Learning the flute and recorder. Any tips?
 

Heya guys :)

I play in a band with some of my friends and we've accumulated some instruments over time. We have several guitars, a violin, harmonicas, ukuleles, accordians, but I've been wanting to add some flute to our repertoire.

So I just bought myself a recorder and a flute. I haven't had time to play them much yet (although I have some recorder-xp from my primary school days, so I can already play "Mary had a little lamb"). What do you guys think? Is it possible to learn how to play these instruments on your own? How hard is it?

I'm not really worried about the recorder, but I figure the flute might be a little tricky. Any advice, hints, tips or tricks would be appreciated!

Add a whistler and I would love your band forever.

You need a Kazoo up in that bitch

Thanks for comments and suggestions. ;)

.. But really, are there noone on MB who plays these instruments?

The flute is about as hard as I thought it would be. That is, pretty tricky, but I can play a sort of slow B-flat scale so it's not incredibly difficult, but becoming confident with the instrument is gonna take a while.

The recorder is a little trickier than I thought, actually. On the flute, if you wanna play a note an octave higher, you change the octave by the way you blow into the instrument (I'm pretty sure). On the recorder, notes and halfnotes at different octaves have different fingerings .. so that means there's a different finger combination for every note/half-note on the recorder and that means there are 32 fingerings you should train yourself to do if you wanna know them all.

Not that it means it's a horribly difficult instrument, just a little trickier than I first thought.

Theres about 2-3 songs by the french band Air that the main riff/melody is just whistling. Its actually pretty ****ing cool.

I'm quite good at whistling actually. I've whistled on a couple of recordings. I thought maybe that would be helpful when learning the flute, at least the blowing technique .. and making a sound with it is not a problem. My girlfriend can't do it though.

Hahaha.

I just dont get whistling. I have no problem doing a tune "whistling" inward, but can make any noise on the way out :(

I'm bumping this suckah cause I'm gonna try again with the flute. Any helpful tips? Anything I should be aware of?

Noone here have any real experience with these fantastic instruments?

I'll post some reasons why to learn flute in the first place. Here's one!

^ Ah, I've always been a fan of Ian Anderson's talent on the flute.

Unfortunately I don't have much knowledge on playing/learning the flute. How have you been going with the recorder? I had to learn the recorder in primary school and have still used it occasionally in recent times for various things. It's a useful little instrument and really easy to learn! And I find many people say despite its limited range it's a good place to start if you want to get serious about flute?

Recorder isn't actually that hard until you start moving up from the base octave. Then it gets a bit tricky as you sometimes have to partially cover the hole at the back and so on. All in all, I guess it's not a very hard instrument - it's certainly easier than the flute.

I haven't been so good at practicing at any of these instruments, but I'm gonna try and make an effort again. I love flute in rock music and the recorder is obviously an underrated instrument, probably because it was forced on so many of us during our childhood. I remember the yellowed plastic one I had back then which smelled like rotten spit. However, the recorder can of course create some beautiful sounds.

Here's another good reason to learn flute!