The year is quickly up and so are all of our lessons and fun in the music classroom this year.  The older students (grade 3-5) are winding down this year with a unit on the recorder. 

When I tell people we are doing the recorder in Music class, I am usually, am met with a wince, a shudder and sympathy.  To that I say, “Nevermind you! The recorder can be a beautiful instrument.”  I say that and I am not lying.  A good quality recorder and well played, can be a beautiful instrument.  It has a very sweet and cheery sound.  The sound and noise, that parents hear from a recorder is the kind that kids make for the sake of making.  Who knows why?! It kind of falls under the same umbrella as picking a fight with their siblings, walking through the house with muddy shoes on, leaving Lego on the floor from one end of the house to the other to be stepped on in bare feet.  That insanely high pitched screeching squeal that kids like to do has given the recorder a bad wrap -a bad wrap indeed!

Recorders were popular with composers in the Renaissance and  Baroque era of music.  So how did it become a staple in elementary school classrooms?  Carl Orff, a composer, worked extensively with making music with children.  His philosophy was to give children a small musically fenced (metaphoric) yard to play in and they will create their own music and become composers and explorers of music.  Give the children instruments that match closely to their voices and see what they come up with.  He also favored the glockenspiel, metallophone and xylophone.  All easy instruments to play and create layers and sound.  Turns out Orff was onto something fantastic with the recorder.

A soprano recorder is an excellent beginning instrument to any of the woodwind instruments.  Through playing the recorder a student will work on playing posture, embouchure, mouth exercises (your tongue separates the note sounds), air control and breathing,  finger positions to create different tones, body awareness, fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, reading and processing.  Along with all of that, the students are working on aural skills also known as a ‘musical ear’ and a sense of tonality and rhythm.

The processing in the mind is huge while playing an instrument.  Both sides of the brain are firing at the time of playing an instrument.  You have to work both the mathematical logical side and the artistic side at the same time.  You are reading from left to right, notes, thinking about the notes, then changing your hand positions to match the notes, counting the beat, breath control, muscle control, making many things match to what your are reading on the song to have it all line up to make a note.  A single note.  Then this process continues as you read on in the song to the next note and note after that.  You are also listening and making sure it sounds correct, fixing mistakes, making sure everything is just so so as to make a perfectly pitched note.  Your body and brain has to work on quite a few different things at one time, note to note,  in order to play an instrument, even a simplistic beginning instrument like a recorder.

Experience and learning of an instrument, such as this,  develops musicality and a sense of musicianship in the students with an economical, practical and easy to play instrument. Many other factors that come into play when creating music.  Factors like: pride in success of making a song, making music, working together with others to make one unified sound, a sense of accomplishment in working on something and practicing something to make it perfect.  Resilience and perseverance for when it isn’t just right and working on it to get it just right.  As well, as working memory, an appreciation for music and the arts and just a genuine sense of joy in making something like music.  Creating a song that sounds like a song can be astounding!

So in the music room is the recorder-it is happening.  In the music room, there are some pretty big skills we are learning and practicing with a very handy-dandy little woodwind instrument!  It is definitely not that bad-not that bad at all!  But just to spare everyone I won’t send them home for practice and they won’t be sent home from school until the very end of Grade 6!