Customer Reviews

Modern Guide to Fingerings for the Flute

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I keep two copies of Pellerite's book handy. His charts cover the gamut from the basic fingerings to harmonics, trills, tremelos, quarter-tones, and special effects. This is a book that can take flautists from the beginning stages to their professional debuts!

Karen Stafford, Editor of Flutes and Flute Playing for Suite 101.

It's worth your time to invest in learning from a master! James J. Pellerite's classic, A Modern Guide to Fingerings for the Flute is still the definitive guide to flute fingerings, crammed with essential information that isn't available anywhere else. He writes from a wealth of experience as both performer, now retired solo flutist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and as Professor of Flute (now retired) at the Indiana University School of Music. He has performed and given master classes all over the world, including Japan, and has numerous solo recordings. Some of you may be familiar with his work on the Native American flute as well.

The guidebook is beginner friendly in the visual representation of the fingerings, but goes far beyond what is available in most fingering guides found in flute pedagogical texts, giving the flutist essential information to allow you to achieve any technique a composer could write for you to play and allow you to reach the highest levels of achievement on the flute.

It includes the basic fingerings for the full range of the flute, with multiple fingerings and concise explanations of the differences and advantages of those fingerings and how they are best used. Beginning flutists will also find trill fingerings especially helpful.

Beyond the basics, James Pellerite covers tremolos: the major and minor thirds, perfect fourths and tritones, perfect fifths, sixths, sevenths, and octaves. There is a chapter on altered fingerings - fingerings that can be used to deliberately change flute timbre, transparency, raise pitch, and aid with playing in extreme dynamics. These can add greatly to the flutist's tools for interpreting of music.

There are fingerings for quarter tone and quarter tone trills, which can open many doors for playing music by contemporary composers and playing world music. Also, for the flutist interested in pursuing multiphonics, there is an extensive section for playing 2, 3 or 4 note chords on the flute.

A Modern Guide to Fingerings for the Flute is written very intelligently and concisely. James Pellerite gives you a deep understanding of fingering technique with an economy of words. This is of great importance for performing musicians who are seeking information and don't want to be distracted by wordy or lengthy discussions.

If you are serious about the flute, A Modern Guide to Fingerings for the Flute is an essential tool.

If you play the flute, consider this book THE industry standard. This is not a book that you should skip buying. If you want to progress past the intermediate level, there are certain practice materials that you must have, and this book is one of them.

The first thing you need to know about this fingering guide is that it is for the open hole, or french style flute, with a B foot. This guide is not for closed hole flutes, or flutes with a C foot. Though some of the fingerings will work for the C foot and closed-hole student flute, the strength of this book is its comprehensive treatment of the professional, open-hole, B foot instrument. If you have such an instrument, I recommend this book for its detailed discussion of many alternative fingerings and its treatment of the microtonal and multiphonic resources of the instrument. If you have a closed-hole flute you will be disappointed.

Listed as the essential authority, bible, encyclopedia of modern flute fingerings in several key flute books by Nancy Toff, Trevor Wye, Larry Krantz etc. Published in 1999.

FOR ADVANCED STUDY & MASTERY.

Subjects covered as follows:

Basic fingerings.
Harmonics. French flute
Trills
Tremolos
Altered fingerings
Quarter tones & Quarter tone trills
Multiphonics & Special sonorities

A must have Classic for the library of a serious flutist.
I am a beginner and have obviously bought ahead of the curve. Not going to need most of this for a couple of years.

I think this essential to any serious, professional flutist. It's easy to understand, whenever you have a doubt of how to finger a certain note, how to perform a trill, or any such things, this is the great resource!
I'm a flute performance major, and this book has come in handy multiple times. Even for the long time professionals, this is a great resource.

Get this for Christmas. Get this for your birthday. Get this to celebrate a good flute lesson. Just get this before it goes out of print! A must for any flutist but seriously required for the advanced studies.

Melissa Barrow