The Fingering Forum

RE: Long Tones

Author: Musical Mind  Date:   2004-05-15 05:58 There are several ways that my teacher taught me. You pick a pitch (start from the low register). First, you play a whole note with fermata forte as long as you can, a quarter note equals to 60. Count the beats. Second, play ff to pp as long as you can. Third, play pp to ff as long as you can. Fourth, play pp to ff to pp, in a way that the half of the maximum beats you held is pp to ff and ff to pp (assuming X = the maximum beats you held, then pp to ff = X/2, ff to pp = X/2). Finally, fifth, play ff to pp to ff in the same way as the fourth step. The next one is to maintain "long-tone" feeling while moving fingers, which what my teacher exactly said. You play any two notes that are whole steps. Play them as long as you can with equal length amount of time for each note. Then you decrease the value of those notes to half notes, quarter notes, etc., again with equal length amount of time for each note as long as you can play. I know that these are very hard things to do, but I think they are great ideas for practicing long tones. I am disappointed that I didn't practice long tones as my teacher told me to do, although I'm a high school student, becoming a junior next year. I should resume training long tones soon. I hope this helps you.

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