Hello fluters! Welcome back to another blog post. Today I’ll be going through some of my favourite flute music books that I like to use with my beginner students.
These flute books are just what I'm familiar with so they might not be perfectly suited for every beginner student. They are just some suggestions for you to consider in addition to your flute teacher's recommendations. For those of you who are wanting to learn flute through the Suzuki method, it is best for you to get some advice from a teacher who teaches Suzuki (as I do not).
Let's get started!
1. Complete beginners
My go-to music book for teaching complete beginners is the Australian band method book Standard of Excellence - Book 1. This book consists of 155 short tunes along with some technical exercises and scales. I personally think that this book paces the different aspects of flute playing very well, and avoids overwhelming the student with music that gets too challenging too quickly.
Each skill, such as new fingerings, rhythms and articulations, is introduced one a time and the student gets multiple opportunities to apply those skills via the short tunes in the book. The book also teaches the student some very basic theory to help them develop their music-reading skills.
🎼Standard of Excellence - Book 1 (Flute) - https://amzn.to/3sF4u6a
2. Beginner-Intermediate
The second book that I move my students onto once they've completed the first Standard of Excellence book is Amazing Little Solos for Flute and Keyboard by Howard Harrison.
🎼Amazing Little Solos by Howard Harrison - https://ebay.us/RXFbUz
I'm a big fan of this book because it is made of tunes that are slightly longer than those in Standard of Excellence . The tunes in this book increase in difficulty as you go, so it creates opportunities for the students to learn new skills and also start to increase their stamina.
Once my students complete this book and are feeling more confident in their abilities on flute, I move them onto this next book with tunes that are even longer and more challenging - 40 Little Pieces in Progressive Order for Beginner Flutists by Louis Moyse. Most of the tunes in this book are half a page long but as you go through the book you begin to play tunes that take up an entire page. The tunes in this book are also quite well-recognised so it can provide extra motivation for the students to play something that they've heard before.
🎼40 Little Pieces in Progressive Order by Louise Moyse- https://amzn.to/3L7BvhP
125 Easy Classical Studies for the Flute edited by Frans Vester is the next level up from 40 Little Pieces. This book begins with short studies that are about half a page long and heads into longer, more technical studies that are designed to push the student even further as you go through the book.
🎼125 Easy Classical Studies by Frans Vester- https://amzn.to/45YnyKS
If you are looking for some extra music, there is always a ton of free beginner to intermediate flute music available for you to download on IMSLP. However, IMSLP doesn't categorise their music into different difficulty levels so you may need to just look through each piece of music/study book to see if it's at the right level for you.
And there you have it! Those are the my personal music book recommendations that I use to work with my beginner flute students. If you'd like to know what other things beginner flute players might need, please check out my 5 Things Beginner Flute Players Need blog post.
For more flute-related resources please feel free to check out my other blog posts. Happy fluting and see you in the next article!