does anybody here play or is learning to play flute?

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I was digging through my collection of stuff [i'm an incurable stuff accumulator] when I dug up a bass flute [actually called a tenor nowadays] i'd long ago gotten at auction] and had forgotten I had, and i'm determined to learn how to play it. I found the toughest thing was just to get the embouchure correct, it took me all day of blowing until I was black in the face, until I could get a somewhat reliable full tone out of just the head joint, and maddeningly when I put the rest of it together, that tone would disappear. finally, as I write this, I can get a halfway reliable and mostly full tone on most of the keys that I play it in.
what I wanna know, is if there are any other WPers here who play flute and who could exchange tips with me.

I play flute. I've actually been paid good money to play on the flute, but that's because I'm a sax player and doubled on the flute. So I played the flute like a sax player for years, then about three years ago I decided to learn to play it properly (like a flute player).
The embouchure is the hardest thing, it took me two years before I got anything approaching a beauteous tone.
The first consideration, you'll save lots of time if you have some lessons. Personally, I would find lessons too stressful. The next thing, find Jen Cluff's website... there's loads of info on there. I also found Trevor Wye's beginners' books to be excellent.
Finally, practice two hours a day for two years before you decide you're no good at it (by then you will be quite good at it).
Best of luck.

PS... if something's not right you may be think "is it me or is it the flute?". It's probably you... but make sure your flute is checked over anyway.

^^^thank you Trueno and you are a very patient as well as talented musician!

No problem.
I wonder if that's just two of us playing flute on the whole of wrong planet....

or at least the only two willing to talk about it in public!

Trueno, can you please fill out the poll? thanx

Done. Couldn't ignore the ice cream either.

thank you
I don't feel quite so bad now that it took me all day just to get a sound outta the thing.

No problem if you just play into the headjoint first. You can hold it with both hands and really get the hang of blowing into it. If you put the whole flute together try playing the note of b natural. It's one of the easiest notes to play as the tube is shortest and you can still get a good grip on the instrument.

i took me several hours in front of a mirror before I could even get the headjoint to make a solid tone. then I found I could at first only get one note [of the whole instrument] to play, the one where all the left hand fingers were down. then just the index finger which was even louder. now I can sorta play, waveringly, up and down the first octave. I wonder if there is something about the bass flute that makes the 2nd and higher octaves "leak" more easily into the first octave? it must be noted that i't not really a musician in terms of any natural talent, i'm just a music lover who is trying to be more musical, is all.

I've never played a bass flute. I can imagine it would be more difficult to learn on... but no reason to let that put you off. The thought I always keep in mind is... don't compare what you are playing today with what you were playing yesterday, compare it with how you were playing a month ago. If you keep going a while and think your tone has suddenly gotten worse, it's actually because your ear has gotten better.

Octaves "leaking" into each other is called cracking the note. The cure is more practice. Best to get a solid low octave before moving into the middle octave.

^^^thank you Trueno for that flute playing musician wisdom my goal is to be able to play along with some flute jazz records in my collection, by moe koffman and paul horn. might be a ways down the road. do you have fave flutists?

a long time ago, when I was a young guy, I tried to learn how to play a concert flute and found that my lips are just too big, as well as my hands. i'm a big guy. I couldn't get more than a "FFFFFphtt" out of it no matter what I did. the bass [called "tenor" nowadays in modern flute taxonomy] was much easier to get a foothold on, even though I struggled with it also.

I can play this one lol