Hi, and welcome to Week One of flute lessons in the music coach program. We're gonna get started on a great journey today, learning to play the flute. Now the flute is a descendant of one of the oldest instruments that humans have made. flutes began as simple woodcarvings with holes in them that people played. And you may have seen in Celtic music or Irish music or indigenous music. flutes that are played that are made of bamboo or made of wood.

The modern flute that we play in orchestras and in other kinds of music is a directly connected to that lineage of instrument. So we're going to get started today by learning how to put the flute together and make your first sounds and learn your first three notes. They're going to be part of the scale for this program. Now when you're opening the case, it's really important to make sure that the latch are opening up. This way you can be sure that the instrument is on the bottom of the case. The flute is made up of three main sections, the head joint, the body and the foot joint.

Now when you're putting it together, you're going to take the body and attach it to the head joint. The way you know which way the head joint goes into the body, is it's the longer piece of tube is the top and you're just going to gently Twisted into place. And now put the foot joint into the body. The foot joint is going to connect to the body where the keys are. Now to line up your flute to make it playable, you want to line up the rod on the foot joint with the center of the key that it's closest to and the head joint is going to be lined up with the first key, the opening will be lined up with the first key here. So now we're going to work on getting your very first sound.

In order to practice this, you don't even need to have the whole flute put together. So we're going to take the head joint back out and rest the flute in your lap. Now making a sound on a flute is a lot like blowing air over the top of a pop bottle which you may have done before to make make a sound What you're trying to do is with your arm musher which are all the muscles in your face right here, you're trying to make a very small opening and push the air across the opening in the mouthpiece and split it so that some of the air goes into the tube and spins and some of the air goes right over top. So when I'm making the sound, a lot of the air is going right off the top and over to my hand. It's very similar to whistling in that way.

This is the trickiest part about playing the flute. Once you master this, the rest of it is actually quite a bit simpler. So make sure to take lots of time to practice it. It's easier to practice it with just the mouthpiece than it is the whole body because you're not holding up the whole thing the whole time. So try rolling the mouthpiece forward and back to find the sweet spot where the sound happens. And remember to think about Blowing some of the air down into the mouthpiece.

Another good way to think of how big the opening should be in your mouth is it's a little bit like trying to hold something the size of a pen or a pencil and making the air go through like that. Now we're getting ready to learn your first three notes. The flute works like every other wind instrument where the more of the tube we have closed, the lower the sound is going. keys that we're going to hold down to make our first note are the thumb key on the back, it's important to play the one closer to the bottom and not this one. later on. I'll explain why.

But for now, hold that one. On, you're going to play the first key with your pointer finger which is the B key then you're going to skip over one and play the A key and then you're going to play the G key with your ring finger. And this note is G and it sounds like this. How to Play your second note which is a lift up your ring finger and keep the other fingers down. For your third note, lift up your middle finger and play those notes one more time our G is all the fingers in the top and lift up your ring finger and you have a lift up your middle finger and you have be your bottom hand or your right hand is giving you the balance to hold up the instrument. So you want your thumb to be resting on the body.

Now there's no specific folder or clip or anything for your thumb but you want to have it down Close enough so that your bottom hand can touch all the keys. And for now, you're going to want to just let your other fingers rest on the keys, you don't want to be pushing them down but just resting them there and balancing the flute. And one of the thing to keep in mind when you're playing the flute is your left shoulder can get sore or get tired very easily. Even though the flute is not heavy. Holding your arms just in this position for a long time can be tiring. So whenever you need to take a break, make sure to drop your arms, especially your left arm.

Even on the practice video, when I'm talking between things that you're going to be playing, you'll see me sometimes drop my arms even just this far, because this gives your shoulder a bit of a break. And you want to avoid doing this you'll see flute players sometimes start to tilt their bodies to rest their shoulders, and it's better to keep your the flute level all the time and then rest when you need to and then come back All right, excellent work, and I'll see you in the practice video.