I think of this song frequently when mentioning that you can improvise on just one note! Listen to how she improvises at first with just one note. Then she stays MOSTLY on that note but just adds one more. Then one more. It gradually gets more complex - like turning up the volume on a dial! Can you imagine being him trying to improvise along on that single note? Bah! I encourage you to record your own one-note improvisations and share them here in the comments or post them in the improv waterfall!

Last time in Improv Games I mentioned that if you want to learn how to play the pentatonic scale you might like to learn the flute part I played in Brave Spirit with the Cosmic Butterflies (in a-minor). Why would you want to play with just 5 notes? Because limiting the possibilities frees up your mind a bit (for the other elements of music like groove & intonation!) and leads to creative, pleasant-sounding choices! "Pentatonic" just means "5 notes" and so hypothetically it could be any 5 notes, but usually it's this pattern. Leave out the 2nd and 6th notes of the minor scale to get the minor pentatonic scale: 1, 3, 4, 5, 7... Or to name the notes in a-minor: A, C, D, E, G! Or if you want to play the "major" version, just start on C instead! C-D-E-G-A! (Tip: every major scale has a twin minor scale that is the same 7 notes just with a different starting note - the sixth note of its twin major scale. Likewise the major and minor pentatonic scales ) Playing music with Cabe Lindsay and the other musicians in the Cosmic Butterflies band played an important role in building my confidence that I could lead yall to a similar place of freedom when you improvise. After I started playing with them people started asking me "Where do you teach?" and that's when I created Flutarians. If you have a Native American flute in the key of a-minor you can also jam along with this on that flute. I have one... and while I did not play it in this recording, my solo on the concert flute is inspired by it. Cabe's Lakota. I improvised on this recording in the studio, but I also improvised unique variations of this solo many times with Cabe in his home or around a campfire! If you really want to master the technique of playing with the pentatonic scale, I think it would be good practice to learn how to copy the flute exactly from this song. You will make many mistakes along the way - consider those to be part of the process of discovering your unique flute voice on this song! - some of those mistakes will become "your thing" that don't sound like mistakes but your unique flavor. Once you've learned to copy me in a-minor... learn to mix it up from the straight copy and start incorporating your own unique variations! Then use the Transpose tool to learn it in all 12 keys!!

Or something else it wasn't?

I made the time last night to do the AF with Vic on YouTube. I think the video was from about 2 weeks ago. We did "brrrr" with our lips and for the life of me, my sound kept shutting down because of tension. I finally figured it out. We did long tones and octave slurs and I started to really see and feel my jaw and lips in the process. Tiny movements but they are there. Last one were high notes but focusing on frown vs smile muscles just to see the difference. I really enjoyed the 20+ min of freedom just messing around with my flute. Thanks, Vic!