Flute Video Lesson: Playing Holiday Music

Robert: Hi, welcome to the Flute Show with Florence Estrin. I'm Robert Estrin. Today's show is playing holiday music. So what can you say about that, Florence?

Florence: Well, I really have a lot of fun playing Christmas carols and Hanukkah songs. And I know that my students have always enjoyed this time of year getting ready for recitals, doing all this music. It's so much fun and what's great about it is that most Christmas carols are not that hard. So it's really very gratifying for beginner students, maybe they started only a few months ago, and they can play all sorts of Christmas carols. And it's impressive to their parents, and we put them together, sometimes big ensembles like a quartet, and if you have a bass or an alto flute to blend in with the quartet, it makes it very, very interesting with the flute choir sound.

Robert: That's right, and I guess a lot of students who start in the fall, by the time they get to Christmas they can actually play a lot of these songs, is that right?

Florence: That's right. That's right which is so much fun for them.

Robert: Now for those of you who have followed along with your music, you probably noticed. I did not play what's written. One of the cool things about Christmas songs, if you know them, you can play them by ear. And better than that, if you look in your score right here on Virtual Sheet Music the chord symbols are there which makes it even easier to play. If you don't want to read all the notes, you could just play a simpler arrangement than what I just did, and you can embellish it over time. And every season you'll get a little bit more advanced.

Florence: Right.

Robert: And that's the beautiful way to approach it, one way to do it.

Florence: Right.

Robert: All right. So everybody, have a good season and enjoy the music and enjoy the holidays.

Florence: Happy holidays!

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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