Hi all, just joined the site, been learning the flute mow about 9 months..loving it but it can be so frustrating!!.. been tempted to hit it off the wall a few times!..anyway my main problem is hitting the high notes..can do it some times and am getting better but now they sound out of tune most of the time..From the very start I could hit the low notes no problem, but still the high notes can sound like a wasp farting (as I call it) 
so Iād be grateful for any tipsā¦cheeers..Kit 
Nine months is still early in, so donāt get discouraged. Find a high note, and play a long tone on it. Lots of very slow notes, up and down the scale. Play any tune you know, slowly, and strive for volume and projection.
Imagine, in your mind, the ornament sitting on the hood of your grandfatherās old '55 Ford. Focus your sound to a laser point, and try to blast that thing off into the bushes somewhere.
What youāre doing is building muscle tone and muscle memory.
Have fun! 
The biggest thing to keep in mind is: the flute is not a whistle. On the flute, you donāt get the high notes by blowing harder: thatās a mistake and will give you loud, unfocused, out-of-tune high notes.
Take a search through the forum here on āsecond octaveā and I think youāll find a number of earlier threads on this describing how to adjust your embouchure/blowing angle to play the second octave efficiently. You should be able to play the second octave more quietly than the first ā not that you necessarily would play that way, but you should be able to do it. If you canāt, youāre not using the right technique or you havenāt sufficiently developed the muscles around your mouth.
cheers guys, yeah must start practising long notes more often..I have been practising jumping octives and can get the notes but then I go to play them in a tune and they sound awful, maybe its psychological!..Iām sure Iāll have a new problem to focus on soon!..have just recently figured about blowing them quietly..I suppose Iāll get there in end Thats what I love about the flute, I actually seem to be getting better not worse! oh itāll be a long long road though, anyway thanks for replying
Another possible element of the problem is that if the flute itself is a simple cylinder design (the bore the same diameter all the way through), the notes at the top of the 2nd octave will be flat - can sound very out of tune depending on how you blow them.
Garry
Hi Denny, cheers that one hand exercise will definitly help..although it took me a while to figure out that you dont just use one hand!! twas very late at night!..anyways Iāll keep practising, Iām sure itāll come good
hiya,
Itās a Hammy flute, not sure about the cylinder design an all that, just got it new a few months ago so maybe its a matter of getting used to it as wellā¦although I have of course blamed the instrument in times of madness!..thanks for the reply though
Itās not a basic cylinder design then. Youāll be alright. Itās also worth bearing in mind that your embouchure muscles can get tired if you practise too much at the start ā even from one day to the next they may not recover from a long session the previous day. Then you think youāre getting worseā¦
Garry
Cheers for all yeāre advice, this is a great little site!
Iāve been learning (I hesitate to say āplayingā) about the same time as you, kilkeat. Itās an interesting one to me, this one - I think we might be approaching things from āopposite endsā as it were. When I started, in January, I could get what I thought was a nice tone out of the bottom octave notes straight away, but I found the upper octave really difficult. In particular, I always seemed to play sharp in the upper octave, and it was a nasty, screechy sound. Then, an experienced player on this site (whom I wonāt name, in case my inadequacies and lack of understanding rub off onto him) got me putting my lips more parallel, with less of a ābeakā on my upper lip. He got me to shove my lower lip forward, in fact.
That totally changed my fllute playing. At first, I couldnāt control any notes, whatever octave. Then, the upper octave started sounding out, much louder but also much purer and, importantly, in tune. Itās the lowest notes I still have trouble with. Iām using, essentially, the same embouchure for them - parallel-ish lips, although probably a little looser - and, when it works, it produces a lovely reedy tone from the lowest notes that I wasnāt getting before. And in addition, on a good day, the upper octave notes are now sounding really nice as well, though I say it myself!
Your post got me wondering if you are using the ābeakedā embouchure that I started out with. Are you getting really round, fat tones out of the lower end (though with none of the āreedinessā that I like)? If so, thatās what I was getting, right from the start. But Iām glad I started down another road. Get someone whose playing you like to show you what they do, would be my advice.
do ya have a before picture?
Oh ha ha
I should have done, shouldnāt I? And, as you can see, I do way too much fiddle practice, and not enough flute ā¦
Regarding embouchure- I was told to āpractice frowningāā¦it worked, or at least helped I believe. Good luck and welcome to Chiff Hammys are nice flutes, I love mine. I have found that now that I have some control over that beast, itās great fun and can offer a lotā¦
All the best:)
This is amazing. The advice that Brad gave just clicked in my head. Iāve been having trouble with the high notes so much that Iād all but given up for the moment. Whistle was easy for me, being an end-blown flute player, but I just couldnāt get the upper register side blown.
My experience learning instruments is that you tend to hear the same thing over and over until one day it clicks. Not like anything is new to you, just took a while for it to settle. That happened today reading Bradās description of not playing louder, but just focusing more and even playing quieter. I thought āHuh, thatās weird. Maybe he fell on his head as a child.ā
But then I went to my flute and tried it. Within a few minutes I found I could (donāt know how to describe it) ākissā a bit tighter and a crystal clear upper register note came out. At first I thought it was some strange harmonic and started adjusting my fingers to make sure the holes were tightly closed! It almost scared me!
I hope this helps the original poster, because it certainly helped me. An hour later, I can confidently go through very slow exercises hitting the upper register at will. Still a long time from doing it in a song, Iām sure, but this is a HUGE boost to my confidence.
Thanks!