Teaching myself to play the Chinese traverse flute (dizi 笛子)

I am not a musically-inclined person, but I have always wanted to learn to play an instrument. One of them is the Chinese traverse flute, the dizi (笛子). Unfortunately, my "formal" music education ended with whatever music was taught in grade school, which is very very little. And there were other things that kept me occupied, like computer games, books, programming, taiji, and work.

So it took me a while to eventually get down to learning to play the dizi. And like many other skills, I am trying to pick it up on my own. Thanks to Amazon, it is easy to get a simple and cheap flute for initial practice. But I should have done a bit more reading before that, actually. I didn't realize I needed a flute membrane (which gives the sound more timbre compared to a Western flute). I ended up having to use a piece of tape for the time being, which allowed the dizi to be played, but lacked the timbre. Still, it was a first step.

And thanks to YouTube, it was much easier for me to learn how to play the dizi. YouTube videos provided two important pieces of information. One is the basics of how to play the flute, like how to hold, the shape of the mouth, and the sound that I should be aiming for. The other aspect is actually how to play a tune. I would search for the song that I want to learn, see how others actually play it (the fingering, to be exact) and try to match that with the score.

Another key point for my learning journey is the numbered music notation that most dizi scores use. Instead of drawing circles on lines, each note is represented by numbers, which makes it easier since each number corresponds to a hole on the dizi.

For slightly over a year, I have been practising almost daily, about 20 to 30 minutes each time. While I am still very much a beginner, at least I can play a tune (badly) now. The next step is to record myself more often so that I can listen to how I am actually playing. This will allow me to understand the mistakes I am making (a lot of them) which in turn will help me improve.

I want to improve. And so I practise.