Advice Wanted!

[Wormdiet]

@BillChin

@Cranberry

I really think a lot of people (especially on this forum) over estimate the difficulty of playing flute. Sure, it’s difficult to learn to play well, but that’s true for any instrument.

It sounds like you are a “natural” flute player–you are blessed. May you use your gift well.

However, like Chris, I have heard any number of stories about people that take a LONG time to get anything approaching music out of their flutes. One friend has a house full of instruments and is an accomplished musician on recorders, and whistles, but never plays flute for the gathered crowd though he owns a very nice one.

I feel fortunate that I am able to get notes out of my new flute within a few days. However, I realize that I am an exception, not the rule. Even so, it is my many years of whistle playing (almost every day for over 10 years) that makes my first few days with the flute relatively productive. Years of working on breath control, concentration, and fingering do help, but the second octave still sounds like dying birds.

The originator of the thread is a novice to whistles and flutes, so unless he/she is also remarkably gifted, picking up and trying a flute will most likely be frustrating rather than enlightening.

In retrospect I think I lucked out in my approach to getting sound out of a flute. I had a cooperman fife lying around from many years’ past Xmas. I had about 3 weeks to work on getting a sound out of that before my flute arrived. When it did, I was playing tunes in a slow session the same evening. The flute seemed to be much easier than the fife. (Still does). Lucky I guess.