recorders

[redsummershoes]

the so called musical instrument
aibu to think they don't belong in the hands of primary age dc?
the noise they make!

YANBU had to teach it for a few years it was school policy. Was literally one step ahead of them used to practice it at night until dh his it!
Godawful noise.

I really feel for the teacher?
why recorder and not xylophone or ukulele?

It's a good gateway instrument to lots of others. And it can be played to a high standard of itself, of course.

One on its own is bad enough in the hands of a child. But several children attempting to play the same thing at the same time? Earplugs!

Recorders are cheap. That’s pretty much the only reason.

I agree that they are good as a first instrument to learn. Played well they are beautiful.

Look up the price of a recorder v a xylophone and see which one our education system is more likely to go for (parents too)

Uke is great but if you are trying to get kids to read treble clef notation, it's recorder thay does the job quickest (Also see curriculum time)

but why not use orff intruments.
much easier on the ear for the same benefits.

DD1 played the recorder for a few years, she got quite good and was allowed to play the treble and tenor recorders they had at school. She was part of the junior school "recorder orchestra" and they won prizes at the local music festival. It helped her when she started playing the flute as she could already read music and she knew a fair few finger positions for the notes too.

Dd2 has now been playing the recorder for a year. DH keeps threatening to hide it, but dd2 loves it. She has just been allowed to join the recorder orchestra, and I can foresee many years of music festival entries ahead of us. She's just started learning the flute too, which is also a horrible noise in the hands of a beginner.

Oh, and I can confirm that the recorder is a nice sound than the ocarina, which is what dd1's first school tried to teach them all. That was even more shrill and screechy.

Recorders are cheap and give you the experience of creating the sound with your body in quite an organic way. Playing them takes care, subtlety, gentleness, and control, but it is not actually that hard, so a child can have the experience of trying, being unable to do it, and then improving quickly to the point of acquiring some real skill.

The problem is you need a teacher who actually likes the recorder, plays it well enough to inspire the kids, and is teaching in a small group (or 1 to 1).

I saw AIBU Recorders and my instant thought was NO YANBU hideous instrument,
That said I still have my brown and cream recoder purchased for me in primary school. I’m 45. I never could play more than the one 11 notes/bars? Tune I first learnt and I was always envious of my elder sisters pure cream recorder. Why did mine have to be brown?
Whenever we move house or empty & repack that box I always get it out of its yellow corduroy sleeve and play that one tune I know-it will give your DC many years of happy memories. Oddly I’ve just realised my DC never had a recorder is it too late to force recorder practice on a high school kid?

Recorders played well make a beautiful sound. Try this for one of the Brandenburg concertos with recorders (flute a bec) instead of transverse flutes. Or anything with Piers Adams - here playing a Poulenc flute sonata

The trouble with it is that the pitch of the note can be changed by altering the breath pressure, so if you have two people playing together you need a good ear to stay in tune with each other. Gets even worse with 30 people playing descant recorders. Normally you'd have a quartet of recorders, say bass, tenor, treble and descant. And of you wanted to play as a bigger group, you'd have more people on lower parts - the descant is piercing enough to hold its own as a single instrument above quite a few people playing lower pitched instruments.