As a (mediocre) guitarist just starting to dabble with other instruments, the first several fingering diagrams for flutes, saxophones, etc make good intuitive sense to me because you're effectively just lengthening or shortening the resonance cavity, and coming from strings it's pretty easy to grasp that short=high and long=low.

After the first several notes, however, that intuition begins to break down and I really don't understand what's going on.

Take this fingering chart, for example:

[![Traditional Flute Fingering Chart](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gLRKC.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gLRKC.jpg)

D through B make total sense to me, but I don't understand how the subsequent broken-looking patterns work AT ALL. I can see how leaving the first tone hole uncovered will produce a higher pitch, but I don't understand how any open fingering after the first open fingering actually changes the note. If my original intuitions about D-B are correct, it seems like the first open hole the wave encounters should be the only one that matters...

Are you setting up two regions of resonance that interfere with one another? Can this be thought of like harmonics on a string instrument? What does a single open fingering in the middle (C# or that high E) actually DO? Is there an intuitive way to wrap my brain around this or am I just going to have to memorize diagrams?