In this video, you'll learn my TOP 5 TIPS for beginners of the flute!

Top 5 beginner flute tips!

These tips are so fundamental to how to learn the flute well...

As you've progressed with your flute playing over the months and years, if you skipped one of my top tips back at the beginning of learning, you'll find that your progress has now started to slow down...

Let's see if you've skipped any of them!

Jane xx

Flute tips for beginner flute players

You're about to learn my top five flute tips for beginner flute players. So obviously I'm a flute teacher, which is why I'm giving you flute tips. My name is Jane Cavanagh. I live in Australia, in Sydney and I'm a professional flute teacher. And these are my top five tips.

Faster progress with good flute teacher

Number one, get yourself a flute teacher that knows what they're talking about. So whether this is in real life or online, just make sure they know what they're talking about. And they can actually teach you how to do something, rather than just saying, you just need to practice more.

It's really important.

It means you'll get faster progress because you're learning the right way. Plus you'll develop the right habits and everyone knows that old habits die hard. They're challenging to break. If you learn something the wrong way it's possible, but it's just better to learn it the right way to start with.

Correct flute embouchure

Number two, tip learn the correct embouchure before you do anything. So embouchure is just the shape of your mouth. And there is a perfect way to learn how to form a perfect embouchure. And it's not this, this is step two. You want rice. This is raw, medium-grain rice, not long-grain rice.

This forms the perfect embouchure for you. It will teach you to get a small hole in your mouth, which is imperative for being able to get a good sound, not run out of air quickly, and basically develop your flute playing.

So if you stick the grain of rice on the tip of your tongue, push it up behind your lips and blow it. That is the perfect, perfect flute embouchure. So if you do that a few times, then try it without the rice and then try it just on the head joint.

Instantly improve your flute tone with free course

Try it with your hand on the end for a low sound and off for a high sound. Now that was the express version of how to form a perfect embouchure, but it's an overview.

This video is to tell you the most important things. If you can already get a sound and you want to learn more about how to get a better sound, I've got a free mini course for you. www.flute.school/free. I'll see you there.

After this video finished this video, then sign up, go and register for the free mini course. And it teaches you how to get a better sound. If you can already get a sound.

Correct flute playing posture

Okay. Tip number three, when you play the flute. So when you're learning with your teacher, either in real life or online, make sure that you bring the flute to you. So bring the flute up to you as opposed to your head going forward to the flute. Okay? Let me show you that from the side, you want to bring the flute up to you like this as opposed to this. 

Did you see my head just stuck for just a little bit? Now it might not look like much, but if you play like that with your head forward, just a teensy bit, you are going to give yourself neck pain over the coming years, probably even months, maybe even weeks. It's not only a pain in the neck, literally, but the pain goes through into your arms that slows down your fingers and it gives you pain in other parts of your body as well.

So it's really important to think about bringing the flute up to you and thinking  tall, like an imaginary string coming out of your head.  I was going to say mouth - out of your head, bringing flute up to you, but like a ballet dancer, it'll save you heaps of grief down the track.

Small incremental improvements on the flute 

Tip number four is understand that small incremental improvement are the way forward. It's not only the best way forward. It is the only way forward. Small incremental improvements are the only thing that your body and your brain can actually handle doing.

It's like learning any high-level skill. Like imagine a gymnast. You don't just walk into a gymnastics. Um, what are they called? Arena? Oh, gym. And suddenly we have to do back flips down the floor. It takes incremental improvements to improve enough, to be able to do the big things.

So I want you to value the small incremental improvements that you make and the right teacher. A good teacher for you, will actually show you how to get small improvements instead of just saying, oh, you just need to practice more.

It's all about understanding how to progress with the right technique and going, oh, I can do that a little bit better than I could yesterday. I'm on the right path. Really important for your mental state, because it means you won't get frustrated and really important for your progress because it's how you progress.

For example, some flute players think that if they learn the highest note on the flute, they'll instantly be an expert at all high notes. But in reality, it's better to carefully learn the proper way to easily play high notes, and incrementally be able to play higher and higher, bit by bit.

Play a few notes on the flute first before reading sheet music

Tip number five, learn to play your notes and a few melodies before you try and also learn to read music. And there's a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, it will teach you to learn, to listen to yourself. It will because you're not being distracted by also learning to read at the same time.

You will learn to listen to your sound. You'll learn to listen to your playing. And that means that it becomes a habit and in the future, because you can hear yourself and you can hear what you're doing. You'll be able to, self-correct much more easily because you're aware of how you sound.

And the second reason for learning to play notes and a few melodies before you learn to read is that your brain can only handle so much new information at once. It doesn't matter how smart you are. It doesn't matter how motivated you are.

And it doesn't matter how much experience you've got behind you. There is only so much a human brain can process when they're learning new things at once. So you've got enough things to think about when you're learning to play the flute so don't complicate it with learning to read music at the same time.

Definitely learn to read music, but just wait till you've got a handle around most of the notes on the flute, a few melodies, maybe a couple of scales. And then when your brain can handle it, introduce learning to read music.

Three tweaks to better flute playing

So remember that mini course that I just mentioned back in point number two, I highly recommend it. If you can already get a sound out of the flute, even as you can, it will give you some basics, come and join me at www.flute.school/free. Sign up there.

It's a three day free, obviously mini course. And I'll teach you basically the three tweaks to get you a better tone instantly. And I mean instantly. So I'll see you there. Bye.