Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

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Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by tstermitz »

I played whistle ages ago but never got very good. Then started it up again 8 years ago with more focus. Five years ago I started learning flute and have barely touched the whistle since. What a joyful journey.

I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere with the flute; obviously, it is a lot more complex than the whistle, which is a great challenge. In particular, it takes a darn long while to develop embouchure and articulation.

Challenges:
Tone quality
High notes; low notes.
Embouchure consistency
Articulation speed.

I feel like I am starting to meet these challenges, but still have a long way to go before I can be a "real" musician. So, I ask whether it is possible to for someone to get really good on flute in 5 years, or maybe the question is, "How can one get good in 5 years?"

I can think of two situations where I've seen people learn remarkably quickly:
(1) Younger kids with flexible brains.
(2) A master musician coming from a different instrument.
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by Loren »

Depends on what you consider really good, but the answer is yes: IME one can become good at nearly anything in 5 years if one devotes oneself to it with sufficient focus, vigor, and quality tutelage.
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by bigsciota »

Yes. It's not an amount of time from when you start, it's an amount of time you spend on it. A person who devotes 1 hour a day to practicing/playing will get farther quicker than someone who devotes 30 minutes to practicing/playing, but not as much as someone who devotes 2 hours a day, so on and so forth. That's a huge oversimplification, obviously; someone who practices the same bad habits over and over, for example, won't really do well. But broadly speaking, the more focused, productive time you put into the better you will become. Instruction will help, as will listening, watching, reading, and general absorption of knowledge about the music and technique.

To take an extreme, someone who moves to a trad-rich area with a flute, gets a great teacher, and spends their time outside lessons doing nothing but practicing and going to sessions and performances would get up to speed rather quickly. They might also burn out fairly quickly, but I know a good few people for whom trad is a "way of life" like that; they can never get enough, never mind too much! Taking a more reasonable/relatable approach of an hour or so a day, a lesson once a month, and plenty of listening, I'd say in a few years you can get to be quite decent.

You'll also generally have a head start if you've played another instrument, especially a wind instrument, before. After an abortive attempt at accordion with a fantastic teacher (I just couldn't wrap my head around it), I settled into whistle and then flute simply because they felt quite intuitive to my fingers, which spent their high school years working a clarinet. I'm not Matt Molloy, but I do just fine at just about any session I walk into at this point, 7 years after picking up the flute for the first time.
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by Nanohedron »

It may not be true of everyone; aptitude comes into it, too. I do believe there's great advantage in having a good teacher - to emphasize, somebody not merely having top-shelf chops (ideally a given), but who is good at teaching, which is another matter altogether.

How do you know if you have a good teacher? Sometimes it's just the fit. But it's worth weighing how much a teacher inspires or confounds you. I'd go with the former.
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by Conical bore »

bigsciota wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 9:38 pm You'll also generally have a head start if you've played another instrument, especially a wind instrument, before. After an abortive attempt at accordion with a fantastic teacher (I just couldn't wrap my head around it), I settled into whistle and then flute simply because they felt quite intuitive to my fingers, which spent their high school years working a clarinet. I'm not Matt Molloy, but I do just fine at just about any session I walk into at this point, 7 years after picking up the flute for the first time.
Agreed that playing another instrument before taking up flute is helpful. Even if it's not another woodwind, there are other things like developing a good sense of rhythm that may help with the transition to flute.

Also, if you've been playing Irish trad on another instrument, then you already have some memorized repertoire. You can focus more on the mechanics of embouchure development and fingering, without the need to refer to sheet music or audio recordings. The tunes are already in your head.

I had played Irish/Scottish trad on mandolin for something like 8 years before learning flute, with 30+ years on guitar before that. It took a few years to develop a reasonable embouchure and get the mechanics of ornamentation down, but after the initial steep part of the learning curve, I'm gradually moving more of my mandolin repertoire onto the flute. I'm no Matt Molloy either, but as a "later in life adult learner" and not a kid spending all day practicing, I don't think I would be where I am right now without experience on another instrument, and experience with this genre of music before I first picked up the flute
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by gbyrne »

Depends on what 'learn' means. Play 50/100/>250 various Jigs/Reels/Hornpipes/Polkas at full, normal or slow session speed? With 'proper' ornaments? In sets? Should you have mastered a half dozen slow-airs? Able to pick up tunes by ear?

I'm approaching Year 5 anniversary (ITM/started whistle) and 4 for flute. Lots of classes, workshops, sessions, practice. Still feel like I have a plenty to learn.

Definitely tone/embouchure takes 3-4 years to get solid and stable.

There is no 'end' - it's a journey. But fun
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by highland-piper »

It seems like it takes about 1000 hours of practice to gain competency* in a musical instrument. So at an hour a day, six days a week (fingers need rest) it takes maybe four years (it takes time to work up to being able to practice an hour a day).

That's assuming you have good instruction. Most people aren't good self-teachers. It's hard to know what you need to work on the most, especially when you're just starting out. When i was taking lessons on bagpipes I had a great teacher. At each lesson she would tell me what I needed to work on and provide me with goals for the next lesson. The assignments were always challenging, but also always attainable. They were just hard enough that I could get them done if I practiced about an hour a day.

Without good instruction you can waste a lot of time working on the wrong things. That's true 10x over if no one has taught you how to practice efficiently. Without good instruction you can spend a lot of time baking in poor technique or poor phrasing.

* No, I'm not going to have a specific definition for competency. Maybe something like you could give a recital and people who heard you would enjoy it.
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by Sedi »

Learning the guitar definitely felt easier :D . But back in the day I was still in school, didn't much care about my grades and played 3-4 hrs a day. Managed to play in a band after a half year and did that for the next few years till I more or less stopped when going to university -- band split up and I never really found anyone, I wanted to play with after that or form a new band. But I did in fact have a teacher back then when I started.
Nowadays I am lucky when I can get a half hour to an hour practice time in. Life just gets in the way. And I'm getting older -- so the neck hurts faster, the fingers, too. I don't think I'd be even physically able to practice the flute for 3 hrs a day like I did with guitar.
But apart from that, I guess some competency can be achieved in 5 yrs when putting the hours in, and, yes, maybe getting a teacher, even though I am mostly self-taught on the flute. Might explain, why I do have a hard time. Especially with rhythm and phrasing. Consistency could be better. Sometimes I think, "now that was nice", next moment, "will I ever get this right?" :D .
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by jim stone »

Being hard to satisfy is part of the price of excellence, IMO. And the better and deeper one gets, the more one realizes one doesn't know. It's been nineteen years of two hours a day and I feel like I'm at the beginning.
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by Katharine »

That's something I keep wondering about... mostly because kids start playing flute in school all the time. And they don't wait years before they're playing in the band, and I doubt 10-year-olds are practicing 1-3 hours every day. (I mean, I don't know. I wasn't in band; I played violin. So I didn't pay that much attention; maybe school bands all essentially have a nearly-nonexistent flute section in terms of sound/good sound for the first few years while the flute kids work out their chops on the instrument? And I suppose it's a matter of selecting for those who have some aptitude-- I remember when we were choosing instruments, they'd have you try the wind instruments. I couldn't get a sound out of the flute, so it was assumed that was right out, so maybe the learning curve is also longer for those learning on their own because unlike in school, some do start from not being able to make a sound at all?)
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by ChrisLaughlin »

For sure. You can become a pretty decent player in 5 years if you focus and learn the right way. In my opinion, the best option for most people is The Online Academy of Irish Music - https://www.oaim.ie/. If you follow their progression, and you're disciplined about actually doing it, you'll be flying before you know it.
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by RudallCarte6950 »

Yes
But it would need 2 hours a day of focused practice, not noodling.
Recording oneself, listening critically , refining
Listening a LOT ( all the time to other good players )
Start with Tone/Embouchure/Embouchure/Embouchure/ Rhythm/Feel/Finger-work/Ornaments/Breathing/Supported breathing/Tune learning ( the latter the least important IMO )

As Bigscotia said, you might burn out.
You would need to manage the physio side ( cramp/RSI/OOS muscle distortions from long periods playing )
I'd say 2 hours minimum a day ( 7 days a week ) would do it.

The challenge is that's quite hard to maintain. ( I can do 2 hours a day solid practicing, for a few days max )
One hour a day is sustainable, and once the topics I mentioned above are mastered, an hour is good ( and necessary to maintain playing "fitness")
Good luck and do some exercises to counter any posture mal-results.
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by BKWeid »

Is an improver apt to make more progress in these 5 years with one main or singular flute? Is it setting me back to be bouncing around between several flutes?
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by jim stone »

Controversial. There are flute monogamists, who advocate playing just one good flute. They maintain you will get a better sound and understanding of the flute by steadily playing a single flute. There are flute polygamists (I plead guilty) who say that there's nothing wrong with monogamy and playing different flutes is no worse and may even help, because allegedly the different challenges of different flutes improve one's embouchure. Also polygamy is a way of getting acquainted with different flutes, different voices, different makers and acoustic strategies and, like real polygamy, is fun.
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Re: Provocation: Can you learn Flute in less than 5 years?

Post by oleorezinator »

Learning to play an instrument is easy.
The real challenge is playing music.
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