How to Play Your First Note on the Flute

In this short video, I’m going to show you how to play your first note on the flute. You’re going to combine knowing where to put your fingers, knowing how to hold the flute, knowing how to blow, all into playing your very first note. The first note I’m going to teach you is B. It’s quite a simple one for your fingers, but at the same time it’s going to feel a bit strange because you’ve never done this before so don’t worry if it feels uncomfortable.

You’ll remember where I told you to put this part of your index finger. That squidgy bit there is going to take most of the weight of the flute. You put your flat thumb on the thumb key, first finger on here, and you’re going to leave these other ones off. On your right hand, your thumb is going to take a little bit of the weight, and your little finger is going to be on, and these ones are going to be off. You only have three fingers down, thumb, index finger, and little finger here.

You know how to blow across the embouchure hole of the flute, but we haven’t done it with the whole flute yet. You’re going to be tempted to do this (see video). As you can see that doesn’t look very elegant, so I want you to do the reverse. Instead of taking your head to the flute, you’re going to take the flute to you. We’ll get you standing straight to start with. If you think of a string coming out of the top of your head lightly pulling you up so that you’re standing straight. Your head and your chin are up, and you’re going to bring the flute to you. See if you can get that good sound that you got on the head joint now that you’ve got the whole flute together. Keep repeating this until you feel that you can get a sound out of the flute.

Obviously after this video, you’re going to need to stop it and practice that for a little bit. You can practice it for a couple days just that, you know a little bit in the morning, a little bit in the evening. Do that for a day or two and you’ll be improved out of sight.

Remember, think of string, bring the flute to you, and avoid taking your head to the flute. Aim for a clear sound just as you did before.

In my other videos, I show you how to stand so that you don’t injure yourself long term. There is a way of standing and holding the flute so that you don’t hurt. Aim for a good sound. Aim for a good sound and the string pulling you up. If you could do that, a good sound with the string pulling you up and a reasonable relaxed mouth, remember no smiling, no coke-bottle blowing. You’re going to be well on the way to learning more notes on the flute, so I’ll see you in the next video.

The note B on the flute:

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