Recorder Thread!, All Sizes Welcome... Options

[ChiffChaff]

Thanks! I've found a really useful chap called MusicTheoryGuy on YouTube, his videos are great, I don't feel quite so thick after watching his explanations of various things.

Let me know if you'd like a study-buddy to do grade one treble with (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clarinet.gif)

[katemorrisviolin]

Well, I've got my Alan Davis book and was dissapointed with how thin it looked when I first saw it, considering it's price.... However had a very pleasant hour studying the first few pages and learning about several things I've been doing wrong already! It turns out there's more to learning the recorder than simply using the orange fingering chart that came with my aulos and working through the Time Pieces books.
It's a good book if you're proficient on another instrument, as it assumes a high level of theoretical knowlege, plunging you into a variety of time and key signatures and complex rhythms early on. Complete musical beginners would need something else to get started on that side of things.
Excellent, excellent...now I'm eyeing up the exam syllabus and thinking......

[limh]

ChiffChaff, on buying really nice instruments before getting super-good at them: I think it's wonderful you're buying nice instruments, and you should be happy, and certainly not ashamed to admit what you're doing. Good recorder makers need to sell their instruments, so you're doing them (and the recorder world in general) a favour. If makers could only sell to the musically elite, half of them would go out of business, and the other half would have to elevate their prices to stratospheric levels that few can afford - it's a spiral at the end of which no one buys or makes anything. I strongly believe (very strongly, hence this rant) that amateurs are the foundations on which any interest is built (that applies to music, sports, and games). Yes, it's great to have some active, enthusiastic top players, but alone they can't make the whole thing work. If you look at really successful instruments (e.g. violin, guitar; in sport: football), they have a very healthy pyramid with some household names at the top, but very very importantly: a large array of highly competent teachers somewhere in the middle, and a truly vast array of more-or-less amateur players at the bottom, with a range of skill levels down to "started last week". If you look at numerically less successful instruments (risky statement: carillon, organ, xylophone?? In sport: polo?) the top players are still there, and just as enthusiastic and outgoing and capable as the best violinists, but the amateur end is missing or small. To be fair, it's often small for very good reasons (carillon, anyone?).

Recorder has an interesting and unique situation. It has a huge amateur base from school recorder learning, but almost the expectation that no one takes it further, that it should be forgotten on becoming an adult. The result is that its true amateur base is rather thinner than it deserves. Good instruments are definitely more appealing than cheaper ones. If you can afford to buy nice ones, and want to, then do! You will be more of a positive influence on the world if you do, both by supporting the makers, and by exposing the general public (even if it's just your family or immediate close friends) to beautiful recorders.

Enjoy your instruments! I must admit I'm a little envious... but at the moment my practice tends to be 10 minutes here and there, so I haven't the time to look after a good instrument the way you clearly care for yours.

(rant over)

[limh]

KateMorris, I have to agree at first sight the Alan Davis book is quite thin for the price, but it's very concentrated! I also agree it's definitely, absolutely, only suited to someone who has already studied another instrument and has some confidence in musical matters. I just keep thinking about how long it's going to take me to work my way through even the first part, and how much better my playing ought to get, if I'm conscientious. Per pound, that makes me feel very happy...
(Oh I wish someone had proof-read the introduction, though; and one day I'm going to need serious help on trills and suchlike. Knowing what is supposed to happen is very different to being able to make it happen.)

[katemorrisviolin]

KateMorris, I have to agree at first sight the Alan Davis book is quite thin for the price, but it's very concentrated! I also agree it's definitely, absolutely, only suited to someone who has already studied another instrument and has some confidence in musical matters. I just keep thinking about how long it's going to take me to work my way through even the first part, and how much better my playing ought to get, if I'm conscientious. Per pound, that makes me feel very happy...
(Oh I wish someone had proof-read the introduction, though; and one day I'm going to need serious help on trills and suchlike. Knowing what is supposed to happen is very different to being able to make it happen.)

I need lots of additional material to apply the Alan Davis learning to. I'm thinking of just going crazy buying up all the abrsm graded pieces, as I don't know where else to start.

[limh]

we are lucky enough to have a good local Oxfam shop with a surprisingly large throughput of instrumental music. I also treated myself to a Schott anthology (Bowman and Heyens) which comes with a disk of Gudrun Heyens playing the pieces disconcertingly superbly.

[anacrusis]

John Everingham's tip would be (as is mine) to get anthologies, and collected editions of things where possible, when not sure of what you want to buy - the advantage being you get more pieces for your cash, and also there tend to be movements within those of varying difficulty, which means the music lasts longer too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif). Although he's not keen to advise on difficulty of the material he sells, there is some indication certainly for things like the collections of dances. As an exam board's lists will have only very bitty selections, I think you might find that the anthology thing is more helpful, especially as adult learners: it's all very well learning just the slow movement of a sonata, but sooner or later you'll want to branch out and find out about the rest of the piece, and then having to buy the whole thing just means reduplication of material.

On buying nice instruments early on - I'm in favour: I've always felt vaguely guilty about my purchases, thinking well, does my playing justify this outlay at this stage, but the fact is, my good instruments have also provided me with some good aural feedback which in turn spurs me on with further learning. Of course, a top player would get a far more amazing noise out of my instruments than I can, but ironically they can also make amazing noises out of less good ones: I need the good ones I have in order to make a nice sound, and really don't make poorer instruments sound all that great.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif). So I do think it's fair enough to go and try out a string of instruments, and to stretch the budget as best as you can: if the worst comes to the worst, and you decide it's not for you, well, the resale value will be reasonable too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif).

[katemorrisviolin]

lovely post, anacrusis.

What does a little plus sign mean above a note on recorder music? I have noticed it on a book of 2 sonatas for recorder/guitar by Telemann on the recorder parts.

[limh]

I believe it's a trill, but Need Help on this theme...

[anacrusis]

Yes, that's a trill. In mainstream baroque music, so Telemann's time definitely, these would have started on the upper note, and it's considered elegant to give the first turn of the trill a slightly slower lead-in if placed in a slow movement - there isn't usually much time to do that in fast ones. It's worth having a listen to a few examples - I've learned a lot from recordings about performance, and use them to help me decide what I like to hear, and would therefore also like to emulate (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif).

[limh]

Admission: the Schott anthology of baroque music I bought was an enjoyable but silly error of judgement in a music shop: The third volume was the only one in the shop, and I was thinking keyboard-player and it looked doable, and forgetting I'm supposed to be the recorder part. Even the recorder parts of some of the pieces didn't look totally impossibly hard at first sight. Then I listened to Gudrun Heyens' recording which came with the book, and was stunned (and panicked).

KateMorris, you might also like this series of anthologies and recordings.

Gudrun Heyens seems to treat the notes on the page as a mere framework and starting point, and hardly a single note goes past without being embelished, or turning into a springboard for some extra mini-tune to bounce up or down to the next written note. It's very beautiful, but also scarily virtuoso-ish. Her style is also cheerful and fresh - lots of fun. It also made me realise that to perform the pieces this way makes them very, very hard.

So now I'm a bit worried. I don't want to aim low, but professional performers are drawing on a lot of talent coupled with years (decades) of dedicated effort. I doubt I'll ever have the time or ability to get half as far. In the meantime is it helpful, or just plain stupid, to attempt these rather beautiful bits of music, but just cut them down to the notes as written, with an attempt at a very simple trill on the notes marked? I still think they sound OK (in a naive-melody kind of way, instead of a virtuoso-wow kind of way). But maybe I'm fooling myself. People, especially beginners, are often terrible judges of their own products.

[anacrusis]

Of course it's okay to play just the notes - that's the framework on which the embellishments are later hung (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif). There is one habit it is useful to get early on, and that is the so-called cadential trill - it's the right, folks, this is it, we're coming to a gathering point here announcement. Definitely advised at the end of a piece, it's also useful when the music produces a similar feeling elsewhere in it too. When I first started taking lessons (wow, is that really ten years ago now?), I'd been trying to teach myself for some time, with mixed success...and one of the things I asked my new teacher then was, can I please learn how to do ornamentation? Oddly enough, though he did put all sorts of music my way, and helped to show me how to produce pieces with embellishments which were the same each time, the real skill of ornamentation is one I've yet to master (improvising it, I mean) - I'm adding to the ones I know, bit by bit, but am very glad now to have all sorts of other skills on automatic pilot first. Stuff like double and triple tonguing, and more fancy sorts of articulation, and alternative fingerings. Twiddles can be added in slowly, using a pencil in the score, working them out painstakingly and practising them, as a first step, but I'd always want to be on top of the basic shape of a piece first anyway, and in the early stages of learning, they're a bit of a nuisance to play (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif). Later on, I'd get in a copy of Telemann's methodical sonatas, a recorder edition, and have a play through the first movements of those: they need a bit of skill before they're all that tackle-able, but they show one composer's preferences in ornamentation, and are very useful to help learn how to think out of the standard box of filling in thirds with passing notes, or putting little twiddles on individual notes in a series. Telemann seems to glory in tripletting things, for starters....oh, and then there are some of the harder Corelli sonatas, wow what frills you can find, in contemporary editions of those (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif). But, that's for later. For now, yes, go for it, get the climbing frame out first, then learn the gymnastics bit by bit (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif).

[ChiffChaff]

Thanks Limh and Anacrusis for your thoughts on buying nice instruments. I love the way they sound; I've just purchased a plastic Yamaha because I've heard that I shouldn't play either wooden recorder for more than an hour a day, and although it's very nice it does seem quite bland and characterless compared to the wooden altos somehow.

Could anyone advise me as to how I could find a teacher who would be happy to come to my home and teach me, and perhaps accompany me on the piano (I have a piano). Since I'm ill I can't really go out much. I live in East London rather than anywhere remote, if that helps.

[limh]

Anacrusis, thanks so much for another really thoughtful and helpful reply. If you get much more helpful I'm going to feel I ought to be paying... I'm really glad I'm allowed to build the climbing frame without being too gymnastic, as it's rather fun. Now you've given me some useful hints on where I should be going when if I manage to get the framework strong enough, too.

ChiffChaff, good luck with finding a teacher. You won't regret the plastic recorder either: when you're well enough to get out and about it will be useful too, for places where you wouldn't want to take a more delicate instrument. My home environment is far from ideal for practice, and even if I had a nicer recorder, I think I'd still like to have my cheap and tolerant plastic one to take out and about for occasional use when I get 5/10 minutes on the way to work. It can live in a shopping bag and get damp and bumped, and it doesn't complain...

[katemorrisviolin]

If you get much more helpful I'm going to feel I ought to be paying...

ChiffChaff, good luck with finding a teacher.

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Limh, thanks for the tip about the book. I can't find it on musicroom.com but will find it somewhere.
One of my recorder buddies turned up for practice yesterday with a crumhorn....what fun! It sounds like a very polite, shy retiring bagpipe. I wish I knew more about early music. Someone has recommended watching the old Elizabeth R series with Glenda Jackson as a starting point!