Hi I currently play piano G7 and violin G6. I'd like to know if it would be possible to learn flute independantly with a few books. I also have lots of friends that play flute so i could ask them for a few pointers. But is this enough or do i need a teacher? I'm not planning to take grades but play as a hobby ( but i still want to be able to play properly and well!!).

If you want to play "properly and well" then I would recommend having at least a few lessons and if possible the occasional lesson after that with the best teacher you can find. Flute isn't hard to play, and not even too hard to play reasonably, but to really play it well with a beautiful tone and no bad habits, you need a teacher... it's just one of those instruments where it is so very easy to pick up bad habits, and to develop habits earlier on that seems to help (ie with tone) only to find later on that you have to unlearn them in order to develop further. Much much easier to find a very good teacher and start on the right foot, even if once you have the basics you are mostly self-taught.

I speak as someone who has taught myself the flute for most of my fluting life (now about 14 years) and I can testify that the times I have had a really excellent teacher I have 1) found out that I had some truly horrendous habits which were holding me back a LOT and 2) improved enormously in a short space of time just from having a teacher.

You could teach your self but as Sarah said I think it would be wise to have a few lessons with a teacher.

I agree with what's been said above. You will almost certainly fall into some bad habits without guidance from a good teacher at the start.

Good luck!

Barry (clari)

Not that any of my teachers bothered to tell me this (ever) but flute is actually the woodwind instrument with the highest risk of the player developing Repetitive Strain Injury.

After three years at a music college (I won't say which) studying jazz flute with a sax teacher who happened to play flute I developed RSI. Looking back on videos of gigs from up to two years earlier, I noticed that my hand position had degraded to such an extent that my right hand position was totally screwed. When I started getting warning signs in my hands (which no one told me were warning signs of RSI) I asked my teacher if my hand position was ok. He said it was fine.

Moral of the story - get a real flute teacher, even if it only to get you started. Once you have the basics sorted you could try and find a teacher offering flexible tuition where you could just book a lesson as and when you felt you needed it, whilst being very meticulous about your technique.

That is a moral everyone ought to take heed of. I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to get the basics right (on ANY instrument, not just the flute). You need a musician who knows what to look for as far as faults are concerned, because, as I've said lots of times before- its a LOT easier getting it right in the first place than correcting any errors you may have picked up/taught yourself. I have seen, and have inherited many pupils with basic playing errors, errors which SHOULD have been pounced on earlier, and it saddens me . I should be spending time building on the sound technique musicians have already acquired, not correcting long term errors.........

Barry (clari)