Benji Rose's Virtual Studio

About This Space

As a multi-instrumentalist, I'm interested in where worlds collide: medieval and saxophone, folk music and composition, early instruments and contemporary practice. I explore these ideas through performance, writing, and teaching.

The basic principle of my artistic philosophy is getting away from standardisation and ideas of virtuoso and perfection. Music isn't about flawless execution. It's about finding your voice, understanding your instrument, and making something that matters to you.

As a teacher, I'm particularly interested in developing materials for early music that actually help people play, not just read about playing.

My Teaching Philosophy

Music as Living Practice

For centuries, improvisation was central to Western art music. Musicians like Mozart and Liszt didn't just perform, they created spontaneously, embellishing, ornamenting, and making music their own. This living tradition was lost as music moved from aristocratic courts to middle-class concert halls, as notation replaced oral transmission, and as reverence for the past replaced creative engagement with the present.

I teach to reclaim that living tradition.

Breaking Free from the Tyranny of Perfection

Modern conservatory education has become obsessed with technical perfection and "correct" interpretation. Students learn to reproduce canonical works flawlessly but rarely learn to question, experiment, or make music that reflects their own voice. This fear of mistakes (reinforced by competitions, auditions, and grading systems) kills creativity.

Music should not be about avoiding errors. It should be about expression, exploration, and taking risks. As Henry Cowell observed, the pursuit of virtuosity and perfection has created a "toxic development of our musical world, in which 'stars' count more than creativity, ratings more than real talent, numbers more than sounds."

I've outlined my philosophy in greater depth in my work Music, Creativity, and Education

My page on articles provides links to some of the research I've done.

Foundations

You know what? There are already too many books about music pedagogy. The shelves are groaning under the weight of them.

I did the conservatoire thing. Twice. Memorised études like some demented parrot, played the game, bowed at the altar of dead guys everyone pretends to worship. Learned a lot of stuff that didn't help me. The real education? That started the moment I walked out of that place and never looked back. I cheated on my recorder with a flute.

Then that flute introduced me to her dangerous cousin. The saxophone. You know the type. Keeps you out late. Makes you do things you regret the morning after. And I was absolutely hooked. One of my first proper "screw this" moments came wrestling with a renaissance flute tenor in D. You've probably been there if you've played one. The E and F naturals in the low register are notoriously weak. So I tried doing what any desperate musician does: I leapt two octaves up. It was a complete mess. But in that failure, in going back to basics, in rethinking how air and lips and resonance actually work, I stumbled onto something.

That's when I started mapping the connections between flutes and saxophone. And here's the truth: the instrument isn't the problem. You are. Your body is the primary instrument. Everything else is just a glorified tube you're shoving in your face and hoping Mozart falls out the other end.

This isn't some kumbaya self-help manual for turning you into a multi-instrumental genius. What I'm offering instead is the compilation of my notes from years of busted embouchures, fluorescent-lit practice rooms, and the peculiar humiliation of squeaking through a solo whilst everyone watches in poorly concealed horror.

Most of what I learned came from listening to players like Jiří Stivín and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, absolute sorcerers commanding arsenals of instruments. It seemed impossible. Then I realised the trick wasn't black magic. It was understanding that every instrument you touch teaches you something about the others. Every detour, every failed experiment, every frustrated hour wrestling with reeds and embouchures, it all feeds back into the main game. The brutal truth? We're all tension factories. We pick up bad habits like souvenirs. Your shoulders creep up towards your ears. Your stomach clamps down. Go for a high note and suddenly you're locked tighter than a smuggler in an airport bathroom.

Playing a wind instrument is fundamentally unnatural. You're forcing your body to do things that evolution never approved. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, spectacularly, and usually in public. But your sound is your signature. It's the only thing that will make people stop fiddling with their phones and actually listen. The task is finding a voice that's yours. Not a conservatory clone. Not someone else's idea of what you should sound like. Yours. This work is for the musician who has already put in the hours. The one who's hit a plateau. The one who can't get the flute's high register. The one tired of the saxophone's low Bb sounding like a foghorn, or can't play altissimo. Every player is different. Every body is different. There's no universal answer, only trial and error and more error and hopefully eventually, some small measure of understanding. A good teacher is invaluable. But what follows might be the supplement, or the corrective, that even the best teacher can't provide. Because the real frontier isn't external. It's internal.

The Five Fundamentals

1: Posture

2: Breathing

Master Your Breath, Master Your Music

Breathing for Wind Instruments: A Comprehensive Guide transforms an unconscious biological function into a powerful musical tool. This evidence-based resource cuts through the confusion of traditional pedagogy to reveal what actually happens when professional wind players breathe.

Inside, you'll discover:

The real anatomy of breathing: How your diaphragm, intercostal muscles, and abdominal wall work together as an integrated system. Not just "use your diaphragm"
Research-backed techniques: Scientific findings that challenge common misconceptions and reveal how professional players actually coordinate their breathing
Practical exercises: From long tones to straw exercises, develop the proprioceptive awareness and muscle memory essential for consistent tone production
Individual strategies: Why there's no single "correct" breathing technique, and how to find the approach that works for your unique physiology

Whether you struggle with phrase length, tone consistency, or simply want to understand what "breath support" really means, this guide provides clear explanations grounded in respiratory science. Learn why the "belly out vs. belly in" debate misses the point, how to avoid common breathing mistakes that create tension, and why your breathing technique directly affects your sound quality.

3: Embouchure

Flute Embouchu re

Single-Reed Embouchure

4: Articulation

5: Movement

Beyond Autopilot: A Cognitive Approach to Scale Practice for Wind Instruments

This method challenges conventional scale practice by prioritising mental engagement over mechanical repetition. Drawing on systematic pattern work and historically informed performance pedagogy, it expands beyond predictable tonal patterns to develop a broader musical vocabulary through modal exploration.

By working without sheet music and removing familiar articulation patterns, students cultivate cognitive awareness and break free from autopilot playing. Constraint-based exercises (modelled on the limited compass of renaissance instruments) isolate specific technical challenges whilst developing holistic, integrated technique.

Suitable for all wind instruments, this approach combines the rigour of historical practice with contemporary pedagogical insights. The result is daily practice that truly engages the mind, expands technical facility, and builds musical understanding from the ground up.

Transform your practice from mindless repetition into meaningful musical development.

Improvisation

There is a moment every musician knows. Your fingers are poised over the instrument, the chord progression drones beneath you, and someone says: improvise. In that instant, all those hours of scales and arpeggios, all that technical mastery, seems to evaporate like morning mist. The gap between what you can play and what you can create yawns before you, vast and terrifying.

This method is about closing that gap.

Pentatonic scales are simple. Five notes. Entire musical traditions have been built on them. These elegant structures appear wherever humans make music, which tells you something fundamental about how we hear, how we think, how we express what cannot be spoken.

What follows is not a collection of licks. It is a method. A path, systematic and rigorous, from mechanical repetition to genuine expression.

Somewhere in these pages, between the exercises and the theory, you will find the moment when playing scales becomes making music. When your hands know where to go and your mind is free to wander. When you stop thinking about the notes and simply fly.

The freedom you seek lies on the other side of technique. This is how you get there.

Historical Improvisation

Resonance

Unlock the Hidden Power of Your Body's Resonance

Resonance and Sound Production reveals the secret that transforms good wind players into great ones: your body is not just supporting your instrument, it is the instrument.

This guide demystifies the science of resonance, showing you how to consciously shape your vocal tract to create richer, more projecting, and infinitely more colourful sound. Drawing on voice science research and acoustic principles, it explains what's actually happening inside your body when you produce beautiful tone.

Inside, you'll discover:

The source-filter model: How your embouchure generates sound and your vocal tract sculpts it—understanding this changes everything about how you approach tone production
Formant frequency control: Learn to manipulate the resonance frequencies that determine your tone color, using your jaw, tongue, lips, and larynx position as precision tools
The singer's formant secret: How professional vocalists project over orchestras, and how you can apply the same clustering principle (F3, F4, F5 alignment) to maximise your acoustic power
Register-specific strategies: Why your lower, middle, and upper registers require different resonance approaches, and how to optimise each one
Practical experiments: Systematic exercises to map your personal "resonance landscape", discover which oral cavity shapes produce which timbral colours
Proprioceptive awareness: Learn to sense what's working by cataloging the internal feelings that correlate with great sound (because what you feel vibrating isn't always what listeners hear)

Stop treating your oral cavity as just "the space behind your embouchure." Learn to actively shape it like a concert hall engineer optimises acoustics. Understand why certain vowel shapes produce darker or brighter sounds, how to create maximum projection with minimum effort, and why traditional cues like "yawn while you play" actually work.

Resonance Part II.

Altissimo: The Complete Harmonic M anual

Most woodwind players struggle with extended range techniques because they're taught what to do without understanding why it works. This comprehensive guide changes that by revealing the acoustic physics underlying tone production across saxophones, flutes, and recorders, from fundamental notes to the highest reaches of each instrument's range.

Starting with the basics of sound waves and standing wave patterns, this manual builds a complete understanding of how woodwind instruments create pitch. You'll discover why saxophones and flutes overblow at the octave (while clarinets jump a twelfth), how octave keys and thumb vents actually work, and what really happens when you play a high harmonic note.

The breakthrough insight: extended range isn't magic, it's harmonics. You're not creating new notes; you're carefully selecting which harmonics of complex acoustic configurations speak clearly. This manual shows you exactly how fingerings manipulate acoustic impedance, why your embouchure and vocal tract positioning matter so much, and how subtle adjustments determine success or failure.

Inside you'll learn:

The three types of tubes and their harmonic characteristics (cylindrical open-open for flutes, conical for saxophones, cylindrical closed-open for recorders)
Why different bore geometries produce fundamentally different sounds and fingering systems
Step-by-step explanations of octave key and register vent mechanics
The crucial role of your oral cavity, tongue position, and air direction in accessing high harmonics
How flutists use embouchure angle and lip aperture to select specific harmonics
How recorder players use "pinched" fingerings and breath control for upper registers
Why forked and cross-fingerings work across all woodwinds
How to systematically explore voicing and embouchure rather than hoping for lucky accidents
Why temperature, humidity, and equipment choices affect high notes on any instrument

Whether you're a developing student frustrated with squeaks and inconsistency, or an advanced player seeking deeper mastery, understanding these principles will help you troubleshoot problems, practice more efficiently, and play with confidence throughout the entire range of your instrument.

Music Theory

After numerous requests to 'teach me to read music', I started writing an introduction to that topic, realising quickly that without going into music theory, the amount I was able to teach was severely limited. Therefore, I've put together a document intended to guide the student from absolute beginner to beyond what you might expect to learn in first or second year conservatoire.