Beginner Flute Instruction: Quickly & Confidently Learn Flute Basics

1. Class Introduction Beginner Flute Instruction: Hi, I'm Dr. Angela McCarty and welcome to my course and beginner flute instruction. Helping the beginner fluid is to pick up the flute with confidence and learn the basics to get a fast start. Do you? Or someone you know, wanted to learn to play the flute? I've been teaching beginner fluid is since the 1980's and in 2010, I received my doctorate from the Eastman School of Music where I wrote my dissertation on beginner flute instruction. I can help you to learn the flute. I will also help you choose an instrument to purchase. The things that you need to look for when purchasing. And then we're to get those instruments from. I'll teach you how to care for your instrument. And the clause you need, the flute stands, flute begs all those kinds of things that you need to care for your instrument. From there, we'll get started making music. I'll teach you how to make your first sounds on the flute and then put your fingers on the fluids so that you're ready for the next step. From there, I'll teach you 11 beginner songs by ear. The end, I'll teach her how to practice and then what to do next to progress. You don't need to know how to read music to take this class. I will teach you how to make your first sounds, how to put your fingers on the instruments. And that will lead us into the beginner songs. I will lead you step-by-step through all of the songs. Where to place your fingers, what notes to play? Then, after you've learned those songs will play duets together. You'll play the melody and I'll play the harmony. So come join me and take this class. You'll love playing the flute. 2. Too Old or Young to Begin: You would like to take the flute, but you're not sure that you are the right age or the right size to play the flute. Really, anyone can play. You can be old, you can be young. You can be of any age when you play. There's just some items to consider when you decide to play the flute. For our younger students, the important thing to play the flute is can they reach the fingers? We have a long instrument here. And as an adult, as I put the flute to my lip, I can keep my head a little bit turned and I can easily reach. Now, with younger students, when they are quite young in their arms are short. They have to turn their head way around like this. If that's the case, you probably don't want to start at this time, except for one edition that you can use. There's something called the curved head joint. And this gets taken and put inside of where the head joint is, then essentially makes the flute beat this much shorter. If that's the case, your hands can reach it much easier. So I've had personal I've had first graders use the curved head joint and they're able to play the flu quite easily. Younger, even younger, I think have started kindergarten. And so it is up to the individual teacher whether they would like to start a kindergarten or not. But that is the consideration is can they reach the keys without turning their head completely the other direction? You know, when you can change to the head joint. When you, most flutes, if you buy a flute with a curved head joint, most flutes will come with a straight head joint as well, so that when they get old enough, you can just simply switch head joints and not have to repurchase. And other one. When you put the head join in and the there's still going to turn their head a little bit. But it seems pretty comfortable for them to put their fingers on. Then you know that it's the right size. Other than that, for age, I think the only consideration is your fingers feel comfortable on here. Do you have any carpal tunnel syndrome or arthritis? If you have any of those things, you might want to perhaps rent a flute for a short period of time and just see if your fingers are comfortable on here and it's not causing you any problems. I think anyone can play the flute and I hope you try it. 3. Budget Considerations: In this lecture, I'm going to discuss some of the things that are going to affect the cost of your instrument. Some of those things are based on your health, your aspirations, and of course, your budget. Some of the other aspects that we need to consider are the size of your hands, the health of your hands where there's carpal tunnel or arthritis. They can affect the type of instrument and what you want out of their instrument when you go to purchase it. If you're getting a fluid for a youngster, you want to get a beginner flipped. Have real genuine beginner fluid. This fluid is made of nickel and it has a silver plating over the top. But it is very durable. It's very sturdy. This instrument is not gonna be damaged as easily as a professional model or even an intermediate model. Some of the aspects that make this sturdier is that these bars in here, there's still bendable. You can move them and they can bend. But when youngster takes apart, they're flute by moving this part here and they're grabbing here. It's not going to be bent as easily as it will on my flute, which is a much more sensitive instrument. So this becomes a really good instrument for them. It can be taken apart in there, put back into their case multiple times a day and it's not going to really get any damage. When kids are at school. Other students aren't always as cautious around your students instrument as they would be maybe on their own instrument. You want to have an instrument that is durable and has longevity in a school situation. I know that when I was growing up, my flute fell apart, the case opened up and the whole fluid fell right out as I was getting on the bus and that I'm sure it got scratched up but no major damage happened. I was able to just put it back into the case and I went along my merry way. So you want a fluid that can stand up to a little bit of mishandling, shall we say? If you look at my flute, I have holes in my case, this is called the open hole or French model. This is something that you can get a beginner flute. But if you did, you'd want to put plugs in it because little children who are playing the fluid, the fingers aren't quite big enough in their coordination, isn't big enough to cover those holes all the way. They come with plugs that you can put in those holes until they're big enough. My daughter has an open hole fluid and we've had that since she was a beginner. But I've kept the plugs in and only as she's gotten older, do we take them out and have her when I when I feel like her fingers are big enough, I will take them out and she will learn how to play it. That's one of their considerations for a beginner fluid. Now, if you're wanting to just jump into a higher-level float, you're an adult and you know that you're going to develop a lot of skill and you'd like to learn it then go right ahead and get an open hole. You'll still probably want to learn it with the plugs in. And as you get better and have more confidence, then learn to take the plugs out. Also for a younger student, I have a curved head joint. Now if you're really little like my eight-year-old started flute, and her arms aren't long enough to hold the flute this way. When we take the head join out and I put this one in, it's going to make the flute just this much shorter. And it was much easier. So if you've got a really young 1789 years old and they might be small, you might want to think about getting a curved head joint. Now if you did, most of the companies that you would buy a curved head joint from, you can also get a flute that has both the curved head joint and the straight head joint because they will certainly grow out of it fairly soon. You'll want to have that on the ready to have the student grow into, usually by fifth grade, at least they're ready and a lot of times by fourth grade, they're ready to move into the straight head joint. Use this if you think your child is pretty small and that they would benefit if when they have the fluid up to their lip, when their arms are really short and the fingers are small, that makes their head turn too much. And then you would need to have the curved had joined because then it would bring the flute back to here. A couple of other aspects that you'll see when you're reading descriptions of fluids is something called offset g. Now, this is the GK. If you're looking at the A-flat key right here, this is your GI. In some fluids, this is offset. In this beginner fluid here, this g is offset. So you can see it's offset because these keys and these are all inline together and these two are offset. This is an easier way for a younger student to reach this key if it's offset. They're making professional model flutes these days with offset g. Now I learned to play inline G and so for me that's more comfortable. But right now I recommend all students to get the offset g. Unless I've certainly had some gentlemen that are large hands and I think maybe an inline G like my fluid actually would be better for them. If you have very large hands, this inline g might be actually a good choice for you. But you'll see that when you're reading descriptions offset g, inline G, or even sometimes half offset g. When you're reading descriptions again for your beginner fluids, something that you'll see is whether it has a B foot or seafood. And what we're talking about is just this part right here. This is a C foot. That means that the lowest note this fluid can go to is a low state. So if I press down Tukey's here, that gives me a low state. My flute is a B foot, and I have an extra key here. So I'm going to have three down here, and that means the lowest sound I'm going to get is a low B on this fluid. As a beginner, even as new intermediate, you'll have very little need for a low B. So that's an option. It's always cost a little bit more to have that extra middle on there. So you can have a lobby or you could have a low C. This with a C foot is definitely lighter. And so if weight is an issue or your hands have some certain difficulties, you might want to not have the B foot. So that will be easier for you. It's a little bit lighter to hold onto. There are also other things that they will put in description such as a gizmo key or a high ie facilitator or split II mechanism. None of those are necessary when you're looking for you're beginner float. And if you add those things on, they're going to add an extra cost to them. Everything you add is going to cost a little bit more. If you are looking for a float and you say, I would like the next step up, I would like it to be silver. So this is a solid silver instrument. This one is handmade, so your professional models are handmade, but solid silver cost considerably more than the nickel plated instrument that they do beginners. The more silver you want on your instrument, the higher the cost. You can also have gold on your instrument, sometimes a gold lip plate, and they have these on beginner instruments as well. A gold most of the time on beginner instruments, it's going to be gold-plated, which means it can wear off. But that does change the sound of the instruments. So if that's what you're looking for, you can go ahead, but it will cost you a little bit more. That's just a general rundown on things that you can look for when you are looking to purchase your instrument. These are all going to be budget considerations because the more aspects that you're going to add to it, a split E mechanisms, mechanisms, the B foot, the solid silver, that's going to cost more. But if you're looking for a basic beginner float, you don't need any of those things. You need a C foot, you need just the closed hole, float. And nickel plated is just fine. It's going to sound just great for a beginner. As you develop, there may come a time where you want to move to a better sounding instrument and that is certainly your choice. I hope that this really helps. You can download more information on our resources page. Feel free to ask me any questions about your budget at about beginner floats and how to purchase them at the Q&A on the website. So enjoy trying to find your flute. 4. Flute Makers: Now you've learned what types of flutes there are you've learned beginner, intermediate, and professional model fluids, and now you want to pick one out. What type should you get? Well, there are a lot of brands and they're all very good. There's a lot of very good ones. I've had some students get some beginner fluids that were, let's just say not worth the money they pay. You do have to use a little bit of discernment when you're looking for fluids. I play on a professional model, Haines, a handmade. It's fantastic flute. I love it. This is my second Haines that I've had. My daughter plays on a Trevor James. This is a Trevor James beginner fluid. And Trevor James does make different models of fluids in intermediate. This one is a beginner model with the French keys, so it has open holes, but there are the silicone plugs in here so that when she is bigger, she will be able to take those out and adjust to the open hole. Other fluids that are very good. I like the Haynes, lower-level floats as well. Powell makes some very good beginner and intermediate fluids. I do like the Yamaha in all the ranges, beginner, intermediate and professional. They're all very good. Gamma1, mine heart is the flute that I began my career on. When it adds a little fourth, fifth grader, I had a beginner go mine heart was a school float. Not in very good shape, but it was my float that I got to use until my parents saw that I was serious and I got my own float. But they're very good. There are a number of flutes that you can try. You just need to try them out. Whatever fluids fits your hands the best, whatever flute sounds the best when you put it to your lips and you try it out if you can get a good sound right off the bat, which you should be able to do. Then that's probably the flute for you. All the fluids way a little bit differently and the keys are a little bit different. So if one flute is just not comfortable when you put your fingers on, but you should try a different one because you can find one that just fits your fingers just perfectly. When you do get your fluid, you want to take it to somebody before you decide to buy it for sure. Especially if you've bought it off the Internet or if it's a US Flute, you want to take it to somebody who knows how to play flute and just get their opinion. Sort of like when you buy a car, a used car, you take it to your mechanic to have him ascertain that it is a good buy for you. When you take it to your flute teacher or to a band director or somebody that you know plays the fluid, just to make sure. Especially again, with a used instruments, that you're getting a good deal and that there's not a whole lot of work that needs to be done. Sometimes you can have a used instrument that is very good, but it needs some adjustment. It needs some new pads that can run you a couple of a 100 extra dollars. So if you're not prepared for that in your budget, then it may be rather surprising. I have that checked out before you actually purchase that instrument. But I think that there are many good used instruments, so don't be afraid of that. 5. Where to Buy Your Flute: So you've learned about the different kinds of fluids. So you've learned about beginners, intermediate and professional model fluids, and now you actually want to go out and purchase a fluid. Where do you go? Well, there are a number of options for you. You could do a Google search and you'll come up with many, many different places where you could purchase an instrument. So you can choose any one of those. There's certainly some that I think are really good choices to go to. But I think the first place for you to do to look is to your local music store. I think it's great for us to support our local businesses. But if you're going to do that, I would first give them a call so they have a heads up that you're going to be coming in and that you want to be looking at a certain type of Flute. You can say I would like to look at beginner fluids. And they will say whether or not they have them in stock. And if they have them, then the great You can come right in or they might say they need to replenish their stock and tell you to wait for a couple of days to come in. You do want to give them a heads up. There are online auction sites that you can use and we all know who they are. They're great. You can get a really good bargain. This Trevor James was on an online auction site. It was brand new when we got it. It was a great bargain. And I think it's a great flute. Think the only thing that you need to worry about and be concerned with with online auction sites is to make sure that they have a good return policy. You want to be able to take that instrument. Take it for a week, try it out. Take it to your closest music person who plays the flute so that they can try it and tell you yes or no, this is a good deal. Sometimes they need a little bit of work. If the bargain is good enough, then you won't mind paying the extra money for the work. If the instrument needs a lot of work, if it needs all new pads and adjustment back and run you a couple extra $100. So you want to be able to consider that as part of the purchase price. Sometimes they can come with a lot of little tiny scratches on here. That is not a huge deal if it plays well, if there's no dense in it, I don't consider a tiny little scratches in the middle as dent. It'll still be a great flute for you if you like the way it sounds. You just want to try out flutes. You want to see which ones fit your hands the best, which ones sound the best when you try playing it? And then that's the flute for you. 6. Holding Your Flute: How do you hold a flute? Well, if you look at a beginner flutist in fourth grade or younger, you'll see many ways in which to hold the fluid improperly. But it's pretty easy. If you look at the flute, there is one part of the float or you don't have keys. And it's not a joint that's going to come out. And that is this section right here. This I tell my younger students is the handle. You want to hold your flute right here. If you hold it, especially with younger students, if you hold it right here and it's right in front of you, no one is going to come by you on either side and Dean your flute or bump into it or cause it to fall. You don't want to hold it by the head joint. I've seen many beginner float, especially at schools instrument where this had joined is loops. And if you hold onto it, the flute and the body will separate. And of course, we know what will happen then. But this is how you want to hold your instrument right on this handle. Now, I will hold it sometimes on the keys, but I don't allow my younger students to do that. When I'm holding it. The weight of my hand right in here is on this bar. I'm holding it very, very gently on the keys itself, so I'm not bending them in any way. My pads can be ripped in here. And so I'm very careful on how I hold it if I hold it this way so that I won't be on the pads, I won't be bending anything. If the weight is just on the metal here and on the bar here, then I can hold it without bending it. Beginner fluid is going to be sturdier and it will be easier to hold it this way without doing any damage. But I would still train my younger students, really teach them to hold it on the handle. That's really the safest place to hold it. 7. Cleaning Cloths: While we're talking about taking care of your instrument, Let's talk about cleaning cloths. There are a lot of commercial cleaning cloths that you can buy. Some for a nice chunk of change and some for less. Let me show you a few clause that I have that I bought. These are ones that are available commercially. This cloth that says it's polyester, it feels like a blend, but it says it's a 100% polyester, has a different feel to it. The thing I like about this class is that it's longer than my cleaning rod. You can see it hangs down here. The thing that I don't like about this cloth is a little bit too wide when I pull it through here and hold it and then bring it over the top because we always want to cover the top of our cleaning rod and tuck in the nub. I don't want that sticking out. When I tuck it in and I pull it around. A little bit too bulky in here for me. I lead it a little bit thinner because what I don't want to happen when I'm cleaning my flute and it's going through that any parts this will stick out and possibly rip a pad. I'm going to make sure that I don't have a cloth that's too long. Now this one is kind of thin. The material is so it could work if I pull it really tight down at the bottom. It could work. Also, what I don't like about this cloth is I don't think it's perfect with getting out the moisture. There's still some more left. When I look down through my flute, I see some moisture left in the flute. I don't think it's great for that. Another cloth that you can buy as a shammy. I like chemise for one purpose and that is to clean my head joint of fingerprints and just to take off some of the wear and tear that my fingers are gonna leave on it. Only on the metal parts. I only use it to shine it up into take off some fingerprints. There's definitely been times where the stage has been very, very hot and so you have very moist fingers and I don't like feeling that I'll use it to clean this. I would never use to clean on the inside of my fluid. It doesn't it's not for that purpose. A cloth that I use generally all the time is this one. This is just a, a 100% cotton flannel shirt. This is a commercially available this cloth. And what I like is that it's fantastic with getting moisture out of your instrument. What I don't like is that it's a little bit too short. If I take it through, then as you can see, it's just barely the length of my cleaning rod. It can work. But if I take this and flip it over the top to hide the nub from sticking out. And then I tuck in my corners. It's a little bit bulky through here because of the material and because I can't quite pull it all the way down. So only this part is long enough. This part is not I can't pull it tight, as tight as I'd like to make sure that it doesn't get bunched up in my instrument. But it's very good at taking away, wicking away the moisture. You can BY clause. But one of the easiest things to do is just to find an old cotton t-shirt and cut it up. Cotton is the best. This is just a white t-shirt. Colors don't matter because this is plaid. Colors don't matter. This is just a cotton T-shirt, not used anymore and so I cut it. The length is very good. It's longer than my rod. You can see that it's gonna be longer than my rod. Yeah, it's plenty long. I could probably make it a little bit shorter. This one though, maybe a little bit too wide. So let's see. If I take the corner and I pull it through. Let's see if it bunches up too much. I'm only want to do that and pull it over the top. Take my cloth over the top, find the edge here. Flip it over the top and then tucking the corners, all the edges. There's a lot of material here. This is a lot of material. So if I'm cleaning my flute, I'm pulling up like that. I can pull it tight from the bottom. I can put the here's the bottom of my clean rhotic and pull it tight. Then when I pull it, put it into my fluid, it won't bunch up. What you don't want this to happen. Let me find my end here. You don't want this to happen when you're cleaning your flute. You want it, pull it tight, like this. But there is a lot, especially down here, there's a lot of material. I would probably take this, I would keep the length on it. But I'm gonna take this and maybe cut though three or four inches. Probably 12 inches is what I want. Now I took this cloth and I cut off about three or four interests. This is about a foot. Let's see if this is the right amount of material. Let me pull it through. Much easier to use. It's not so much cloth I'm trying to maneuver. Going to flip it over the top. Now it's flipped over, tucking my edges. So nothing sticks out. And pull it down tight. This can squash. Let's see how it fits. You can always address the length of your cloth. Could be maybe a little bit smaller, but that works pretty well. It's not gonna stick out, it's not going to get caught in any of my tone holes and possibly rip a pad. So that's what you can do. And it costs you nothing as long as you have an old t-shirt hanging out. Good luck. 8. Clean Your Flute: In this section, caring for your flute, you're going to learn how to take apart your flute and clean it. You absolutely have to clean it every time you play your flute. When you're done playing, you take it apart and you clean it. That will keep the pads lasting so much longer if the moisture is taken out of your flute after every single use. So the first thing that you want to do is take apart your flute. Don't take apart one section. Clean it, put your foot down, pick it back up, take another part. You want to take the whole instrument apart and put it in the case. I'm going to take it apart by taking the foot joint off, holding only on the end where there are no keys. I'm going to put it totally in the case. I'm going to take my head joint off again. I'm only holding it on places where there are no keys. I put everything away. When everything is put away, then I'm going to take my rod and my cloth. And I'm going to attach my cloth to the rod and pull it over. Since we've talked about clause already, I'm just going to use the one I normally use, which again, it's a little bit on the short side. But I take it through. I take that nub and I cover it by flipping this over the top of the rod. You do not want the top of your rod to hit the top of your flute. I cover it. It's going to protect the top of my head joint a little bit better. Now, I'm going to cover all the ends so there's no ends sticking out. I'm going to wrap it nice and tight. And then I put it in my hand and pull down so that the cloth is tight. It will not been shop. When I put it in the instrument. It's going to be nice and tight. All the ends are going to be tucked in. If you see there's no ends sticking out anywhere in here. The next thing I do is pick up my head joint and I'm going to gently put it in until I see it come through the tone hole. You don't want to be jamming it up and down, which I've seen many a youngster do. And what that does is you're hitting the top of your fluid and that isn't just solid metal appear There's a cork up here. By hitting it, you're actually going to be shifting that cork. The cork is what really gives your flute the right, correct intonation. So you don't really want to move it except by an expert. Clean that, remove the cleaning rod, put it away. The next thing is I'm going to take the body out holding onto the handle part, the big section without keys. I take it and I just go gently in this end, pull it out, turn it over, and go this way in and out. And what that does is just make sure that nothing gets bunched up inside. Can you pull it all the way through? Push it all the way through. You probably could without any ill effect. But I think it's safer to just do it one end, do it the other end. And then I put it away. Then I take out my foot joint. Again, holding on the handle. I've got the handle down here. I'm not going to drop it. And I'm just going to shift put it in, shift it through, pull it out, put it away. So that is cleaning the inside of your flute. Now you need to clean the joints. I take my cloth off the rod and I just hold onto it where I take out my head joint and I want to clean where the joints come together. Your breath condensation in the two joints together causes some corrosion and you need to clean it. I'm just going to take that. That's the only place there. Sometimes I like to clean my lip plate off and I put that away. Next, I take the body out and I'm going to take my finger inside my cloth and put it down inside because this is where the head joint goes together. I'm just gonna go round and I press really hard on the outside of the flute from the inside to the out, going around to make sure that's clean. This is where the foot joint comes together. I'm going to take my finger and put it inside the fluid and then I'm going to pinch the cloth on the outside. Then I'm pinching the cloth as I turned it around and I clean that part. I can put that away and take out my foot joint. And the only part where it comes together is right here. I'm gonna again pinch it from the inside with my thumb on the outside and just go around careful around with the keys section, pressing and cleaning. After that. Then you can take your shammy and you can clean the silver. I just take the head joint and I put the head joint into the shammy and just all over gently rubbing off the fingerprints. Put that away. I can do the same. I'll do it up here, just right here around. Sometimes I might just take the cloth very gently holding the keys in here and just rub a little bit here. You have to be careful. Again. The pads are fragile so you have to be careful not to brush up against them, just gonna do that. Sometimes I'll just come down here and wipe down the keys. Now, you'll see that you'll have some dust and discoloration from where all the metal pieces are in the rods and the wires. That's okay. When you take it in for your yearly maintenance to a repair technician, they'll clean that out. The same with the foot joint. I'm going to put my finger in here to hold it carefully. And I can then just clean right on these metal sections that don't have any keys. I can clean here and then gently here. And that is how you clean your flute. Again with the shammy. You don't have to do that every time. You always, always, always want to use your rod and clean the inside of your afloat. While I have my rod here, let's just talk about these. Almost every float unless you've bought it from a relative or you bought it off at eBay and it doesn't come with this almost all fluids come with a cleaning rod. Sometimes they're metal, sometimes they're plastic. This one is wood. If you have a metal rod, you want to get rid of it and get a wooden rod. Metal rods can scrape the float. This part is usually very square edged with corners. And if you happen to not cover this all the way with your cloth that can scrape the inside of your float. There are times when it's dropped, mean we all dropped things and that metal can really bring up your Flute. Whereas this piece of wood, it's not going to, plastic is fine too. I like the wooden ones. I liked the rounded edges up here on the top. This one did not come with my flute. I bought it separately and they're easy to come by from most music stores. All right, enjoy cleaning or flute. 9. Flute Stands: When you're done playing your flute and you want to set it down, there are certain rules that you should follow. Number one, you always want to put it down flat. And you always want to make sure that this little ball right here is sort of a stabilizer peg that your fluid is sitting flat with that ball that helps it to not rollover. Setting it down, as young students always do. Setting it down on top of the keys, that's not good for your case. It can bend them, it could get them out of alignment. You always want to put it down. Technically, this joint, this joint, that little stabilizing peg in these should all sit and hold your fluid from the metal, not actually touching. These should be the only things that touch. Now some fluids aren't made quite up to specs. That may not be the case and that's okay as long as you have it here where this stabilizer peg is holding your float. I would suggest that if you have to put it down so that you can run and do a couple of things that you put it on top of a piano, on top of a dresser. It's out of the way of anything that could possibly damage it. But sometimes you need to have a flute stand. If I'm playing in a group and you have to do flute and piccolo, I want to put my foot down someplace. I have a stand and I'll show you a couple of stands here. If I put it down on a stand, then I can be relatively as long as it's protected. I'm relatively sure that it's not going to get damaged. So there are a couple of different stands. And I'll just show you the three that I have. This is my stand. It's very solid down here. It's not going to be knocked over with a little bit of work. You'd have to be quite, quite a big push in order for this stand to fall over. This is, I don't know. I would say it's iron. And when I put my fluid on it, it is very steady course I'm holding it right now, but it's going to be pretty sturdy and I feel relatively comfortable with it in this stand. But that's not a travel Stan. That's just a stand that I use here at my house. If I'm gonna travel, there's two different ones. This one is for both flute and pickles. So this top part right here is for the piccolo. It's a travel stand because I can unscrew this and it can be folded up into a relatively easy traveling. I will unscrew it and then that folds down. And then these to come over. And I can put it in my bag or carry it, or it can be even in mice travel stand bag. This has to be, this is just a little piece of wood that stuck onto this larger, this is wood as well. And that can break off. So I have to be careful with that when I'm traveling, but if I have to use my pillow, this is the stand I use. If I don't need my piccolo and I'm just using my flute. This is the standard US. This is not the sturdiest. It's very, very light. What makes it convenient is that it can be really folded up small so those all collapse. It goes into there. I just screw it in together. And then I can plop it in my fluid bag. And it's very easy. I bring this to one I'm teaching lessons. It's a great one that I can just open up. Let it flip out, put it together, and then my food is going to put in there. Now, the only thing with that one is it's not hefty like this. And so it's possible that if I don't have this in a protected spot is possible it could get knocked over. I just make sure that when I use that stand, I have my fluid in a section where it's not going to be knocked over by any means. There are other standards if you're looking that you may like, but I find these three to be convenient for my needs. So have fun looking and find some stands, but they're not necessary. You can just set it on top of a flat surface. It's just making sure that your keys are not going to rollover and be squashed or damaged in any way. 10. Flute Cases and Bags: After you've purchased your fluid, you're going to want to carry it and find a way to carry it where it's protected. Now some fluids aren't like this. The cases have a handle and you just carry it by the handle. I would like to recommend that's not a good way to carry your fluid. If you want to just use that case with a handle. And it just has the class, however, the R that eukaryote under your arm, you want to carry it on your arm. And that way, there's nothing that even if these clasps break which they do or caught on something and flipped open and you didn't know it and you're just carrying it by the handle. Flute falls out onto the floor. So you want to carry it under your arm. Now, there are many cases, many variety of cases. You can buy a special case. You can buy them in pink and purple and stripes and polka dots. Have fun looking for the case that you want. If you have a case such as this, you need to have a case over the top of it that you'll carry up. Now this is the one that came with my hands float and it is lined with sheeps, wolf, and the inside. So I can just put my fluid in. I zip it up. I can carry it over my shoulder or by the handle. It also has a pocket that can put pencils in. Now it's not gonna be a great way if I have to carry music around, I'll need a separate bag for that. But sometimes I have a gig where I just have a sheet of music and I don't need to carry larger bag. I'm just going to carry this and the music at a folder. And I don't have something big and bulky. But there are times where I need my gig bag. Again, you can, there's a wide variety of gig bags, but this is the one that I purchased a long time ago. I think the company that made this is not in business anymore. This bag has been my lifelong friend. I've had it for many, many years. You'd see it's quite worn. The class down here finally, worn out. And so it doesn't use to clasp here. What I like about this bag is that there's room for my flute. I opened it up and there's a spot for my flute to fit in here. There's a place to put my piccolo. What I really like is this very sturdy center that separates the flute from music. And what that does is keeps my music from getting tattered. Some bags do not have this sturdy center and the edges of your music get tattered. Overtime. This bag has been really good. I've lots of pencils. I can keep extra cleaning rod. I also have a place back here for a tuner and for my metronome in a little pocket back here, this has been my best bag. But today, there are many, many bags that you can look on. You can refer back to my website. I will post a few bags that I recommend, but there are other ones. And then some people choose to carry their fluid this way and just get some attractive bag that they think that serves their purpose from any of your big box stores. And you can put in music and your pencils and anything else that you need. There's no right or wrong. It's just how is your flu protected? And do you have that covered? If you do do whatever suits your lifestyle, There's all sorts of money that you can spend. There are flute makers and flute beg makers that have, they will make flute begs to your own dimensions and specs and you can specify the sky is the limit how much you want to pay. But these are just your basics and they've suited me just fine. So have fun looking for a bag. They're very fun to use. 11. Flute Maintenance: After you've been playing for a period of time, you're going to need to do some maintenance on your instrument. Now, after you've been playing for a year, you should have it taken in for what is known as a clean oil and adjust. We call that a CoA. That needs to be done yearly if you're especially if you're playing on a regular basis. And what they do is they're going to take this apart in here. You get Dustin, cat hair. We have a long-haired cat. You'll have hair and things that get in, inside here. And they'll clean that all out. They oil. You're a little mechanisms here and then adjust all the keys so that they are ceiling properly after a year or so playing, things tend to become an adjusted. The little screws that are in these posts will loosen up a little bit. And especially a key like this which puts down three different k's. Something will become unadjusted and it will start leaking. You'll notice because something that you could formally gets pretty well. All of a sudden stops coming in quite nicely. If you've been able to get a low C with all your fingers down and it has come out fairly easily for you. And then all of a sudden you start trying to get it and it doesn't work, then you pretty much know that you're probably leaking keys somewhere. Then you need to take it into your local repair man for a clean oil and addressed. Now, those are very routine and there's a standard pricing for those, so that's pretty easy. It can run the cost up a little bit if there's a path that has to be replaced. Now sometimes pads needs to be replaced just because they've gotten old and they no longer the felt in them is no longer stealing. These pads have to seal the a hole there. When the felt is aging. It's not going to seal evenly all the way around. Then it has to be replaced and repair. People that work on these instruments when they are replacing a pad. It's not just a ticket out and put it in. You have to worry about whether or not it's going to seal properly with the other key that goes down at the same time because almost all of them put down another key other than just itself. If this one is brand new and this one is not brand new, then you have to let it settle for a little bit. They generally work on it a little bit. And then hours later they come back to and see if it's still needs to be adjusted, settling in properly. That's really the maintenance that needs to be done. If you need a complete overhaul. So if there was a flute that was sitting in your attic for years and years or somebody's attic and you've got it at a yard sale and you take it to your repair person, they will probably say it needs to complete overhaul. And what that means is they take out every pad, they replace every pad. And depending on the type of instrument, what's the quality of the instrument? It could be 100 to $400 or even more than that. You want to get that checked out before you. Before you say, go ahead and do it. Is it worth it? The flute worth it? I've definitely had a student who pulled one of those instruments out of who knows where? The attic yard sale not sure. And the repair or local repair person said it's just not worth repairing, it's just going to keep falling apart. So that wasn't a deal for them. You do want to have it checked out and know that there are some costs. There's usually not anything hidden. It's gonna be replacing the pads. There's a price for that and the repair person will be able to tell you all that. Have your flute checked out, especially if it's a use float or if it's been sitting for a long time. 12. Putting Your Flute Together: The fun part is about to begin. You now have your fluids. You've watched all the maintenance, you've, you know all this technical stuff about the flute, but now you're actually going to learn how to play it. First thing we have to do is put your flute together. You're going to open up your case and set it in front of you, make sure that it's stable. If you're a younger student, I would not put it on your lap. I would put it on a table, a flat surface. And even even an adult, I'd put it on a flat surface so that you can just keep the case open. Some cases don't want to open all the way. And it's much easier to deal with if it's on a flat surface and not on your lab. The first thing you're going to do is take out the body. The body is this section right here with all the keys. And what you're going to do is in the case like so, you're gonna take your left hand and you're just going to pull it up from the center and then put your hand around what I call the handle, this part that doesn't have any keys. You're gonna put your hands there and hold the float right in front of you while you take your other hand and you take out your head joint with your head joint, you just want to make sure that your lip plate is on the upper side and not this way because you're joined here is what's going to come together. Then you take those two and gently, carefully back and forth, just push them together. It doesn't have to go all the way down. You don't want to jam it down, just put it in your head joint in your body are together. I like to line up the tone hole in the proper position with the keys. What I do is I look down the keys straight down and I take the tone hole and I'm gonna move it. And of course I'm holding it on the handle. And I move my head joint until I see the whole line up with the keys. When it's there, That's probably the right spot for you to begin playing in. It can be adjusted a little bit at some other time, that can be moved. But right now, let's start with it there. Next, you're gonna take your foot joint and you're going to take your finger and pull out the end of the foot joint so that your hand is on the end where there's no keys. When you're taking it out. You want this little set of keys right here, up and these three down. So your hand is down here. I don't want to hold it around here because as I'm putting it together, I could bend some of these keys. All right, so I'm gonna put it like this, and then I'm going to put them together back and forth gently, carefully. And then you're going to take this ball right here on the end of this rod and put it in the middle of the keys right here. It seems like they should blind up this way. But you can never reach around and play the keys over here if it's there. So that ball goes right in the middle of these keys. Now your fluid is together and you're ready to start playing. 13. Hand Positions and Finger Placements: Your fluid is now together. So it's a good time to learn how to put your fingers on. It takes a little getting used to have the fingers nowhere to go exactly. So let's do this by a process. We're going to use the right hand and put that on first, I like to just take the flute and hold it, especially with my younger students. Hold it by the handle. Just kinda let it rest on your shoulder. Then you're gonna take your right hand and make it straight from elbow to fingertips. It's gonna be straight all the way down with your thumb, straight out like this. Now take a look at the end of your flute here. We're not going to talk about the foot joint right now. What we're gonna do is talk about the last three keys on the body. Those three keys are 123. Those fingers go right on those keys. Now, your middle finger is a little bit longer than these two. So what you're going to do is put 13 on. We call that one and through we're going to put those on first and then we'll worry about my middle finger. While your arm, fingertips, elbow straight. You're gonna set your first finger on the third key up from the bottom, right here. Then your third finger fits on nicely. From here. What I want to do is bend my wrist down, not the elbow. We're not doing this. Elbows gonna stay where it is for now. I'm just going to bend the wrist down until my thumb fits nicely underneath. Generally in between 12, it's going to fit there. When that time comes in, my middle finger gently sets into place. All right. I'm not trying to do anything weird with it. Now, you'll notice right through here, There's a lot of tension because your elbow is up so high. So what's beautiful about that is that all you need to do is lower your elbow until that tension releases. When it releases, that's where your elbow goes. From there. Your pinky is going to just set right on the key that's closest to where that finger is. This is called your E-flat pinky. And it's going to go right there. You don't have to stretch them for now out here. Just let them set right there. Now you have all of those fingers on. Let's just review that. Will do fingertip straight. Find your last three keys. 123 on the body, not talking about the foot joint on the body. Alright. Your 13 go on. You bend your wrist down, not your elbow. You put your thumb under, let your middle fingers set on, put your pinky on. And then when you feel that tension in your wrist, lower your elbow until that tension releases, you should not be hanging on as if you're hanging on a bar. We just wanted to have a gentle curve in your fingers. If you look this way, There's a gentle curve this way. I'm not doing it with a fingertip straight. My risks would have to be an elbow too high for that. And for me I wouldn't cover these holes if I did that. So I'm just putting the fat part of your finger right there in the middle of those keys, then the elbows down. And it's very comfortable. Very comfortable to hold it. I can hold it with just resting it on my shoulder. When you have that hand on, Let's just take that one off for a minute and just hold onto your float and I give you permission to hold down the keys. I take this part of my hand and put it on the bars so that that's where the pressure goes, not holding it on the keys themselves. I do that. I'm going to rest my head on my shoulder. Now when you look down these keys here, you see there's this little key, then you have this one than these. When, especially with my little ones, I teach them this. Saying you go skip, play, skip play, play. Those other ones you're gonna put your fingers on. We skip this one we play, we skip and we play these two on mine. It's easier to save because I've got holes in the ones I'm going to put my fingers on. If you have a closed hole, the plateau model, you won't be covered. So there won't be quite as obvious. We skipped the little one and we skip this one right in here. Now, I'm gonna make my hand a stop sign. Hold it straight out. Here's something that you want to put your flute down for end-state. When your hand is a stop sign, you're gonna take your first finger and find the second knuckle and the third knuckle. And what you want to do is feel the indentation there is between those two knuckles. Alright. I think there's a little bit more than normal because I've been playing flute for so long. But your fluid is going to rest right on that shelf. You need to identify it and nowhere it is before you put your fluid on. For my littles, I go through and I show them, I feel it for them. I say right there, right there is where it goes. You just want to feel that and note that's where your fluid is going to rest. That's important for putting your left hand on the flip. So now I have it up again. And I've got that flat hand, the stop sign hand. Now on this second knuckle, right in-between these first two keys, I'm going to put that second knuckle on and slide it up until it fits on the shelf. When it's on the shelf, i norm ready. When it's there. I'm going to bend my first finger down. Now, depending on the size of your hand, you may need to backup or move forward a little bit. Your finger bends down, then you're skipping, remember, and then you're playing, and playing. From here, my thumb is here. I'm just going to set my thumb on. I'm not going to bend it like going to turn it. It's going to be set. We want to set it right here, not here. You have two keys here. We can deal with that at another time. But this is your V key. And you want to set your thumb on the B. I play with my thumb knuckle, probably maybe slightly to the side of the knuckle. That's where it fits best. You want. It's just wherever it fits in your hand best if your fingers are bent like this. That's where it goes. We don't want to do this or twisted. Nothing. Report your fingers on, put your thumb on. Then from here, your pinkie goes in what we call the A-flat key, just sits down. Younger students have a hard time putting your finger there and not pressing it. They always want to press it down. If you find that when you're playing fluids and you're not getting any sound is probably because that pinky was pressed down. You're just wanted to set it there. When that hand is put on. I can then put this hand back where it should be. Now, my fingers are all in the right spot. You can see there's a little bend to my wrist here. All right. I'm not playing this way. If you happen to have a beginner fluid where this is offset G and they make professional models with offset g as well. Mine are inline, which means all my keys are right in line. But on other floats you can have offset g, which means these are moved out a little bit. Then this bend in your wrist right here is not going to be quite as severe. It'll probably be more like this because that G is moved out a little bit. That's how you put your fingers on. And it's a good idea just to practice that a couple of times. All right, Enjoy. 14. Proper Posture: We're almost getting to the point where we're going to start playing with your fingers on your head joint and playing beginning songs and notes. But let's just talk a little bit about posture. What you want to do is most of the time you should stand there. I have many students, adults that have had back problems or have this surgery and they need to sit when they were playing and that's okay. You can sit and still have proper posture. I also have my beginning students, my very little ones sitting when they're playing. It's just easier. They wiggle less. It's better to keep their concentration if they're sitting. Once my general rule is, although it's not hard and fast is when you're in seventh grade, they start standing for all their lessons. Standing as good. You want to have your shoulders back. You want to have your chest straight. So if you're slouched a little bit, then your error column is compromised. If you're just keeping your shoulders back and your chest up, not that way up. But just as if you were in a swimming pool and the water was cold and you sucked in and this came up. That's how you just want to be with your chest up, your shoulders, back, and then you bring the fluid up to you. Now if you're standing, you want to have your feet shoulder width apart or something. If your feet are too close together, you're obviously a little bit off balance and too far apart, that generally doesn't happen, but that would also make you a little bit less stable. You're going to bring your flute up to you. Your chin needs to be level. Um, and that seems like a given, but it's not. I've corrected that on many as student where for some reason they bring their chin up or because they started when they were really tiny. They have this bad habit of tucking the chin under to get the best sound and the best airflow. Just a level chin, not high, not too low. If you just look at yourself and you're looking straight across and your chin is leveled, that's where you want to be. You can be turned a little bit. I couldn't play straight. If my body was straight, it's not going to work that way. And younger students turn even more because of their smaller size. But I'm going to turn a little bit when I play. This. Height also is something to think about. In marching band. I've definitely students with marching band and when they come to lessons, they're holding their float straight out. While I'd rather see that than if you're holding it too far down, that is not a comfortable position to practice in for very long. The best way is just take it straight out and go down. You feel a relaxation in your shoulders and your arms when you just straight out. And I'm relaxing a little bit. This is probably the best position, it's angled slightly down. The main thing is you need to have this lip plate straight on your lip. If your arm is going down in your head, doesn't go with it, then that armature is at an angle to your lip. So I'm going to let my head go down a little bit with my flute. That gives you still straight access to that lip plate. The Earth stream is still going to go straight, but it's a more relaxed position so that I can play for a longer period of time. If your arms are down here too much. Number one, it's at an angle here. Your air column is not going to go straight when you're this way. And your fingers are cramped, going this way. Just straight out, bend it down just a little bit. Let your head tilts so that you're still straight on the lip plate. And that will be optimal playing position. Experiment. But use a mirror. A mirror is very good helpful tool for you to see what you look like, especially when you're beginning your first notes because you can not have to use music. You'll just look at the mirror and look at your position while you play your first beginning songs. Experiment. Use a mirror and enjoy doing that. 15. Your First Sounds: You've learned how to put your hands on. You've learned what the correct posture is and now it's time to make your first notes. In learning how to first make sound on the flute. And we're gonna take it apart and only use your head drone. Take off your head joint, and then make sure that your flute body is down on the flat surface and then you're holding your head joint nice and steady. There are many ways to get started. What I like to do first is to tilt my fluid upside down, cover the hole in my hand. Don't put the whole on your fingers because you won't be able to make a seal, put the hole in the palm of your hand, cover it. Then I'd like to just start students off with blowing down the end. You'll feel the vibrations in the tone hole. As you do that. You make your first sound as if you were blowing on a Coke bottle. It's the same idea. Your upper lip is a little bit over the bottom in your almost pointed down. If I put my finger up here, I'm just my airstream is just going down. You could see the armature. All right, if you can do this a couple of times, you're gonna take your head joint and turn it this way. The proper way to hold your head joint is there's a thinner spot and a thicker area on the lip plate. The thicker area is what goes against your lip. So I'm going to turn it this way so that that thicker areas, what's going to go against my lip? Now I'm going to take this hand. I'm going to hold it as best I can at the top. Take this hand and cover the end of the flu. Now in this position, I'm going to take this whole and put it in the center of my lips. From there, I'm going to just roll it down. Now, generally, we all have different thicknesses of lips. So this is where looking in a mirror can help you figure this out. But when I do that, enroll it down, I'm just about in the perfect place. I like to move it slightly down on my lip in order to play. You can see this tone hole is in the middle of my lips. I'm gonna take the end, cover it. Take the lip, hold the armature hall, put it in the middle of my lips, roll down and then maybe adjust it down a little. Now, with that same on brochure, I'm just going to blow down. Just do that. That's the sound you should make. Just put it up here. Tilt it down, adjusted a little bit if you need to. It's pretty much at the bottom of my lip. The bottom of the red part is where this edge goes. Now, when I roll it out, if I'm looking in the mirror, I should be able to see if I'm looking in the mirror just straight on, I should be able to see maybe two-thirds of this amateur hole in the mirror. If I can see two-thirds rolled it out the right amount. If I can only see a quarter of it, it's rolled into much. If I see almost the entire hole, I've rolled out too far. All of those ways. You won't get the right sound, you won't get a sound. So you want to be able to see this edge, this outer edge in the mirror, and a little bit of the curved sides when you're there. Just practice. Now, if you're blowing really hard, which especially my younger ones, they think that's what you have to do. They'll get this. That's okay too. All of it is sound. All of it is produced the right way. You can just not blow so hard. If you don't blow so hard, it'll go back down to the lower octave. Once again. The main thing is that you're looking to see how much tongue hole can you see in the mirror? Or if there's someone watching you as you're playing, you're going to say, Oh, can I see most of that tone hole, maybe two-thirds of the tone hole in the mirror. One of my head is strength. If your head is down, I can get sound. Probably others won't be able to, but if my head is down, number one, I can't see myself in that mirror, so I know my chin is not up. If my head was up too high or rolled out. Again, I can make sounds, but you won't be able to make a sound with it rolled out too far. You want to see two-thirds of that tone hole. And your airstream is just going to doubt. So if you just practice, feel that air here. If you feel your ear here, you're blowing to your armature is kind of in an office. So you say all are current position. My error is going down. So think off. And hopefully you'll get a sound. It may take a little practice, just keep working at it. If you don't get it, go back to doing this and practicing it this way. Sometimes this is just the easier way to get those initial sounds. It also builds your confidence to say, oh, I can do this. And then you turn it middle of your lips. Roll down. Make sure you can see two-thirds of that total whole. Your chin is up. You cover the end, hold onto the edge joint. Blow, would that sound inside? Which means your air from here it's being split and going down here about somewhere in that angle. Don't be discouraged. It takes a little bit and it may take that you need to put it down and come back to a little bit later and do it again. But you will make sounds. Enjoy trying. Don't get frustrated. If you get frustrated, put it down and come back to it again, you'll get it. 16. Play Your First Song Hot Cross Buns: You've learned all about the floats, how to put your fingers on and how to blow your first sounds. Well, now it's time to actually play some songs. And there's a whole slew of nursery rhymes songs and easy songs that you can learn to play. Let's start off with that, which was hot crust bonds. You have to know three notes in order to buy hot crust buttons. So let me show you what they are. We're going to start with b, and a. B is going to use your thumb key. You have to make sure that you're not putting your thumb on this part of the thumb key butt right here. You're going to play with your first finger here, that is a beak. And then you have to come down here. And on your foot joint, you're playing what we call the E-flat pinky. Pinky key right here. None of these fingers down, so it's just gonna be that pinky key, your thumb here, and your first finger, that's B. You're going to play B. And then we're going to play a, which is just adding a finger. Nothing else has changed. Then you add another finger for g. Let me just play those again. Here's B. In G. I will play all of those. And then you have to play four Gs in a row, g, g, g, g, and then you play a. And then you're back to just doing B, a, G. So let's run through the whole thing. I'll sing it here. We play B, G, B a G, G, G, G, G a B, a G. And now we'll play it. Play that through a couple of times. But let me do it again and show you what the fingers look like. I'm going to turn and you'll be able to see the fingers a little bit better. So you won't see this one so much. This pinky, E-flat, pinky we call it has to be done. So that's gonna be down. I'm going to turn here and still play the song. So brief with me. Now when you're playing with me and you want to play along with me, it's good if you will breathe at the same time I do. If I take my breath. Let's just practice coming in together so you take your breath with me. Then if you do that, we will start at the same time. Every time we'll be together. One more time. It. If you get that rhythm down really well, click on the next video and we'll play a duet together. I will play an accompaniment to that, and we'll play your first flute duet. Have fun. 17. Your First Duet Hot Cross Buns: So you've been practicing Hot Cross bonds. Now let's play a duet together. If you've been playing this tempo, that is a tempo of 404. So I'm going to count to four, and then I'm going to play the wet part. And you play what you've just learned. For Hot Cross bonds. 1234. It didn't work out. I hope so. Let's do it one more time. Then you can rewind it and do it as many times as you want. 123. 18. Mary Had a Little Lamb: This next song is another nursery rhyme, Mary Had a Little Lamb, and we can use the same three notes, B and G. So let's just review that again. Be your thumb, your first finger, and your E-flat pinky. Then we add a finger and G. So here's Mary Had a Little Lamb and breathe with me. Now in Mary Had a Little Lamb. The rhythm is a little bit different from hot cross buns. We use something called the eighth notes. We'll get into that. But I think you can just learn it by ear and just learn what the rhythm is and imitate it. Now that you're playing it. Let me turn around and you can watch my fingers. Breathe with me. Just one other tip. If you hear this. The very sad sounding, Mary Had a Little Lamb. What you know is that your thumb is hitting this key. You have to make sure that your thumb is only on this part. And notice that I keep my thumb straight. I'm not bending it to hit just stripe and I played with it right there. You're not rolling over and hitting that part. Otherwise, you have the very sad Mary Had a Little Lamb. Let's do it again. Ready to breathe with me? Once you learn that, then click on the duet and we'll play the joint together. Have fun. 19. Duet Mary Had a Little Lamb: You've just learned Mary Had a Little Lamb. Now let's play the dwell. I will count and breathe with me and come in. Did it work out? You're playing Mary Had a Little Lamb and I'm pulling the wet part. Play the notes that you've learned. And let's do it again. Here we go, 1234. Play it as many times as you need to really get it together and feel like you're playing a duet. It's a lot of fun to play duets, enjoy. 20. Pierrot: All right, So you've learned two songs. Here's your third song. This is called peer row, and it's using only the same three notes that you've learned, your g, your a, and your B. But tiny bit trickier because there's a skip. The other ones we've been moving by step. So we go from a G to an a to a B to an a to a G, always in order. But now we're going to have to skip from G to a B. And so that makes it just a step-up in difficulty, but it should still be pretty easy for you. We're gonna start off with your G. As always, your E-flat pinky is down, down here. And here's, we're gonna say the notes. So first we say G, G, G a B, a, G, B G. And then you just do it again. G, G, G, G, G. The song basically takes the first phrase and just repeats it. Let me play it again for you and play it along with me. You remember to breathe with me? Alright, you've played through it or tried to anyway, let me turn around and show you what it's like. When you look at my fingers moving. Let's play it again. Breathe with me. In. The skips comes between your G and you skip up to be. Instead of always going in order, alphabetical order. We're going to skip from a G to a B. Now play that a couple of times through, and then you'll be ready for the duet that we'll do next. Have fun. 21. Duet Pierrot: That's the PRO that you just learned. Were you remembering to take all those notes or articulate those with a top? I hope so. Now let's play the duet. Remember that you're going to count off with me, and then we'll breathe together. So we'll count of four, will breathe together. And then we'll begin and you play the melody. I'll play the harmony. All right, 1234. Basically, you play it twice through. I play it twice through. That's the song. Appear row to try it a few times, see if you can get it to line up to work. It'll sound really cool. Have fun. 22. Go Tell Aunt Rhody: That song is Goto at roadie, and it's a little bit more complicated than the songs that you've learned so far. There are more skips and there are two new notes. So let me teach you what those two notes are. The first note you need to learn is C. And if you take your B fingers, which of course are your thumb, your first finger In your E-flat pinky, and you take off the thumb, that's C. I'm holding the flute with these fingers. There aren't any fingers down. Just because I'm doing that, Don't be confused. So C is your pinky and your first finger, and that's it. The other note is one that's a little bit trickier to remember to do because you're putting all your fingers down. Lifting up your first finger while this one was down, it's now going to go up because they're gonna play a D. And a. D is your B finger, your a and your GI fingers. No first finger, and then 123 and no E-flat pinky. If I play a C here, then D. You're going to need both of those notes. So try them both. Just go from a C to a D, or D to a C. Just go back and forth because it's a little bit tricky to go from C down and your E-flat pinky. Then both of those get lifted up and everything else goes down except for this guy. So go back and forth. All right, Then to play the song, we're gonna start with B. After you've practiced that a little bit, let's just speak the notes. B, B, a, G, G, a B, G. Here's your d. D, d, c, b, b, a, G, B, G. How about if I turn around and maybe you can see the fingers at a different angle. Let's try it. Ready to breathe with me. Remember? Remember, remember. Remember that when you go up to your D, first finger and pinky are up. So let's just do that little bit again. D, D, C, B, B G, B, G. Hotel eroding. Want to try playing it with me? It's a little trickier. Let's breathe with me. Start with your b. Let's go through it one more time. It'll probably take a few times to really learn that song before you can play the duet. And don't forget to articulate, make sure you put a top. Every time you change notes, you're putting a ta, ta, ta, ta sound at the beginning. And if you are still having a hard time with that, go back to the articulation lecture and just work on getting that down because you're going to need it for all the songs that you are going to learn to do. Enjoy. 23. Duet Go Tell Aunt Rhody: Now are you ready for the duet? Have you played that enough times that you get that skip to the d, d, c, b. If you feel like you're comfortable with it, Let's play a duet. Here is the complement. Let me count for 1234. Let's do it again. Remember whenever we're doing a couple of times and see how it goes, Have fun. 24. 2nd Duet Go Tell Aunt Rhody: That of course is go tell it roadie, which you've already learned, we've done this. We've played it with a very simple duet part. Well, I thought that we take it to the second step and play it with a more complicated dwight part. What you've learned is exactly right and you're going to play that with me just like I did at the beginning right now. And now I'm going to play a more complicated, too wet part. It'll make it a little bit more fun. Let me forget 1234. Let's do it one more time and see if you've got it. 1234. How did it go? Did you get it? It's really fun when you start doing a little bit more complicated to wetting, it can make practicing just that much more fun. Enjoy. 25. Down By The Station: That's song is down by the station. It's fun one. It's going to use the same keys that you've learned so far. It's going to start with a G. So your GKE with your pinky down. And you're going to use your C, which was G, a, B, C, no thumb is just your first finger and pinky. And it's going to use D, which was 123 here. No pinky and 12 and your thumb here, that's your D, C, D. Practice going between those two a little bit back and forth so that you've can feel like you can move from a B to a D, or a C to a D. Just going back and forth. Pinky down, pinky up, pinky down, pinky up. Alright, so we're gonna start with our g. G, g, b, b. We've learned a couple of songs that start that way. Let's start it together. You're going to breathe with me. Remember that breathing? I think we're going to learn this and tarts. Let's do the first part here. Now that first part is just G. G a B, B, a G, a B G, G. If you can sing that and say it, do it a couple of times, it's going to make it a whole lot easier to do. All right, let's try it again. Now for the next part, Let's start on a, b. We went G, G, G, G, G. Now we're going to start on a, b, b, b, b c d c, c, d b. And you're going to practice that a couple of times. So you really feel comfortable with that. Now let's just do that section. All right, from there we're going to go back and do the beginning part again. G, G a B, B a B, G, G. Let's play that. Now. The kids always loved this next part because it's puff, puff to chew off they go. The notes then would be G, G, B, B, B, G. Now let's put the whole song together. Hopefully you've practiced all those parts. Now we're going to play in, well, enjoy playing that one. It's a little bit longer, but it's gonna be a lot of fun. 26. Duet Down by the Station: That's the end of down by the station. You ready for the duit? It's definitely longer. You need to know your part really bill before you can do it with me. But let's see how you do. If you've got it and you really feel like you have it down, Let's play it together. 1234. Shall we do it again? Let's try one more time. 23. I hope you have fun with that one. I think it's a really nice little duet to do. Do it a whole bunch of times, get really comfortable, and then you'll be ready for our next one. We have fun. 27. London Bridge: We all know that as London Bridge, It's beloved by many young adult. This particular London bridge is going to introduce a new note. So it's going to be a note that's a neighbor to your D. So your D that is first finger up. No pinky. You're going to go from there to E. And E is just putting first finger down, pinky down, and lifting up your third finger here, we call this your d finger. You're going to lift that one up. If you go D, E, Let's practice just going back and forth, D to E, and back to D to E. How about going from a C to D? It's hard to hold up your flute when you're just fingering a C in your hands, let it rest on your shoulder. And just C, D, E, D, C. Let's go to E. E, back to C, to E, to D, to C. It's a tricky little movement that D and getting 0s, 1s past your past D and you're going to E. The rest are similar to what you've already learned in the lower register. This is your e. Let me turn around and show you what it looks like from here. Here's your D first finger up, pinky up to E. I'm going to put the first finger down, pinky down. I'll lift this one up. If I go from a C though, thumb, pinky, and I go to an E, I'm going to put these all down and keep my third finger up, down here. Go back to C to D. I hope that you have that. So let's look at how you play London Bridge. Where to start with our D. We go D, right to that, E, D, E D, C, B, C, D. And don't be afraid to let your foot go on your shoulder. I can't hold my fluid up on a C with just pinky and our first finger, we need to have that anchoring your fluid. That's okay to have it let it rest right on your shoulder. All right. Let's try that again. This is your London D, EDC, B, C, D. Let's just try that. You're ready. Breathe with me. Try it again. That's D, E, D C, b, c, d. The next part, after you've just practice that, really got it down. We're going to go to his start with an a, that the first part was London bridge is falling down. Now we go to falling down, falling down. We go to a, b, c, again, resting it on my shoulder. A, b, c, then b, c, d. Let's try that again. B, c, B, C, D. Now let's play that. Now it's easy because the next part is what you've already learned at the beginning, that D, EDC, B, C, D. Let's play it. Now the ending, we go down to D, B, G. Let's try that. D, B, G. Let's play it. Now if you've played all those parts a bunch of times and you feel really comfortable, Let's do the whole song with me. How did it go? You're getting it. It's a fun one to do because of course we all know the melody, so it's a little bit easier to play because your ear is directing you as to where to go next. Let's play one more time. Well, enjoy playing that nursery rhyme tuned, but it's fun to play. Have fun. 28. Duet London Bridge: There's the end of your London Bridge. Let's try the duet. Are you ready for this? Here we go. 123. And how did that go? It was that fun. Let's try it one more time. The more you do it, the more comfortable you will be with all those notes. Especially because in this song you're adding that extra E and you're going back and forth between C, D, and E. Just keep doing it and your fingers will eventually get comfortable with that. Enjoy. 29. Yankee Doodle: That of course, is Yankee Doodle. In order for you to play Yankee Doodle, we need to have a new note introduced, that is your F-sharp. Now sharps make notes higher. We could have a sharp on any note. Right now, we're going to have a sharp on F, and we haven't really done F. You can still learn the sharp. If you finger your G with your pinky down here, you add your D finger, that is an F-sharp. It'll be lower than your G. We're going to play it below the g. Just like that. When we get there, I will remind you that it's coming up. Since we're doing this in parts, you'll know when we're there. Let's just begin the beginning of Yankee Doodle. And we're just going to say the name of the notes as we Finger them. We started off with your G. Here we go. G, G, B, G, B. Let's try that again. D, G, B, G, B. Now let's play that. Let's try it one more time. I'm good. You have that. I'm sure it's not too hard to do. Now let's add the other part. And this is very similar. So we went G, G, a, B, G, B. Here's the next section. G, G, B, G, F-sharp. There's your F-sharp. Let's try that again. G, G, G, F-sharp. Let's play it. Try it again. Alright, third section. G, G a B, C, B a G. Let's try that again. Say at first G, G a B, C, B, a G. Now let's play it in part four is really quite easy. F sharp, F sharp, F sharp, F sharp, G. G. Try that again. Your F sharp here, your D finger down. After F sharp, F sharp, F sharp, G, G. I'll try that. If you've practiced all those sections, those four sections a couple of times. Now, let's put the whole song together with me. Before we play it again. I just want to let you know that your ear wants to hear this. That's how you sing it. But that would be adding three notes to this song. I thought adding three notes was a little bit much that we should just stick with one. So we'll just do the modified version of Yankee Doodle. Let's play it one more time. That's fun to do. Join me again. We'll play the duet part. So have fun. 30. Duet Yankee Doodle: You've been working on Yankee Doodle. How's it going? Do you have it down? Let's try it. If you have it down and you think you have it pretty smoothly, Let's try it as a duet. Here we go. Ready? And did it work for you? I hope so. I hope you're getting bad and you're getting the tuned down in the rhythm of it down. It's familiar. We all know how to sing it. Sometimes it's slightly different than how we're going to play it. But let's try it one more time. If you think you've got it, Let's do it one more time. Ready? Play it. If you don't have a downdraft yet, well then keep playing it. Really know it well. The melody before you try to do it as a duet. If you don't have the melody down, it's gonna be pretty tricky to do it as a duet. If you have the melody down and it's still just not working quite right, just play it with me, play the melody with me over and over, and then try the DWT again. I'm sure you're going to get it. Have fun. 31. Twinkle Twinkle: Are you ready for another nursery rhymes song? So we all know Twinkle, Twinkle. It's something we've been sung since we were very young. So it's always easiest to play a song that you familiar with, a rhythm, you're familiar with it. So it's your ear is going to help you in case you get off. Let's talk through the notes before we start playing. This one is going to start on F, and it is going to use the B flat that you've learned before. So this B flat where you have your finger, first finger, your thumb, and your f, We call it your finger. Those are down. You're going to need your B flat for this. So we're gonna start with F and we skip up to C, F, F, C, C, D, D, C. This has the D. Now we've learned a D on another song, but let's just review. D has 12312 and thumb. Your thumb is down. These fingers are down. Your first fingers up and there's no pinky key. So these two fingers are up. That's your D. We've learned that another one, just reviewing it. Let's start it again. We start with F, F, C, C, D, D, C. Now here's your B flat. B flat, B flat, a, G, F. Now jump back up to C. C, C, B flat, B flat, a, G. Again, C, C, C, B flat, a, G, F, F, C, C, D, D, C, B flat, B flat, a, a, G, G. And your pair, of course, your pinky is down for everything. They're just not on D. Sometimes when I'm just fingering it by PQ slips up, but make sure you have it down. It is down. Now after you practice that a couple of times will play together. So here we go. Three. Once you have that first part learned, it's the same as the second part. You're twinkle, twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are that comes back at the end. So it's just exactly the same. It's just the, up above the star so high like a diamond in the sky. Those parts, That's, that's the middle section. Those are different, but the beginning and the end are exactly the same. Shall we try it one more time? Let's drew it. I think it's actually a really pretty fun, enjoy playing it. And just try it a couple of times until you get it and make sure you've got it down before you try the duit. Have fun. Do you want to do the turnaround? Know that's the same because it's nothing new on that one. I mean, you have to see you. 32. Duet Twinkle Twinkle: How is your Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is going? Figured it out. I hope that it's going smoothly and now you're ready to try the duet. So let's try it together. We'll keep the same tempo. Nice and slow. Not very fast. Here we go to 30. How did that go? I hope that you're staying with me. If not, practice it a little bit more and then try it again. Let's do it again right now. If you remember. If you don't have it quite smoothly yet, we'll just keep practicing it. Keep cute. Make sure that the tempo is nice and steady. And then try it again. Enjoy. 33. A Tisket A Tasket: That song is, TIS, get a task. It, That's a nice, beautiful old folk melody. Let's try putting them together, but let's review some of the fingerings before we start. We're going to start on a, but we're gonna use a lot of our low fingers on this one. This one has the F sharp. This is F-sharp. You played this in Yankee Doodle. If you're going through the songs that we have, Yankee Doodle, use an F-sharp. Here's your F sharp, so it's just your E-flat pinky. And your, recall your D finger down here. That's a U, F sharp. You're going to need E. And you're going to need a low, deep, low D is this finger down and your pinky up. You can't leave your pinky down. It won't sound proper for the song. And you'll hear that if you know the melody. So you need an F-sharp, E, a, D, pinky up on that D. Let's finger through a task. At a task it remember to use your F-sharp and you're gonna use your low date with your pinky up. So here we go. F-sharp, G, a G, F sharp, G, F sharp, G, G, G, G, G, G, a G, F sharp, E, F-sharp, d. And then you do it again. F-sharp, G. After F sharp, G, G, G, G, G, G, G, a G, F sharp, E, F-sharp. That's the fingerings to practice that a couple of times. And then plate with me. Let's try that. Ready? All right. Try that a couple of times and then we will play it together again. Let's do it together right now. If you notice it does repeat the same line twice. So you play basically two times through. If you know, one time, you'll note the second time. Remember that if you feel like you're not starting with me, it's because you're not breathing with me. So make sure that when I take my breath to get started, you do that as well. And then we will start together. Will enjoy working on a task. At a task it 34. Duet A Tisket A Tasket: How could a task it going? Do you have it down? Let's try it as a duit. If you think you have to remember to breathe with me. 123. It. Did that go well, let's play through it one more time. Alright, play through that a couple of times until you have that down, and then move onto your next song. Enjoy. 35. Wake Up Shake Up: That's a cute little tune. We call it wakeup, shakeup. I'm sure there's some other titles to that, but it's a nice tune and it's easy to play. Let's try this one. Now. This one is using your low fingers again. You will go down to your load D right away. You're playing down there a lot. Let me just tell you a couple of things that you should know about playing in your low register. There's been a couple of songs that have that low deep. If you are finding that it's difficult to play down in that register, usually means you're blowing too hard. You're low register takes very little air. If you are born really hard, you're not gonna get it out, but you want to blow very little. That is really holding that area in and not letting it come out. So keep that in mind if you're low register notes are not coming out great. It's probably because you have too much air going through. Let's learn wake up, shakeup. You're going to start with your GI and go right to D. So it's G, G, D, D, E, F-sharp. So this has your F sharp in it as well. We didn't talk about that, but you've played it into other songs. So it's there. Let's try that again. Those turf and we're getting g, g, d, d, E, F-sharp, G, D, D. Now jump up to C, C. Remember no fingers, C, B, B, G, B, G. And then we repeat, and that's the whole song. G, G, D, D, E, F-sharp, G, D, D. Jump up to C, C, C, B, B, G, B, G. After you've done that a couple of times, Let's play it. Ready. All right. Let's try it one more time. Make sure you've got those fingers down. You're getting down to your F sharp, jumping up to your C. And let's try it again. Good. It's a simple song, but it's fun to play, enjoy. 36. Duet Wake Up Shake Up: All right. How's wakeup, shakeup going? You finding that you can play through it. It's a pretty easy song. It just goes a little faster than some of our other songs. You're ready for the duet. Here we go. Make sure you breathe with me. That's it. Did it go well for you? Let's do it one more time. All right. Keep trying that until you get it and then move on to our next one. 37. Lightly Row: That's Lightly Row another of our tunes that I'll have you play and that you'll learn using the same fingerings. Pretty much. I think it's all the same fingerings that you've used for your other pieces. But it's just another song to add to your repertoire as you're strengthening your lip and developing your tone and learning how to breathe and not use so much air all at one time. Lightly row is going to have the F sharp that you've played on some, a couple of other pieces. And you're gonna go down to a low D, which is going to bring all your fingers no pinky on a low date. Neither pinky is used for low do. It starts on a, we're going to start with your fingers here. A, F-sharp, f-sharp, G E, E, D E, F-sharp, G F sharp, F sharp, G E D F sharp, F sharp, F sharp, F sharp. Let me play that for you again. Starting with the a, breathe with me. How did you do on that one? Shall we try it again? Start with your a and we're going down. You go right to your F-sharp after that egg. So bright from a to F sharp. Don't forget to tongue your notes on each note. Here we go. Let's breathe together and try that a few times, and then you'll be ready for the duet. Enjoy. 38. Duet Lightly Row: How was slightly bro going for you? Are you able to play through the song without stopping? If he can, then we're ready for the duit. If you're ready, let's play it together. Ready, breathe with me. I hope that worked out for you. If not, learn the song just a little bit better so that you have no question as to what notes go next, what fingers to put down. But let's try it again right now. Ready? I hope you're getting it and getting all of these songs with the duet part because it makes it much more fun to play when you play two parts together. And it's very enjoyable to play duets with people. I enjoy playing duets with my fellow flutist. So enjoy playing that. And if you don't have it down, keep trying and then come back to the duet and do it again. Enjoy. 39. How to Practice: You've been playing flute for awhile now you've gone through the lectures. You've learned different songs. You've been able to play without feeling faint as you did maybe at the beginning, depending on your age and size. Now you want to know how should you practice on a daily basis? Well, that's going to depend on your desires and also your age. For my youngsters, all my little ones that start flute 15 minutes a day tops, at the very beginning. The reason for that is because if you recall right when you start pulling fluid, you can get dizzy playing it because you're breathing a lot of area and usually you use too much of the air at the very beginning and too much oxygen kids stayed, stays inside. And that gives you that hyperventilation feeling. So you will get a little bit dizzy 15 minutes or so. Now, even if you're older and wiser, of course, then you can try that 15 minutes and if you feel good, then keep going if you have that desire. But a good rule of thumb is at the beginning of your practicing thinking about a half an hour. As you get more developed, you can lengthen that time. And if you really are wanting to learn Flute and to develop your abilities will certainly you can practice as long as you want. But at the beginning, what you should just be doing is just go through the notes that you know, just playing long sound and try to hold your air as long as possible. So if I was teaching beginner students, I say, okay, let's just start with a B. And I want you to play the B as long as you can. So we're not counting necessarily beat. I'm just saying Hold your air, trying to learn how to make the air lasts longer. So it's not used up. It's not just but the longer you do it, the better you get at it. Holding it as long as you can. And then go down to the next node, to an a, to a G, to an F, to an a. That's how you should start. It's just a good way to get your air ready to play, to start learning how not to let all the air to come out at one time. After that, I would go into the tunes and just go through the tunes. I bet that if you went through all the tunes that we have recorded and the duets, you'd be playing for a half an hour or so. If you play them a couple of times through, that would be a really good practice session. So try that and see what happens. If you want to practice longer. That's certainly up to you. You can. But if you're the third, fourth, fifth grade, and you're just beginning fluid, a good 1520 minutes tops for them because there'll be a little bit too much with the amount of air they're blowing through this instrument to keep going for any longer. So try that but enjoy practicing. It's a lot of fun. 40. Beginner Books: As you have gone through this course and you're feeling pretty comfortable with the flute and playing your beginners songs, you might start thinking that, well, it'd be nice if I had a beginner book to look at. You can go down to your local music store and look through the various books that they have. If it's anything like my local music store, usually the beginner books are that they have in stock, are the ones that the local band directors in the community for the schools are using for their beginner students. You can choose from one of those. Or you could go online to any of the various websites and order of book, beginner book. They're all good. They're all going to be fine. You're going to learn the stuff that you need to learn. The countings and the rhythm, and what quarter notes are and whole notes are, and the things you need to learn to read music. You can pretty much go through that on your own since you've already know how to play. And when it says to play a B and hold it for four counts, you could probably do that on your own. But I can show you a couple of books that I really like. This is the breeze easy method. Book one. It has a book too as well, and this is my go-to book of choice for my beginner's. It is very succinct. It's not flowery. There aren't a lot of colored pages, it's white. And it has a box up at the top telling younger students. And that's what it's for younger students, what the new theory is for the page. But it's very clear. It, it goes through all the things that you need to know. You'll find some of the beginner songs that we've done are here. And you'll say, Well, I already know how to play that. If you're an adult, I like to start adults with this book. It is not meant for a real beginner. If you're in third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, it goes very fast and it's not all nicely spaced out. It gets dark and there's a lot of stuff going on. A lot of notes in this book. It goes, adds notes very fast. So this book is better for an adult who already has the concepts of music and reading. And I like to use this for my adult beginners. The breeze easy for my younger student beginners, both of them, the Rue bank method also has an intermediate book. It also has two advanced books. They are very difficult and you don't want to use them probably for awhile if you're just starting flute, even if you are an adult. But you can choose the book you want. Go to your local music store, ask them for a beginner flip book and they'll guide you. If you would like to order a bruise easy book, you can go to a website and find that pretty easily. Or riverbank if you're the adult and would like to use the Rubik elementary method, you'll find what you need in most beginner books. So just go and find one and start reading the notes and the rhythm on the page. And joy. 41. Private Lessons: You've taken this flute class and you've learned a lot about float. And now you're asking the question, what next? Well soon my next class will be coming out beyond the beginner fluid. And you can take that to learn what next. But in the meantime, if you're looking for a private teacher, you can find one in a couple of different ways. You can always go to your local music store and ask them for references. They always have a list of teachers in the area. Sometimes they even have them teaching out of the music store itself. Then you can find also a teacher via a search engine. Just go online and ask for a flute teacher in your state or in your community. I know Someone advertised on Craigslist as well. You can list that and check that out as well. If you're wanting to contact me, I'm available for lessons. You can contact me via the website. We can get in contact with each other and do a lesson via a web call or video call. Enjoy. 42. Class Conclusion - Beginner Flute Instruction: Congratulations, you've just taken this whole course. I hope that you've really learned a lot. I know you've learned 11 beginner songs by ear, and that is a really good start. Now I hope that you'll take some more classes for me. I have a lot more that I can teach you. Please sign up for my flute tips newsletter on my website, dr. Flute.com. I will send out regular tips on various aspects of flute playing. If you will also give me some feedback, I'd appreciate that. Let me know what else you might like to learn. Now, get ready to play a lot more flute. Enjoy playing the flute.