Fifes in are generally much cheaper than a full sized flute. Look at Ralph Sweet’s folk fifes. They help you with being efficient with your breath. But I doubt that they would help with your situation.
It may be that you are jumping too quickly from practice speed to playing speed and just need to do some drills on the troubled passages. It sounds like an embouchure problem, not a fingering problem. Arpeggio (sp?) practice may also help.
Take any advice from me with a grain of salt.
I didn’t know that a fife was more difficult than a wooden flute…
How much of a difference would it make? Enough for me to improve my tone and thus play quicker?
[I 've always been curious about fifes having seen them in N. Ireland and at parade marches in Dublin occasionally.]
I really do need to know why it’s taking me so long to improve on the flute, fellow flautists.
Thanks
F.D.
I second the suggestion that you may be trying to speed up too quickly, and that it is probably an embouchure problem. Thing is, each note effectively requires a subtly different embouchure. When you play slowly and you are developing your embouchure, I think you are using a concious fedback loop - start the note, listen to the note, adjust the embouchure until good tone, hold, then repeat on the next note. Over time, you learn those good-tone-embouchure positions so they become second nature. But until that has happened, if you go faster than that feedback loop can operate, you don’t give time for the note to become stable before moving onto the next.
Another variable to throw in the mix is the combination of the size of the interval between the notes and whether you tongue/throat or play legato.
My experience is that playing legato for smallish intervals and drops down to the low notes prevents the embouchure becoming disrupted whilst tonguing or throating can help the large interval jumps up.
I really do need to know why it’s taking me so long to improve on the flute, fellow flautists.
I’m in the same boat, although it sounds as though I’m months behind you in skill. I really have trouble hitting the low tones on both my flute and my fife–it seems as though I can’t keep myself out of the second octave! 
No such problems for my son, the horn player. He keeps telling me I need to “relax my lips,” and just to prove his point, will typically grab the flute out of my hands and crank off a low D, or G, or Bb, or whatever I’m fighting with for that day!
He’s played the horn for two years now, and I’ve got to believe that it takes that long to develop a usable embouchure—meanwhile, there’s always my whistle 
I’ve also noticed that I can only practice about ten minutes at a time before my “lip gives out,” and I lose everything below G on my D flute. Again, this must be similar to my guitar playing–you start out playing til your fingers bleed, then go from there. Eventually, it doesn’t hurt anymore. 
Well FD long is a relative thing. I remember when I first started on the flute it was an impossible venture. It wasnt untill I got a plastic flute that could withstand being thrown through my walls with out damage, to the flute that is, that I was able to begin to progress. It sounds to me like your problem right now is breathing. It is a timing thing that you can have complete control over. In my practice sessions I alway do a freestyle few moments. I just play the flute, no tunes no set patern just play the flute. Helps me loosen up and get my breathing ready for the real work ahead. The flute is a difficult instrument to play well and if your standards are high then you will just have to face the fact that it is going to take quite some time to reach them. Payoffs come in small packages but they do come, sometimes as if by magic. I have only been playing a couple of years now and still everyday, when I pick up that damn instrument I have no idea what to expect. The only difference now, as apposssed to two years ago, is that I feel more confident in my ability to figure out what ever trouble I get into. I may never achieve the quality of play that I have invisioned but the path is so intrieging and the little pearles of progress so sweet that I cant see any reason to bag it. So please hang inthere and be patient and maybe a little less hard on your self. It will come in its own sweet time.
Take care
Tom
Odd that you’re having trouble keeping out of the 2nd octave, John. My usual problem is that I can get the low register pretty well (admittedly, I have to pay a bit more attention to low D, but I don’t find it too hard). But - my main issue is that getting the upper register, above about 2nd octave E, is still kind of spotty.
I can even play most tunes in that don’t go above my sticking point and sound deceptively competent - then sound even worse by comparison when I flub an easy 2nd octave F# or G.
Sometimes I can get a good, strong, pure-sounding tone all the way up to the 3rd octave D. Sometimes I can’t hit 2nd octave G reliably. I’m getting better, I think - but I’ve a long, long, way to go before I’m where I want to be and can just play the tune instead of worrying about my embouchure. About the only thing that moderates the frustration is that, sometimes, I do get it right and I see a distant glimmer of my goal.
I’m trying to avoid Tom’s throw-the-flute-through-the-wall moments, but I really understand the motivation. 
But I am making progress. It’s just that the low register came so easily and sounded so good that I expected the upper register wouldn’t take long. Ha! 
Not more difficult, different. The finger spacing easier, the instrument is lighter, and you can play longer passages without losing breath.
But we will see in a month or two when I get my new flute…
DCrom - hang onto those moments where you get the glimmer. Don’t forget that that glimmer is a hint of what lies underneath if you keep polishing!
Oh, I’m sticking with it - I love the sound when I get things right. It’s just that I was way, way, overconfident about how fast I’d master the needed embouchure.
Boy, was I wrong. 
I’ll get there, I think. But it’s going to take months/years, not just a couple of weeks. 
(Beware, beginner speaking.)
A few days of very intensive flute playing has helped me improving and moving on after frustrating long periods where nothing seemed to happen.
A festival or flute workshop is best, of course, but I sometimes visit my parents not only to see them, but also to have time and opportunity to play for hours on end, for a few days.
Practising several hours a day builds up stamina and makes my body find more efficient posture and movements, my embouchure improves in huge steps, playing gets easier and easier and is fun again, it’s like a drug. And legal! I don’t practise for speed, by the way, because it spoils the fun for me. I don’t know if that makes me learning better or worse, faster or slower, because there’s just one me and I can’t compare.
Disclaimer: Be careful with your body, you only have one for this life. When something hurts, find a different posture where it doesn’t. When you can’t find one, stop. There are enough people on this board who have carpal tunnel or other problems - listen to them, it is a real danger.
But oh, the oxygen high after hours of playing…
Sonja