 A couple of final points on why I see the power of teaching recorder to young kids:
Fine Motor Skills Playing recorder supports the fine motor skills and finger/hand independence that are needed for playing piano (as well as using a fork and knife or typing on a computer keyboard). Teaching Personal Responsibility A recorder is often the first instrument a child owns. They have to learn the practical applications of responsibility: cleaning it, practicing it, putting it in their backpack the night before they need it in music class, and self-control (as in the proper environments they are allowed to play). Self-esteem Every kid likes to show off to their teacher, principal, or parent. Recorder provides this opportunity in a challenging music format. Like Ringo Sang, “It Don’t Come Easy!” Recorder is not a game app that can be mastered in an afternoon. It is the patron saint of delayed gratification, a crucial concept that all children need to learn and have reinforced on a daily basis. The flip side is achievement only comes with sustained effort and mastery of reading skill. All the sugar found in “Laughy Taffy” or a “Kit Kat” can’t hold a candle to the sweet taste of success after a kid plays a song for the first time. Being Part of Something that Is Bigger Than Ourselves The first few weeks of recorder amount to beginning a recorder ensemble. Kids learn that they have to work together to do hard things in tandem when making music. The Best of Expectations The anticipation that a teacher can build for the coming recorder program in the minds of kids can reach apoplectic heights. There is nothing quite like waiting and counting down the daays until you get your recorder. Bottom line: teach recorder!  A couple of more points on why I see the power of teaching recoreder to young kids:
"If You Can’t Say It, You Can’t Play It!” In one of my videos, I constantly repeat the mantra "If you can’t say it, you can’t play it!” Every time I said the first half of that phrase, kids would scream the second half back to me. Recorder in third grade is the perfect way to solidify the “trifecta: say the rhythm first, say the pitches second, and say the fingers and move them with an invisible recorder, third”. It Is always better to break down big goals into little skills. The recorder should be positioned in their laps – not their hands when doing the trifecta. If possible, use a SmartBoard to display the recorder etudes. Do each of the three trifecta passes of an etude while you are pointing to the notes on a SmartBoard. On the first pass, have them chant the rhythm “Quarter, quarter, half-, note, whole-, note, three, four”), the pitches on the second (“B,A, Beeeeeeeee,Geeeeeeeeeeeeee”), and the fingerings on the third (One, One and two, Oooooone, One-two-and-threeeeeeeeeeeee”). Only after accomplishing the trifecta, does the instrument even approach the mouth. After kids have done the trifecta a few dozen times out loud with their recorder, give them the previous prompts but have them do it silently as you continue to point to the notes.Make sure they are tracking the notes with their eyes. The next step is to give the start prompt and not point and watch them silently do the trifecta with only their self-disciplined eye point. Rhythm, pitch, and fingering will quickly become imbedded skills and the trifecta process will fade while spontaneous reading and performance will mature. Teaching with the trifecta model is the easiest way to assess and predict if a kid will be able to play an eight-bar etude. First Notes Kids who learn B, A , and G in sequential order on the recorder already know the fingering for E, D, C on clarinet, as well as B, A, and G on sax, oboe, and flute. A few final thoughts coming up in “Recorder Hero: Intergalactic Truth Number X”.  Here's a video about finger position.  By now, I hope you are seeing that “moving the pencil” is indicative of learning how to audiate both melody and harmony in real time. This diagram is how I think I developed the skill of audiation with a pencil. Each step started like an individual cell of a cartoon that gradually sped up to the point that there were no small isolated steps but rather one continuous movement, a lingua franca to experiencing musical sound.  As with much in music, repetition is key in acquiring these skills.
The example we’ve done are all in the key of C major. There are another eleven major keys to become facile in with your pencil – as well as your inner ear. Just as you probably learned how to run basic eighteenth century harmonic progressions in theory classes, those seminal I-IV-V7 sounds are only the beginning of audiation. As it becomes increasingly easier to write melodies when you are steadily feeding new and different melodies to your memory, your vocabulary of harmonies has to grow as well. There are theories that when perfect pitch develops in a young child, one of the greatest influences is continuous exposure to both tonal and atonal melodies and harmonies. Most of us grow up in a society where traditional harmony rules the day. The more you are able to approach those melodic and harmonic concepts as a child in a play-like way of endless experimentation, the more you can experience and embrace "outside" harminies and melodies, the more supple your audiation skills will become. As a first year double bassist, I remember reading a bass column in the jazz magazine Downbeat where the author claimed that he had learn a thousand songs by memory. I couldn’t believe that I would ever have that kind of knowledge or ability. The focus of the article was on common progressions and typical, predictive patterns in melodies. While most of us distinctly remember the particulars of our first kiss or when we learned how to ride a bike, audition skills have a way of creeping up on us. With supple audiation skills and a good memory, a thousand songs isn't an unreasonable possibility. One day you are struggling to “hear” and gradually you realize that everything you hear is a variant of something you’ve heard before . You are able to synthesize your past listening experiences with new creative input. For me, audiation used to be sequential procedures that at first were like a toddler learning how to get around their world: crawl, stand, step, walk, run. We don’t remember our first independent successes at crawling – but our parents do. I saw my teddy bear across the room and suddenly had a deep desire to hold it so I started to crawl. Being prepared for the significant motivation was the key for me crawling as well as audiating: I wanted to do it because it gave me pleasure. I wanted it and was willing to make sustained efforts to achieve my goal. In college, many of my classmates had to learn how to audiate on command. First and foremost, it was required for a grade. Audiating for me started when I was a toddler when everything was a new experience and my world grew exponentially because of my developmental curiosity. Just like a lot of early childhood, audiation was messy, not always a straight line of success or growth, lacked a vocabulary, but ultimately fulfilling. By the time I got to college, I was spending hours pounding on a practice room piano, exploring more complex and textured melodies and harmonies. They stayed with me after I left the practice room. If you are working to develop your audiating skills, the best advice I can give you is that maybe you might want to “play” instead of “work’. As my friend Jack Jadach would say, “call off the dogs” and let the action progress more from a place of experimentation and play. That’s not to say that as an adult, programing your time to a goal is different than a child at play. At it’s core when I was a child, music and audiation was fun for me – and lucky for me, it still is. Here is a video I made for my recorder students concerning hand position. |
AuthorBoyd Holmes, the Writer Archives
February 2025
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