Search - Ultimate Beginner Series, Flute on DVD

Reasonably good (at least for music instruction).

12/02/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The actual instruction portion of this DVD is acceptable, the best I've found for flute (out of the three videos I've seen). The instructor, Elizabeth Rowe, does a good job and I'd almost give that part 4 stars The overall DVD is a bit disappointing however. It seems a little cheap to put out a DVD with a total running time of only 60 minutes considering all the information a new flute player needs to learn and that could be presented well in this format. I realize sales are low on this type of thing but how much can they actually cost to produce? Also, the DVD is different from the two-tape VHS version. The instruction portion is the same but the music theory (music reading) sections have been replaced with a cheesy DVD 'interactive function' -- what this effectively means is you can read the equivalent of about two written pages of information while having the fun of continuously pushing the select buttons on your remote. There's also an added 'special feature' about which instruments belong to what musical family which is even cheesier.Overall, I'd still recommend this DVD for a beginning flutist but it sure would be nice if someone could do a better job with musical instruction in general. If other skills such as baseball or math were taught as poorly as music, vast numbers of baseball bats would sit dry-rotting in the closets of 12-years olds and most of us would only be able to count using the numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, & 9. I'd also recommend getting at least one good book on flute playing to go along with this DVD (the Amazon reviews are helpful), and maybe one on reading music if you're new to it."