In December 2017 I joined a Facebook group called Etude of the Week (EOTW) so that I could view videos of my friend, Roderick Seed, playing etudes. I had never heard of the group and didn’t intend to join in, but as I discovered hundreds of videos of flautists just like me, from all over the world, ‘showing up’ every week and posting their video of the current etude, I was soon motivated and inspired to join in.

At that point, I had recently left my post as principal flute with the local amateur symphony orchestra. I was grateful for the wonderful experience I had had there but wanted to establish myself firmly as a professional musician in the public eye, and most importantly in my own mind. I had already been a professional flautist all of my working life: doing freelance performance work, running my own teaching practice and being involved in many professional music projects. But in my mind, I still wasn’t worthy of the title ‘professional musician’. My experiences over the past 15 months have affected me profoundly and changed my relationship to my flute, to music and to the wider world.

As soon as I joined EOTW I discovered a worldwide community of flautists – really good flautists! It made me have the realisation that
a) I wasn’t special
and
b) Of course I’m special
It was simultaneously a comfort and a challenge that there were so many people out there who were kind of like me, that I wasn’t alone. It was comforting to be part of community who had similar hopes and fears and loves and talents. But what was I going to do with my hopes, fears, loves and talents? That was the challenge.

The structure of doing one etude a week and sharing it online inspired me to perform one unaccompanied programme every month and share it online and also directly with my local community by doing a recital from my music room. I did this for 5 months from February to June, and then a final one in December. I was pleased to have a structured approach to work with and in January 2018 I also started having regular lessons (almost monthly) with my wonderful friend, colleague and mentor Susie Hodder-Williams. My mother was in the late stages of dementia at this time and she sadly died on 13th July 2018. Susie helped me to realize how connected my emotions are to my physical body and how connected my physical body is to my flute playing. Her lessons and support were invaluable.

The things I discovered with Susie in my lessons were reinforced by people I discovered in the online flute community (all through EOTW). I discovered Lea Pearson and her wonderful knowledge of body mapping. I discovered Jolene Harju Madewell with her wonderfully clear explorations of technique, and life-affirming love of colour, and I am currently enjoying her shared experiences of Alexander Technique. And there was much to be learned simply from watching other people’s videos. It helped to clarify my own approach both to my own playing and to my teaching.

Etude of the Week is an egalitarian group. From me, to a teacher in Russia, to a student in America, to a flute technician in Norway, to a symphonic flautist in South Africa, to an internationally touring flautist – we are all working on the same etudes every week, we all face similar challenges and we are all people who love the flute! There is no hierarchy. I can genuinely find inspiration and something that astounds me in every video I watch; whether it’s a note-perfect-memorised-expressive-performance or a first-try-brave-upload or a one-and-done-this-is-what-I-have-today-offering.

Discovering Jolene Harju Madewell led me to take up her scale game challenge (using the scale game by Michel Debost) which I completed during Sept – Dec 2018. I created an Instagram account in order to follow Jolene’s account. On Instagram, I found the 100-days-practice-challenge and I started doing that! Videoing myself has made me into my own teacher and I have changed and improved my posture, my sound production and my self-esteem. This was a journey, however, and a lot of the time I was very low and lacking in self-esteem throughout. My strength to keep going, to stay curious, to stay challenged, to hold on to the love of playing was found through my community. And this community, and my perspective, has been significantly widened through the Internet.

The Internet has been a catalyst for me crafting my own performance degree, if you like… (HONESTY ALERT!)

15 months ago:
1) I thought that the Moyse 24 little melodic studies were too simple and never really properly practised them.
2) I would struggle to play through a whole Boehm (or similar) etude. It was physically and mentally a big strain which I would undertake very occasionally and mistakenly feel like I’d achieved something.
3) I had never had a regular scales and arpeggios routine.
4) I had never had a daily practice routine. I practiced (sometimes a lot) – but no routine. My relationship with practice was fraught with a sense of guilt and lack.

Today:
1) The Moyse studies have become friends to me. There is so much complexity in simplicity. But the ultimate aim is simplicity. I use the melodies in my practice on most days. I use them in my teaching. They are so useful and lovely.
2) I have learnt and recorded 73 etudes over the past 15 months. I have had to develop physical and mental ease to do this. This has had, and continues to have, a profound effect on me.
3) I am intimately acquainted with Taffanel and Gaubert daily scale and arpeggios exercises and they are a touchstone of my daily routine. They are something I can do if I feel out-of-sorts, or if I don’t know what else to do. It will level me out, or will set me off on practising something else.
4) My relationship with practice is (mostly - nobody’s perfect!) healthy and regular because my understanding of myself as a flautist and what that means and how valid it is has been deepened. Practice is my friend, a constant.

Over the course of this 15 month period, although my technique was clearly improving – I experienced frequent despair about not being good enough. I have always felt this, and I think the death of my mum heightened my sense of lack, of loss, of not enough, of futility - whilst also challenging me to live fully. Inwardly, I became deeply unsatisfied with my playing to the point where I couldn’t enjoy playing with other people and I would even be jealous of other musicians, their ability or maybe their appearance of satisfaction, or ease. I was horrified with this despondent voice that was growing in me. I desperately wanted to change and grow (even though I already was…) and decided that I had to do the postgraduate music course that I had never done. I did a wonderful summer course at Harlaxton Manor with Carla Rees (a week after my mum had died) and decided that I wanted to do postgraduate study with Carla at Royal Holloway University.

I was determined to see this through, and make my family and work fit around it, as it was the thing I had never done and had always wanted to do and it was the answer to my insecurity. About two weeks ago, I had a deep realisation that I could keep chasing the idea of being good enough all my lfie and never be happy. Or I could be good enough and be happy. I have so much to be happy about. I decided not to do the postgraduate course. Dropping this idea of the-thing-that-I-never-did has been a big relief.
The idea of being ‘good enough’ is not a passive thing. It is a joyfully active thing. It requires my engagement every day. And I can only be productively engaged if my desire comes from a happy place.

From a young age, I have been a good sight-reader and have been able to communicate through my music. This is a great gift, but one that I subconsciously took for granted. I needed someone or something else to tell me that I was special because I didn’t really think it was special myself. I now understand how special it is and every day I actively participate in something which deserves my love, care and attention – and that is incredible. Most importantIy, I have an inkling of just how special we all are, and I am, whatever our endeavours or achievements are. I could give up playing the flute tomorrow and I would still be special. There is something about community, communication, the fostering of love, of a listening space, that helps us all to thrive. I am very lucky to access these things through my flute playing, but it is not the only way.

Thank you to all my friends in ‘real life’ and online, for helping me to be both serious and light.

I gave a short introduction to the flute to a class of year sevens this morning, to encourage students to sign up for flute lessons. In the past, addressing a whole class would have made me a little nervous – I normally teach one-to-one or small groups – but today I was confident and excited. The reason being that I am on a mission!
I love the fact that I can stand in front of a class of 11/12 year olds and say “Hello, my name is Ruth and I make my living by playing the flute.” No careers advisor is going to tell them that you can do that! Mine certainly didn’t when I was in year nine. Despite the fact that I lived and breathed music, and I was well on my way to grade 8 flute and piano in my mid-teens, my careers advice was to become a Nature Park Ranger.
I love the fact that I have such a wide circle of creative friends and collegues from whom I have learnt, and continue to learn, so much about playing, teaching, sharing and creating. This makes me a conduit of musical and creative possibilities! I love giving people of all ages the chance to reimagine themselves.
I stood in front of the class and played various examples of different flute styles – without sheet music (first time I have done this) – and being able to look at them as they all sat there engaged, curious, surprised – was fab. To guide them all through breathing exercises and help them make funny flute playing faces was a gift!
The desire to connect with people, takes away my fear of fear. To be vulnerable and together, not vulnerable and alone.
As a musician, I am so grateful for the ways - educating, performing, composing, listening -  I can connect with people. 

I know a fair amount of musicians who have had tough times recently - chronic illnesses which prevent them from playing, financial difficulties, ailing parents, life-threatening illness - myself included. I also know a fair amount of non-musicians too who have these things to contend with. In fact, I often see the 'MUSICIAN' living out their life through their relationship with their instrument, technique, expression and creativity as a metaphor for the 'every person'. A person who doesn't play an instrument is equally living out their life through their relationship with their instrument (what they do), their technique (how they do it), expression (of what they do) and their creativity (how they make their expression of what they do unique to them). 
Agh, goodness, this is why I haven't written a blog for a while... let's get to the point...
The point is, I have been struggling. This time last year I was 'pouring my heart out in gratitude' for everything and getting up early to practice everyday and paying to hire a practice space and aiming high high high. And this year, struggling with finances and with a mum really suffering very much now with Alzheimer's... I feel that, rather than pouring my heart out, I am having to hold my heart in. Be gentle with my heart, preserve my heart, make sure that there is enough to go round. Not just my heart, but my head. 
At the beginning of the year I was preparing audition pieces, entering competitions, constantly looking out for funding opportunities and further studying opportunities. And now, I have stopped.
I am asking the question WHY am I striving? WHY do I need to maintain my technique? WHY do I need to play the flute? I can't really continue until I know. I KNOW that I do need to. There isn't any question over the fact that I will continue. But I can't really continue in earnest until, until something.
I am casting aside habits and assumptions. I am casting aside aches and pains and things that squeeze my heart too much (there is enough of that in life anyway), and I will find my way. I am doing afew other things, walking, bouncing around with Davina McCall discovering muscles I never knew I had, throwing out stuff, looking after some other stuff. I really really really want to do it all, but it really really really isn't possible. A 'whole musician' will never fit a mould. 'Doing it all' is based on assumptions of what 'it all' is. I will be a whole musician. A whole person. I just feel very mutable but possible right now.

I haven't got a new flute! I have had my gorgeous Altus for 2 years now and still love it. These thoughts have been prompted by accompanying a good friend of mine on a flute upgrade mission. Here are my musings...

When I first try out a new flute I can usually quickly tell whether I gel with the basic sound quality of the flute. If it is a sound that I like, I will find what I call the 'sweet spot', the particular tone colour that I find easiest to produce on that flute - and I will revel in using that particular tone colour. I get carried away with the 'newness' of the instrument and simply expect it to do 'hard things' easily - crisp tonguing, low notes, high notes quietly - and because I expect it to, it fairly often does.
I come back to it later and play it again. I enjoy the 'sweet spot' of the sound, but don't revel in it quite so much this time because it isn't new to me. I start to notice other elements in the sound of the instrument and try to bring out these different sounds - can I push for more lower harmonics in the sound to get a 'darker' sound? can I make the sound really gentle and clear but without an 'edginess'? I get more picky, and of course, the flute - and MY technique - doesn't always satisfy my expectations. I lose abit of my 'revelry' and then the basic things eg. articulation, even sound throughout the registers - start to seem more of a labour again.
For me, this happens on ALL flutes. Just like it can happen in all human relationships!
I feel very happy with my Altus as I know that it contains all the possibilities in colour and expression that I want it to. It is my responsibility to keep my technique secure and (for me, this is my latest key revelation) - to keep my REVELRY - and then all is possible.

“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.” 
― Howard Thurman


I have recently discovered the writings of Howard Thurman  - so many wonderful thoughts that really reverberate with my own feelings - so affirmative to read.
We are beating up our world through our addiction to consume. To buy pointless things and throw them away. To earn lots of money and then have to earn more...and more... and more.... what? More what? 
I am so lucky to be able to follow my heart - to make music with my flute and to touch on beautiful moments frequently - with fellow musicians, with my students, with audiences, with my friends, my family, with myself, and with simply the company of the energy of the room.

Many circumstances can make it harder to follow your heart - ill health, financial need, social inequality, discrimination, conflict - I pour love out of my heart in gratefulness for my situation in which I am able to hear my heart. 

I have been growing a flute course! I am currently in the process of creating advertising materials and a full throttled publicity assault will be launched shortly, but I couldn't wait to to share it! Let me know if you are interested, or if you know of anyone who might be interested. More details will be on here in the next week or so.

FLUTE BOOST - with Ruth Molins

Boost your flute inspiration levels in 5 days!

A course for flute players of any age who are grade 6 + standard, who want new ideas
to refresh their practice
and invigorate their playing.

Participants choose from 3 course formats
1. ALL sessions; 2. Mornings and Saturday or 3. Afternoons and Saturday

Morning sessions, 7.45am – 8.30am
A routine of exercises focussing around breathing and tone control.

Afternoon sessions, 3.45pm – 5pm
Group warm-ups using scales and simple melodies.
Rehearsal of 2 flute ensemble pieces.

Saturday session, 2pm – 4.30pm
Rehearsal and an informal concert for friends and family.

An additional 45 minute, individual lesson can be booked at 5pm.
Tuesday 29th July – Sat 2nd August, at the Newtown Community Association hut in Belmont Park, Exeter

I haven't blogged for a while... Not through a lack of potential material! (Photos show afew recent gigs- with 1. Earworms at Exeter Northcott Theatre, 2. with Flute Cake and Rebecca Willson and Bel Canto and David Cottam! Mammoth line up! 3. rehearsing with ESO in Exeter Cathedral) It is difficult to decide how honest to be on a blog like this: should this blog present a professional, polished image of myself or a realistic portrait of who I am? When I became a mother at 24, I frequently trawled the Internet searching for blogs/accounts if what it is like to be a professional musician or a practising artist and to also be a mother and a wife. I couldn't find what I was looking for. I don't really know what I was looking for... Anyway... I'm going to blog in an honest manner else I'll end up not blogging at all. March has been very busy for me: I've done alot of gigs, a record number of my students have taken music exams this term, I've been practising like mad and I've been writing applications for funding to enable me to pay myself to practice and audition and to hugely raise my game. My mum has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's - being an only child raised in Devon(!), I have always possessed a strong sense of family and place - but with my mum getting older I feel a daily closeness to death. I always have done. But now I have an almost irritating feeling of never having done enough - that I will never be able to do enough. I am aware that my desire to push my skills as a flautist - do make me into not such a great mother/lover/practical person. I live my days with a desire to push push push - but often do not have the right balance. I expect myself to excel as a human and as an artist. I know that is not humanely possible, and my mind doesn't believe it, but my heart does. The challenges of general daily tasks combined with the urgency of being alive actually really upsets and confounds me. I never thought it would be so hard. My mum made it look easy.

Recently, I have been considering single notes. In much of my repertoire for my last performance - the music frequently dwelt on sustained notes. The 2nd movement of Bach's G minor flute sonata, Gluck's Dance of the Blessed Spirits, Faure's Pavanne. .... this is quite an obvious observation to make.... but I am taking pleasure in this. How much can be got from a single note? Why - or HOW -  can a note be exquisite? As Spring edges in a little on Winter, I start to take pleasure in single things - a colour, a sound, a smell, a feeling. Things can become very cluttered. Music can become very cluttered. Life is cluttered. I think it is an illusion to believe that things, anythings, are simple.... but the elemental things have to be appreciated - polished, enjoyed, loved - otherwise everything is dull and sad. The photo was taken last Spring by my mum - my daughter and I enjoying the daffodils.

Be rooted and breathe. Stand a little straighter and feel comfortable! Last Sunday's afternoon concert was a memorable one for me. Thank you Lympstone entertainments for giving me the opportunity to perform an entirely solo programme. Thank you Susie Hodder-Williams for being such an insightful musician. Thank you if you came and gave your ears and eyes and stillness to the sounds and music of the flute and the composers...

Flute voices: solo.
Music for flute, piccolo and alto flute.
Lympstone Church, 20th Oct, 4pm.


Mike Mower           Two-Timer (1993)

The composer writes “This piece fluctuates between triplet and double time semiquaver metre in a question and answer feel. Try to create the impression of two instruments playing a duet, especially in the first section to letter A, where the feel changes every two bars.”

Johann Sebastian Bach                Partita in A minor for Solo Flute, BWV 1013 (c. 1722)

I  Allemande -  a dance with 4 beats in every bar, of German origin, it is serious in character but not heavy.

II  Courante -  a ‘running’ French dance.

III  Sarabande - a slow, stately dance. The earlier, livelier Sarabande has its origins in Latin America and later a slow version emerged in France and England.

IV  Bourée Angloise – a lively dance.

Francis Poulenc           Un Jouer de Flûte Berce les Ruines (1942)

‘A Flute Player Lullabies the Ruins’

Pierre-Octave Ferroud         Trois pieces pour Flûte (1921-22)

                I Bergère captive (The captivating shepherdess)  II Jade  III Toan-Yan (La fête du Double-Cinq)

A set of three pieces for solo flute in a quasi-Chinese style by French composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1900-1936).

The composer wrote this note describing the third movement:

"The Toan-Yan holiday (or the day of Double Five) is celebrated in China on the fifth day of the fifth month - whence its name - and it is dedicated to the commemoration of a certain hero who flung himself into a body of water and drowned rather than submit to military dishonour. The solemnity of the holiday gives way in turn to mystical and fervid dances which symbolize the contrast between peace and war."

Later in the movement, the theme marked "très libre dans la mesure" [] is described by the following annotation:

"This theme is an authentic Chinese melody that is played on the large recorder - each Chinese instrument has a monopoly on certain musical themes, on account of its form, fingering and extent. One must play it in a chanting manner [psalmodier] with extreme simplicity, and without rhythmic precision."

Michael Colquhoun         Speshal Birds (2005)

The composer writes “Speshal Birds was inspired by the birdsong I heard every May while staying in a cabin in the Green Mountains of Vermont. While there I was the guest of a very ‘speshal’ friend, Stephanie, and this piece is dedicated to her.”

Daniel Dorff       Tweet for solo piccolo (2011)

            Commissioned and premiered by American piccoloist Lois Bliss Herbine.