One day when I was at home practising my flute for a Jazz gig, I had a particularly hard chart with lots of key changes and I just couldn t get into the flow of it. I was thinking logically and thinking of the chord symbols and just thinking, thinking, thinking which anyone who improvises knows is a sure way to stop you being in the flow . Being a Jazz singer, I love to scat sing and so I soon found myself putting my flute down and scat singing through the chart instead. I wasn t thinking, I was just scatting around with my do-be-doos and I was really getting into it and enjoying myself, feeling so free in comparison to when I was improvising on the flute. That s when I had the idea to sing and play on my flute at the same time… I figured that all I needed to do was practice playing on my flute what I was singing at the same time and I d be sorted with this hard chart in front of me. I started off simply at first, but the more I practised, the more I found my voice and fingers working together until it literally felt like they were one and I was singing my flute . Then when I took my voice out of it and all that remained was the sound of my flute, that feeling of singing still remained and I felt a freedom in my flute improvising that had been missing before. This discovery completely changed my jazz flute playing and to this day it is still my favourite way of practising improvising.