Wow, never has my blog felt so loved. Seriously, though. This is technically my third post of the day. This post has a specific reason, however. Because I’ve wanted to tackle a new skill of some sort for a while now, I finally decided today that I wanted to each myself another musical instrument, but one of which I have no previous knowledge.

Day one: 18 August 2008.

Teaching one’s self a new skill can prove to be quite the daunting task, especially if he/she knows nothing about the particular skill he/she wishes to learn.

Cut to personal story. Today, I have decided that I am going to teach myself to play the flute in an attempt to see what the internet has to offer. In this process, I will not buy a lesson/practice book, nor will I sign myself up for private lessons (whether or not they’re free). Do I know anything about wind instruments? Not a damn thing. But that’s not going to stop me, because I am determined. We’ll see how this works out. . .

First off: What does YouTube have to offer?
Why YouTube? Because whenever I want to learn how to do something, nine times out of ten, I can find it on YouTube. How did I teach myself how to play Rihanna’s Take a Bow on the piano? I found it on the Tubers. How did I learn how to tie a tie? Yep, you guessed it. Someone took the time to post a video, hoping to help out some desperate internet junkie, and then I came long. Nice.

First stop search “beginner flute lessons.”
It brings me to a place called “expertvillage” with quite a few videos posted by a girl named “Sara(h).” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RstkLDX1TgE.
It also links to their website http://www.expertvillage.com.
This seems to be promising, but there are numerous videos with only 3 or 4 star user ratings. Sometimes that means something, sometimes not. We’ll see.

Assessment:
Helpful in the fact that you can pause the video to place the fingers and then play. Not helpful the fact that I had no idea what in the hell she was talking about regarding finger placement.

After a bit of searching, though, there are related videos on what I was seeking, I realized that I was going to have to figure the basics out on my own. I moved my fingers around to see which little button things (yeah, my flute jargon needs a bit of work) closed when, and finally figured out which fingers are supposed to go where. Ten minutes later, I could blow out (ha) half of a reasonably sounding F Major scale. Feeling a bit faint, however. Need to work on breathing exercises or I’ll pass out after blowing five seconds.

Now I’m getting somewhere.

Practice for this week:
1. Breathing through that little hole to get constant sound. So far, this has been the biggest struggle.
2. Learning the fingerings to the scale enough so that I’m not pressing as hard as I can. My pinky went numb last time, and I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen.
3. Practice breathing exercises to build up stamina. It’s all about the diaphragm.

Day one of Week one = success!