How to Start Playing the Flute

To start to play the flute, you first need a flute that is working! You should be able to rely on your instrument.  

Listen a lot to your teacher's playing, as well as recordings, so that you can hear what you should aim for as a sound quality.

Learning to actually produce sound on the flute could be difficult and take some time. Be patient! Aim to have quite relaxed lips while playing the flute, do not tighten the mouth muscles.

Use a mirror a lot, so that you can observe the changes that you make. With time try to remember the different feelings.

 Try sustaining long notes, this will help to improve your sound quality and purify it.

Breathing – take a big breath and use your diaphragm as well as stomach muscles. Shoulders and throat should be relaxed.

Breathing exercises:

-       Blow out all your air and feel your stomach tighten as you run out.

-       Once all the air is gone, relax stomach muscles and feel air rush in.

-       Blow using stomach muscles and try using “shhh” sound to give a little resistance.

Try to feel your diaphragm working. Check some videos of a working diaphragm so that the you can imagine what exactly is happening in your body. A lot of people talk about diaphragm, but don't actually know what is it.

Articulation. While blowing move your tongue to say “t”. Try to put the tongue at your lips, so to produce clearer articulation, and not on the back of the teeth. (Once you get better, this could vary, depending on what sound you want to produce, but believe me - it is much better to start tonguing forward, rather than the opposite!).

Once you get used to that, start working on starting the note with a tongue.
Do not stop it with the tongue!

If you are a complete beginner and do not know how to read music, you should start to introduce yourself to all the basics in music theory. Do rhythm work singing, etc.

Learn how to put the flute together, take it apart and clean it. It is a very fragile instrument  and special care must be taken!

Posture is very important while playing the flute and any other instrument.

Stand up, unlock your knees, relax shoulders and lift the flute. It should be parallel or almost parallel to the floor. Do not bend your head to suit the flute, bring the flute to you.

Balance the instrument between your chin, the base of your index finger of the left hand and the right hand thumb. Experiment with the balance before you start playing, so that you feel comfortable.

Try not to allow bad habits to occur, since later on it is much more difficult to cope with them. Think while playing the flute and analyze!

In the beginning of playing any wind instrument, you could experience hyper ventilation and faint. Be careful, if something like that occurs, sit down and rest for a while. With practice, this feeling disappears.

The most important thing is that you need to THINK and ANALYZE every single action that you make!