Flute Advice please!

[titchy]

dd wants to learn flute, she's just 9, around 135cm in height. Unfortunately there is only 1 teacher that goes to her school so she will have wait to start proper lessons until next year when she will be almost 10.

she plays recorder and is being entered for grade 1 soon, so the music reading and fingering should be easy once she's got the embouchure sorted out. So I'd like to get her a flute for Christmas. But having never been a wind player myself I don't know what to get. Will she need a curved mouthpiece or will she be tall enough for a straight one? What's a split E? Anything else I need to know? If she pursues it we'd be quite happy to get her a better one so don't really want to spend more than £100 for a starter one.

I only play the clarinet, so don't feel qualified to help you myself, but how about phoning up a good music shop such as John Myatts (wind and brass specialists). They may well have someone who would be able to advise you.

Phone number for John Myatts is 01462 420057

Check that they start them on a flute in the beginning. A friend's DD started on something similar but not a flute. Damned if I can remember the name though! She gave it up though.

Dd1 plays the flute, and started when she was 7.

9 should be old enough for a straight mouthpiece -- I've only ever seen really tiny dinky little girls with curved ones. Not sure about split E, though.

£100 is quite optimistic for a beginner flute IME -- we paid £300 for a nearly new Yamaha one, which is considered a good entry-level instrument. They do keep their value if looked after, so you'd be able to sell it on if she didn't take to it.

Would it not make sense to hire one first, rather than buy a really cheap one?

Or try All Flutes Plus in Marylebone. I started at 11 but I'm tall, and it can get heavy especially if you're standing to play. Maybe a piccolo? a bit harder to learn but more likely to get a place in an orchestra with a more obscure instrument. I always regretted choosing the flute when my siblings played the double bass and got into all the big orchestras no problem.

Ooh a piccolo's a good idea.... Is the fingering the same as the flute? Is £100 realy too little, even for 2nd hand? I wanted it to be a christmas present hence buying rather than hiring, which seems to be around £15 per month so in a year we'd have been better off buying.

I bought my flute on ebay so if you find out what is a good make and see what is available.

My DS has signed up for flute lessons but isn't allowed to at the moment as he has no front teeth (he's 7). However, the teacher is teaching 4 of them the fife until they have their teeth. It is like a sideways recorder but you do need to blow it in the same way I think.

The great thing about it is that it was very cheap - £6.99 for a Yahama one (recommended). There is a book that goes with it too which has pictures showing how to blow it properly.

It is quite easy to pick up on there but is also a good grounding for a real flute.

I've just spent ages googling to discover it was a Fife they used

I would steer clear of the piccolo for now - they are smaller but more difficult to play as you need more breath to force the air through the smaller space. You also probably don't want to be sharing a house with a beginner piccolo player!!

At 9 I would have thought she'd be fine with a straight head-joint. Yahama is quite a good beginner make. Can't remember what a split E is though but this seems to cover it - www.shwoodwind.co.uk/Glossary/Split_E.htm

If you are interested in knowing the name of a decent make, my son has an Armstrong. I know when I bought it, the music shop explained it was not a top of the range make, but not a bottom of the range either. Good for the first few grades. It was the instrument we had been hiring from the shop for the past year though (so second hand) and would have definitely cost a lot more than £100 to buy (though I got it for less as the rental was offset against the cost.)

Speak to the school or the flute teacher or music co-ordinator they is a scheme available whereby if your child is having lessons you can by it without paying the VAT. It does have some conditions (like the instrument goes to the school and has to be handed over on school grounds!) but worth looking into. Sorry cant remember the name of the scheme

Just wanted to say, DS's fife book is actually called 'The Fife Book - An Introductory Course to Playing the Flute' by Liz Goodwin. I have picked up how to play from it with no lessons although I have only got as far as DS and the first 3 notes so far.

It says, in the foreword, that the fife is an excellent starting point to learn the beginnings of really good flute technique.

Getting a fife certainly saves money until you know that your daughter will actually enjoy playing and then you can get the flute when lessons start properly.

I would also advise you just to wait until she is tall enough not to need the curved head. Also, like someone else said, once you are officially about to start lessons you should be able to use the government's VAT-free scheme (assisted purchase scheme) to make it a bit cheaper. This is dead easy, I have ordered several instruments this way - I simply researched on the internet to find the best price for what I wanted (www.netmusicalinstruments.co.uk came up trumps every time!), printed off the relevant bit from their website and gave it to the school office. At secondary school they always ask for a cheque (minus the VAT bit) upfront, but at primary school they are more trusting (they know me well), and they put the order in at 3 p.m. the day I gave them the info and the flute arrived at 10 a.m. the following day! They currently have the Yamaha 211 at £254.47 excluding VAT.

We went for the Yamaha student model, a really good flute that holds its value well so even if it wasn't a long-lived interest you should get most of your money back. Most student models in this country come with split E mechanism and offset G.

My daughter stuck with the recorder until she took up the flute weeks before her 12th birthday. The recorder helped her loads in terms of musicality and sight-reading, and 2 1/2 years later she is working towards Grade 8 flute. So it doesn't necessarily do any harm to wait a bit!

Just to add, I really think it is a false economy to get a cheap flute, you really can tell the difference. For £100 you're only going to be getting the sort of cheap flute you see loads on Ebay, and some of them sound really awful.

Like I said, if you get a good student model, you should be able to recoup most of your money should your daughter not stick with it. I've seen second-hand flutes the same as we've got go on Ebay for the same as I paid for it new!

Or look into rental schemes, most music shops offer these. They do of course work out dearer in the long-term, but some parents prefer a short-term commitment if they're not sure how long their child will stick with it. Generally, you hire the instrument for 3 months or so, then at the end you can keep on renting, give it back, or buy the instrument and have the rental you've paid deducted from their (usually higher!) selling price.

we bought a Jupiter curved head flute for DD2 who started playing when she was seven (but she'd had a couple of years of recorder playing, AND had her front teeth). She switched to the straight head when she was 8 and a half.
We went to Jonathon Myall Music in Croydon where they spent a good three quarters of an hour trying out instruments with her to get the best one (ended up spending £250 though).

hmmm I am grade 8 flute and I have no idea what a split E is?

I started with a fife when I was 5 and then had a proper flute when I was just 7.

Yamaha flutes are good.

I have an Armstrong flute that I am about to sell if you are interested. Dd2 did grade 4 with it then we bought a Yamaha so this is just gathering dust.
I bought it secondhand myself and had it overhauled about 2 years ago. Tomorrow I am going to ask the flute teacher to check it over to see if it needs any attention and how much to sell it for. Definitely not more than £100 anyway.

My son is tiny (2nd centile on "the chart") and yet he didn't need a curved mouth piece when he started flute at Year 4. Try yours out on a friend's. If can stretch his arms far enough, you're OK.

Oops, sorry! Her arms!

you can rent the flute. I am sure the lea music department will have a stock. Why not get her private lessons? outside school? Are you sure that the lessons when will eventually get in school will be single lessons? i don't rate group ones.

flutes are expensive

DD started flute last year, aged 7 when she was only about 120 cm tall. They did tryouts at school of flute and clarinet, not everyone could get any sound out of flute at all. She was just big enough for straight flute then and the teacher said it was best to go straight to that. It was heavy, to begin with I had to support the end when she practiced. The teacher said that it was definitely worth getting a Yamaha as they are
easier to play than a cheaper flute and more reliable. Luckily generous granny wanted to buy it for her!

If you look on the net you'll see that good second hands are a bit cheaper but not that much so seems they hold their value.

I started learning flute when I was 9 and started with a straight mouthpiece.

I was advised to get a Yamaha flute by my teacher.