George Crumb - The Voice of the Whale

[flutoo]

Has anyone here played George Crumb's The Voice of the Whale? I am having a hard time playing the echo part in the Cenozoic (Var V) - hi A, hi G, hi E over and over with ease... Any tips or alternate fingering advice? Also, flutter tonguing in the lower register at the beginning of the same movement.....

[flutepicc06]

In answer to the flutter tonguing question, choose a note that you can flutter on comfortably (for me, I learned on high E, so I habitually start there, but any note will work), and slowly slur down chromatically into the lower registers keeping the flutter tonguing going all the way down. Then you can learn to tongue in the low register, starting to flutter immediately. There are no particularly useful alternate fingerings for the notes you mentioned (aside from using harmonics, but that will change the timbre and likely affect intonation). The best idea is to pick out each note individually. With a tuner (to make sure you don't go flat), play at a comfortable mf or f, and decrescendo down to piano over and over until you are comfortable with the control it will take to make each of these notes sound like an echo.