Hi everyone! I recently bought myself a flute (6 days ago to be precise) and have been practicing rigorously. I quickly finished the Standard of Excellence Book 1 (Due to me having a LOT of time on my hands) and now am on book two. The problem is that today, my tone was rather awful and airy. Could this be because of my chapped lips? Or is my embouchure worn out from past practice? I find the latter to be unlikely, due to the fact that I didn't actually practice yesterday. *blush* Anyways, can any of you guys help me?

You have played 6 days, and you think there is something wrong, when the sound doesn't sound perfect? I have played for a year now, and still sometimes my flute sounds awful. Awful sound can be because of your blowing or if the flute is uncleaned. I put my flute down for a moment, maybe I clean it, and then after a while I try again. If your lips are really chapped, it can make playing flute harder, because you can't use your lips same way if your lips weren't chapped. Use lip balm, but wipe it off, when you start to play, you don't want lip balm to your flute But it takes a lot of time, before your lips began to work smoothly, and you flute sounds beautiful every time. This is what I think.

Now I nearly always have a good tone when I play. I always starts with the same exercises, but it took my teacher nearly two years to find out which exercises worked best for me.

"I recently bought myself a flute (6 days ago to be precise) and have been practicing rigorously. I quickly finished the Standard of Excellence Book 1 (Due to me having a LOT of time on my hands) and now am on book two."

Just because you played through all of book one (in 6 days) doesn't mean you have skillfully mastered all the techniques presented in the book. Producing a clear, solid, consistent tone on the flute takes time and practice (more than over the course of 6 days or even 6 weeks or 6 months!) Its great that you are so excited and committed to learning the flute but understand that Rome wasn't built in a day ....

Get lessons with a teacher. It avoids you acquiring bad habits that will influence your flute playing for life!