[Bette in CA]

Hello again,

Well, yesterday was our son's birthday and the flute was his gift. He loved it! No one here is experienced in any way with the flute, so we fumbled (carefully) with it. I had printed out some good clear instructions with photos from the Internet as to how to assemble the parts, so we succeeded with that. It's a bit stiff to put together - the parts don't slide together or apart easily, but I suppose that's good or parts would be falling off! I have yet to take it to the technician for a checkup, but I will do that next week.

Our son was able to create a beautiful sound immediately, including what sounds to be a natural vibrato, which was pleasant. But of course the fingering is a mystery! He's used to 5 or 6 holes in a Native American flute, or to a pan flute, or a recorder, all of which he taught himself to play -- so this is a challenge for him. It's obvious that to start with we need a good book on fingering, but also he needs lessons. I'll attempt to find a good teacher right away.

The flute appears to be in excellent condition. I think I made a successful purchase - thank heavens!

Thanks for all the advice and suggestions. You really helped with my search!

Bette in CA

 

[MRC01]

Check out Trevor Wye's books. They are the best I've found for beginning and intermediate players. I recommend the omnibus edition which includes the first 5 books. You can get just the first book "Tone", but the Omnibus set is only a few bucks more.
http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Book...6878445?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183652778&sr=8-1

Also, so Gordon doesn't have to toot his own horn, his flute lessons here on this site are well thought out and useful.

You can get fingering charts anywhere, for example here:
http://www.wfg.woodwind.org/flute/

 

[rs1sensen]

I'm a fan of the "Standard of Excellence" book series. They're used by a lot of school band programs, and I've always found them easy to learn instruments out of. If your son knows how to read sheetmusic, parts of it he'll just skip over, but it offers a good starting point. I see they've updated it to include some sort of play along CD. My books never had that, might be useful.