call from the film composer Mark Manchina, who was assuming the job of music supervisor for Lion King. He wanted to meet me, but I was booked solid. That night, unbeknownst to me, he and two other people from Disney came to Miss Saigon, thinking they would hear me play. I was off that night, and unbeknownst to them, they heard my sub. They called the next day to say they had enjoyed my work the night before. I cried, ‘Wait – that wasn’t me.’ We made tentative plans to meet soon. 
    “The following night the same three men showed up at the Miss Saigon, again unannounced.  At intermission, they came looking for me at the orchestra pit, which is very deep. To talk to them, I had to stand on my chair and have the job interview in front of the whole orchestra. When it was time to tune, the conductor said, “Dave,” and I replied, ‘Wait. This is important. I’ll be done in a second!’ My friends still give me the business over that one.”

The development of every Broadway show begins with what is called a workshop. That is followed by the Out of Town Break In, a pre-Broadway production of the show.

The Workshop
    The entire music creative team (composers, orchestrators, actors, and a few players) start throwing out concepts and musical examples and work with them to come up with the score. “Every show is different. I had never heard of a musical workshop as extensive as what Disney did for Lion King. They had the movie score, but the Broadway show was going to be expanded by an hour. Some numbers that had been cut from the movie were added to the show. Disney rented out the Sony Studios here in New York for about a week and hired about 12 of us, about half the size of a traditional show band, and threw charts at us. We tried things out in multiple ways. I introduced the creative team to a variety of instruments that they were not familiar with, including the bass panpipe, ocarinas, and a variety of wood flutes. It went quite well, and after a few days they offered me the job.

The Out of Town Break In
    “In June of 1997 we held further meetings and rehearsals in New York, now really defining what we were going to be doing. I took about 80 instruments with me. The only thing the Disney people had specified was that they wanted panpipes, flute, and piccolo. Eveything was being made up as we went. I was also asked to contribute to the flute parts, sometimes by improvising in rehearsal. 
    “The entire production moved to Minneapolis in June of 1997 where we worked out the details and had our first preview. I had only worked out about 2/3 of the solos, and some of the colors were still not right, so there was still a lot of experimenting going on.
    “What was developing was that some of the woodwinds would color the main characters. Simba, the young Lion King, is represented by the panpipes. The evil uncle Scar gets a lot of the low end of the bass panpipes, and Mufasa, Simba’s father, often has low wood flutes accompanying him. 
    “I used other instruments to express certain feelings in the show. The hardest spot was a ballet inserted into the middle of the song “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.” Originally it was written for just wood flute, and the orchestrator gave me a rather basic solo to play. Once I saw the number with full staging, however, it got my creative juices flowing. It’s a love song, and the stage is a rain forest in full bloom.
    “I decided to try a membrane flute, in this case a Chinese flute pitched in B, but played without any Chinese inflections or stylings. I found that it complemented the stage action, so I reworked the part over the next few days. It always seems to puzzle people that there is a Chinese flute in a show set in Africa, but that’s how it came to be.
    “By then we had the flute book down to about 17 instruments: ocarinas, wood flutes, 5 or 6 panpipes, the bass panpipe, and wood alto flutes. I told them that was still too much. I didn’t mind using that many instruments, but getting substitute flutists in the future would be too difficult for a variety of  reasons. There is also a lot of flute and piccolo. If you look at the piccolo part as it flies up and down, it’s like playing the piccolo solo from Tchaikovsky’s 4th every night.” The program still states that Weiss plays 17 instruments, but the number has actually been reduced to 12. When they have to accomodate the vocal range of an understudy, a 13th instrument is necessary.
    When I spoke with Weiss, it was a Saturday afternoon, a day that he would normally have a matinee and evening show. I asked who was sitting in his chair at the theater. He commented, “I have several subs, and they each have about 90% of their own instruments. The bass panpipes, however, just stay in the pit; they are community instruments.They are also the most difficult to learn to play and are essential color to the score.”

The Flute Book Today
    There have been about 20 Lion King productions to date. Weiss says, “They use some of the music that I wrote, but once the Broadway company was a hit, and they started opening up other companies, I had almost nothing to do with the subsequent flute parts. They took my book, and the copyists and orchestrators copied out stuff.
    “It’s actually quite funny, because sometimes they took notations that I wrote while I was creating the book and misunderstood them. For example, in a performance or rehearsal I would write, Irish Flute or Indian Flute because I had to write it quickly and start playing in two bars. It was just a note to myself, but the copyist would see that and copy “Put an Irish Flute in F here.” It’s a bamboo flute – not Irish, and if they had consulted me, we could have cleared up a lot of confusion. I’m still advising people opening new companies around the world on just what instruments they need.” 
    They had hoped to use more authentic African flutes, but they are somewhat difficult to get, even with Weiss’ connections to Western and South Africa. They are also not in any kind of equal temperament that is essential for the production. “The intonation would be all over the place. So what I went for was the sound and the feel of South African music, but on instruments that would work with a Western orchestra.
    “One of the things that’s really great about Lion King is that it is not a documentary. The staging, choreography, and music come from many corners of the globe. Right from the start they said, ‘If you have something that sounds really interesting, we want to hear it. We don’t care if it is from Antarctica.’”

The Instruments
    I asked if there was a correlation between folk flutes and Baroque traversos. “Traverso fingerings  are very similar. Both types of flutes have six open holes, but with most of my wood flutes that’s it. They have no D# key or thumb hole. The mind set and feel of the flutes are completely different. The wood flutes are much more earthy. With six holes, you can really only play in fingered G, D, and A  Major, so you need a flute in every key.
    “I’m very lucky to have a complete set (meaning a flute in every key) of six-holed bamboo wooden flutes made by Virginian flute maker Patrick Olwell, from alto size to piccolo size.” Weiss has one for every half step. Olwell discontinued making bamboo flutes a number of years ago, and now makes only Irish flutes. He made one of these for Weiss several years ago, too. On the Irish flute, Weiss is an encyclopedia of information. “Most people don’t realize that what we now call the Irish flute is actually the English Classical flute of the 1830s, just before the Boehm flute came into being.
    “Almost any flute that has a tradition to it, such as the Indian Bansuri, Japanese Shakuhachi, or Middle Eastern Ney, is made by artisans. A really good Shakuhachi can cost $10,000, and the best Irish flutes go for around $5,000.”
    Sometimes musicians refer to these instruments as toys, but Weiss finds the term offensive. “These flutes have only six holes, and you have to play them in tune, musically, and figure out how they work. They are genuine instruments like anything else. I don’t care if they cost 2 cents, if you can make music with them, they are legitimate instruments. There are things that they do that fine traditional metal flutes won’t do.
    “What some call ethnic flutes are in fact often instruments with hundreds of years of history behind them. They are made by serious makers, and the master players on them are the equal of any one I know in the western flute tradition. I actually dislike the term ethnic flute, but it has become an accepted moniker here in the West. It really depends on who you are dealing with.  Some people are very respectful and appreciative of the concept while others are not. I try not to make a big deal out of the terms one way or the other.” 

Off Broadway
    Weiss also actively experiments with multi-media and recording. His eyes light up when he talks about the recording he does for and with other musicians around the world. “Just think about it. A laptop computer can be a professional recording studio today. In fact, I have a recording studio at home and can record with people all over the planet. Of course, you need to know how to work over the internet. There’s a steep learning curve there to achieve good results. You have to be your own sound engineer, and that’s a whole different art. Clients send me their music. I play and record my tracks along with theirs and then send it all back along with instructions about how to line up the tracks. Then they can mix it any way they want.”

In The Works
    You can hear Weiss on any number of films and commercials, and he often serves as an advisor to composers on American and ethnic woodwinds. He worked with film composer Carter Burwell for his score to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, which led to Weiss doing extensive solo work in two of Burwell’s subsequent scores, The Rookie, and The Alamo. Some of his other films and television shows are The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The American President, and Where The Wild Things Are. For more information go to  .
    “I recently recorded several tracks for the film Where The Wild Things Are, mostly on the Olwell Irish flute, but played in a very un-Irish way. Its always hard to know whats going to be included in the final product, however. That’s not up to me. Also, I did quite a bit of woodwinds for the new skyshow at the Hayden Planetarium here in New York, “Journey To The Stars.” I recorded several takes of whistletones and windtones for the composer, and he’ll put them through all sorts of effects to get the atmosphere he is looking for.
    “Most of the recording work here in New York is in advertising music, and I’ve been lucky enough to have worked on several hundred commercials in my career. There’s one out there right now that’s kind of unusual. It’s an American Express commercial, and the music is one of the Bach cello suites arranged for flute, alto flute, and bass flute. My apologies to my cello playing colleagues!”
    When Weiss is not pushing half notes around, he and his wife and son love travelling around the country to auto races and sporting events. “I’ll go see anything. I love cars. It’s great, because my wife and son love them too. It is something we can do together.”  

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        Breathe with clenched teeth: this produces a hissing sound, a poor and high-placed intake, and cool teeth. This is bad.

        Breathe with a half-opened mouth: we get the slurp so often heard, a better but incomplete intake, and the mouth is cool. This breath is better but still imperfect.

        Open your throat and feel the colder air deep in your throat: the air intake goes down and is ready to support; the upper chest remains uninvolved.

    An open-throated breath produces the HHAAH sound, which is the sign of the best air intake. The abdominal muscles drop. You might have the impression that the abdominal muscles pump the air in, but they don’t. Rather they create a bellows effect.
    When the belt or abdominal muscles stays flat, as in chest breathing, the air has very little room to go anywhere. When the waist drops during a low (abdominal) breath, a kind of void occurs below the diaphragm. If the throat is open (as in the HHAAH sound above), a bellows effect occurs that draws air in due to the simple action of atmospheric pressure, not by a pumping action of tummy muscles.
    A simple and logical way to feel this low air intake is to observe what you do when you yawn. It is the best and most pleasant way to feel and observe the process of breathing. When we dread a stressful event, a yawn is an easy way to relieve tension.
    We cannot yawn with high shoulders: in yawning, the shoulders drop automatically, liberating the neck area.
    Our ears pop, indicating that all the air inside our resonators (throat, sinuses, even lungs) is acoustically in contact with tone production. We cannot yawn through the nose (except, of course, when we make a polite effort to hide our boredom). Instead the mouth and throat are wide open.
    When the shoulders drop, the abdominal muscles also relax automatically, creating the bellows effect, an impression of fulfillment and an imminent readiness to blow and play, which are, after all, the actual purpose of breathing, regardless of the countless theories that prevail about such a natural act. Breathing is the essence of life itself, not some hypothetical (and complicated) physiological theory.
    For some reason, we tend to use slurp breaths during the course of phrasing, or when there is little time to breathe. However the HHAAH sound, dropping the belt for breath, is the fastest, most silent, and most efficient.
    Once good breathing has been achieved, and your breaths need not be huge, actual playing, air management, and control of the airflow follow naturally. If we support the air properly from the belt and don’t controll release of the air, the lungs deflate quickly like a child’s balloon.
    The secret solution to this is what singers call appoggio, meaning the act of leaning or pushing: the abdominal muscles support the blowing action, while we refuse to allow the ribcage to collapse, as it were, as if the ribs were still pushing outward. It can be compared to pushing to expel the result of digestion. (But of course, flute players, pure spirits as we all are, never have to think about our bowels.)
    At first controlling the release of the air seems complex, but it is well worth the effort to understand. This technique will improve your intonation and dynamic control by stabilizing the airflow.
It is important to develop a way to control airflow, instead of blindly blowing all the air at once, coming up short, and then worrying about running out. It takes more knowledge, thought, and effort to play softly in all ranges than to blast the sound at all times.
    The Big Sound, so beloved by contemporary flutists and flute makers, is nothing more than an easy and noisy paraphrase of what a flute sound should be: human, ethereal, tender, sometimes recalcitrant and aggressive, but always poetic, like the olive branch in the dove’s beak, not like a canon playing God.
    The system of supporting and withholding (appoggio) the air is essential for good playing. Once you have mastered it, as opposed to letting the air all out at once, your inhales will be more efficient as well. This is true especially when playing in soft dynamics. The important matter is mostly in the blowing, more than in the breathing.
   
(The word ‘belt’, and its equivalents, does not refer to the diaphragm, which moves up and down out of control of the player, but to the area below the navel, perceived as the sneeze point or cough point.)

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