A flute is a woodwind instrument, meaning its sound is produced by blowing air into it (brass instruments and woodwinds are both wind instruments but they produce sound differently. How so? Idk I don't really get it I just pretend to understand). Unlike other woodwinds such as clarinets and saxophones, flutes thankfully do not need a reed to produce sound.
There are many different kinds of flutes that originate from a variety of different cultures and eras, but since I play the Transverse flute (il flauto traverso, if you may), that's what I'll focus on.
I first got my grubby little hands on a flute as a young 9 year old primary schooler. Originally, I had wanted to play the trombone, but alas, beggars can't be choosers.
At first, I was terrible at it! I was the last person in my cohort to actually figure out how to blow into the damn thing, and before then I was entirely ready to give up. It's actually pretty hard to blow into a flute at first since the mouthpiece is below your lips; like all wind instruments you have to manipulate your air flow to get it to sound good.
Despite this rocky start, I actually started to get pretty good at it. With the help of a new friend called practice, I managed to sound good enough to go for my very first flute exam a year later! From then I would come to learn that music theory is the grossest, most scariest thing to have ever been created, and would later try to avoid it at all costs.
After that, I kept at it all throughout secondary school. I involved myself in every ensemble that would accept a flute, exposing myself to everything from repetitive pop music to the scarily technical world of jazz solos.
I somehow scraped my way up to Grade 8 in the flute, switching to repertoire exams, where you play more pieces but don't have to answer theory questions, along the way (I had stopped practicing after year 8 so to this day I have no clue how I managed it).
Nowadays, I've been slacking from my instrument but I figure I should pick it back up. It'd be a shame to lose my skill, especially when I still need to fix my posture! I truly love playing the flute, particularly now that there's no stress for me to learn so much music in such little time for an exam.
Do you play the flute? Are you broke and struggle with finding accessible sheet music?
If so, then you're not alone! Thankfully, my amazing teacher from when I was in high school showed me a website that rocked my world.
IMSLP is a website full of great repertoire for free, since the pieces are in the public domain. It's perfect for finding classical music especially. In fact, IMSLP is where I got this page's background (specifically, it's Flute Sonata in C Major, BWV 1033, attributed to the goat JS Bach)!
If you're looking for more varied genres of music, MuseScore's pretty good. I'm not sure if you have to pay to download the music, but it's very accessible to read on your browser and stuff like that.