Do your recorder students quickly lose interest? Do they consider it a toy rather than an instrument? “The Exquisite Recorder,” in General Music Today addresses these problems with YouTube videos profiling
- “young exquisite performers”
- popular melodies from movies
- the world of recorders
- famous recorder players
Young Exquisite Performers
Geoffrey A. Reynolds has culled YouTube videos of young recorder performers who are good musical and social models and gives tips in the GMT article for using them.
- Tinwhistler, a musical tinwhistle and recorder player, plays a montage of five Irish reels in “Jam Session” (on low whistle), and has other videos playing “Mägo de Oz, La Rosa de los vientos” and “The Lochaber Badger.”
- Rhett and Link, a pair of 20-something guys, offer “Tax Rap Battle 03-Beat Box Recorder” and “Afraid of Frogs, You Are Not Alone.”
- Mits Marton and Kovacs Gergo, on recorder and bass guitar, play “St. Thomas,” in a cool jazz rendition.
- Michael, playing soprano and alto recorder simultaneously, plays “Snow Man” from the Raymond Briggs’ book.
Themes from Recent Popular Movies
“Concerning Hobbits” from Lord of the Rings
“Pippin’s Song” from Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter theme by diegiku
James Bond theme from Die Another Day
World of Recorders
A video on the craftsmanship that goes into making a recorder from the Discovery Channel series How It’s Made
An overview of all recorders from the sopranino through the contrabass in “Baroque Recorders.”
Famous Recorder Players
Demonstrating that the recorder is an instrument worthy of respect, Reynolds showcases three famous and contemporary recorder players, such as Frans Brueggen.
Read the article “The Exquisite Recorder,” by Geoffrey A. Reynolds and Thomas Gottschalk, in the October 2009 issue of General Music Today.
Resources–NAfME books on recorder
Playing the Soprano Recorder for Church, School, Community, and the Private Studio, by Lois Veenhoven Guderian, is a sequential, creative, and musical approach to learning Western music notation and soprano recording playing.
Teaching Recorder in the Music Classroom, by Fred Kersten, gives a comprehensive yet streamlined approach to introducing the recorder to K-12 students.
—Linda C. Brown, originally posted November 4, 2009, © National Association for Music Education (nafme.org)
