Any good flute playing advice?

Question:Ive been playing the flute for about 3 years now and i just want to know what i can do to sound the best of my ability!!!!!!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Ive been playing the flute for about 3 years now and i just want to know what i can do to sound the best of my ability!!!!!!

Interesting advice so far.

I'd avoid intermediate flutes and instead save up my money for a full-fledged Powell or Pearl or Haynes. You can often find good ones, used, on ebay for less than you'd pay for a middling instrument.

As for how to practice:

1) Tone studies. Start on high B, hold it a long time and try to make the sound as intense and beautiful as you may, then slur down a half-step to Bb and hold it until you're out of breath. Inhale, and then hold the Bb a long time and then go down a half-step to A. Keep up that pattern until you're all the way down to low C (or B if that's your foot). You can also start on high B and go up by half steps. To vary the exercise, try going down a whole-step and then up a half-step on every breath, or up a half-step and then down a whole-step on every breath.

2) Get lots of books on technique and play through all of them, mastering every exercise in turn. Books on technique for the third octave (upper register studies) are especially useful.

3) Work a little on your dynamics--most players' greatest shortcoming is that there's little difference between their fortissimo and their pianissimo.

4) Read up on books that discuss how to teach/learn to play the flute. You should be able to find some at any larger library. Even the old Baroque-era treatise on flute-playing by Quantz is instructive.

5) When preparing a piece for performance, occasionally play around with the rhythms. Play it very, very slowly. Then as fast as you can. Play every note staccato. Play the whole thing in dotted-quarter/eighth rhythms--and then in eighth/dotted-quarter rhythms. Play the whole thing in triplets. Figure out how to make duple time into triple, or triple into duple. Etc. This helps with fingering technique and it also keeps your mind alert :-)

location location location oh wait
practice practice practice

Breathe from your diaphram and not from your lungs. Get a private instructor to help you, I asked the band teacher for a recommendation. He gave me the principal flutists instructors name, so I had the best. It helped me a whole lot. She taught me vibrato as I got older and better and helped me improve my breathing techniques before that which helped immensely. I started playing in 6th grade and still play 15 years later. Oh yeah...practice.

Wow - your question covers a lot. Go to Yahoo Groups and join FLUTENET - there are over 3,000 of us there to talk to, all about flutes and flute playing.

Lots of things can help you play better...but basically:
1) Play from your diapragm, not your lungs.
2) Step-up flutes...they are closer to what professionals use, and believe me, they sound a lot better!
3) Just keep practicing and ask about private tutors....they help a lot too!