Drum Lessons in Jacksonville, FL

Instruments: Flute Piccolo

What advice do you have about practicing effectively?
Organize your practicing before you actually pick up the flute. Know what you will work on every day, how much time you will spend on each excercise, balance it out with your etude or piece and stay focused on your goal when you start your practice session. The musician you are in your practicing is the musician you become in the lesson and on-stage. Keep it simple, substantial and powerful.

How do I know if my child is ready to start lessons?
I would say that for a wind instrument a good age would be 10+ years old. Unlike string instruments and piano playing the flute being a wind instrument needs one to have some respiratory build up before they can start.

When will I start to see results?
Every person learns in different ways and at different speeds. However, I would say that it usually takes a month more or less for the student-teacher chemistry and connection to establish itself and therefore for one to be able to notice major break-throughs either in the form of breaking bad habits or developing a new skill-set.

What do you think is the hardest thing to master on your instrument?
I would have to say that the trickiest part of mastering the flute is the breath. It's the most fundamental but the most abstract part as well since it happens inside the body. We can feel it but we can't see it. Therefore we have to use helpful imagery and develop an intuitive relationship andsense of trust with it. It can be challenging to master the one thing - breathing , that gets affected first when one gets stressed, afraid or experiences any kind of intense emotional state. However studens will learn in my lessons techniques with which they can quickfix any issue that comes up in regards to breathing as well as return at a desirable state of free, relaxed breathing that is what is crucial to flute-playing.

Does music run in your family? Tell us a little about your musical family members.
Music does run in my family from my mother's side in fact most of my relatives play an instrument. We have a clarinetist ( my brother), four string players and one pianist. Most of them are current members of the State Orchestra of Thessaloniki , professional musicians and one is pursuing a big piano career in Vienna.

Why did you choose your primary instrument?
I choose the flute because I loved to sing from a really young age and was in fact too young to start taking voice lessons, so at the age of ten and in watching Disney movies my parents noticed that I kept humming melodies played by the flute in each soundtrack. My mother has a strong background in music and so one day she asked me if I would like to give flute a try..and after listening to a few recordings I got a student flute and started taking flute lessons by one of the top teachers in Greece. I believe I was 10 years old at the time.

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