Hi Folks,

At 78 I have been teaching myself the recorder for the past 12 months. I am following the ABRSM syllabus for treble and am currently playing stage 3 pieces. I intend having lessons in January next. My question is:

If I play/practise for 1 hour a day, how long should it take me to reach grade 8 ? Would more daily practise, say, 1 1/2 to 2 hours , make a significant difference to my progress ?

Thank you for any comments you wish to make. I am aware that my questions are somewhat vague but please assume that I am of average ability.

Best regards,
#Fipple

My daughter aged 14 is probably going to take Grade 8 at Easter. She did Grade 7 almost a year ago then transferred to a Recorder specialist in January of this year. Playing the notes was easy enough, learning the correct technique for Recorder playing and learning to put more air down the instrument has taken the time. Her teacher is a hard task master and is really keen for her to get a good mark at Grade 8.

Practice will always help but you need to be sure you have the right technique in or bad habits will be harder to unlearn.

I suppose to answer your question it will depend where your teacher thinks you are when you start lessons. I expect it's difficult to generalise.

Good luck and enjoy your playing.

Are "stage 3" pieces grade 3, or does that mean something else?

Quality is better than quantity for practice, and you can add quantity back in once you have got the hang of quality. You need to work out what your weaknesses are and find a piece, study, scale or exercise that will support that weakness and break down where you are having problems. A second pair of ears is so important to this process, as is someone who knows repertoire like the back of their hand. If you are able to pay for even occasional lessons you will be able to play to a teacher and they can say OK, your double tonguing needs work, get this book, your dynamics are strong but tend to go flat in the quiet parts, try this fingering or this lip position to see if you can push the notes up a bit. Then you can take the repertoire and work on it.

The important part of practice is to be doing it on a structure, not to be opening the books and playing a new piece beginning to end just because it's on a list somewhere. What drives your decision to move to a new piece? A new key signature? A large section of triplet tonguing? When you start to play a piece, where do you start, at the beginning or by looking through the piece for the trickiest part? Do you tackle a piece in sections that are short but you get them right? What strategies do you use if you find a particular bit really hard? Slow down? Finger it with easier tonguing? Tongue it on one note?

It's that sort of thing that will make a big difference, you need to understand how and why you are practicing, when I play my recorder today I will focus on ... If I can get nothing else about this piece right I will get the ... The hardest part of this piece is ... because... and I will fix it by ... The easiest part is ... because... and I can build on that strength by...

It's not so much the time, as what you do with it which matters, and everyone has a different make-up and will find different aspects of the skill mix you need to acquire easier or harder to manage, so you really can't put a timescale on it at all. Even the guesstimate that most will do a grade a year is totally unhelpful - and doesn't say at all much about how levels are being achieved. You can do a grade by learning your three or four pieces, and the scales, and doing aural tests/sightreading for each level on a very superficial level, scrape through, and embark on the next - gets the bits of paper, but isn't really a benchmark for where you're at...or you can explore the repertoire at each level, do some duetting and ensemble playing and expand your musical education in all sorts of ways. It depends what you want out of music too.

My music is something I do for pleasure and for my sanity - it gets me release from the humdrum side of life, and I practise intensively but often in very short bursts, sometimes only ten minutes in one go, sometimes an hour and occasionally even more than that. I might work on two bars, I might play something related to what I'm working on, or perhaps do a bit of playing through with my husband accompanying. I rarely get more than four or five hours' worth in a week, but it has been enough to sustain a good level of progress, even now, when I have done my grade eight and a couple of exams after that as well..

I am glad though that you're going to get a teacher - for me this has made the difference between playing notes and making real music .

Thanks to all of you for your sound ( pun not intended ) advice. I decided to have lessons in the New Year for reasons which will be obvious to all of you.

I am thinking of Grade 8 purely as a goal and realise that I may never reach it. I do, however, intend to have fun along the way. I seem to remember reading a remark by an examiner that as people work through the various grades the level of musicianship tends to fall off. So, I shall be content to play simple stuff well.

BTW I have joined my local branch of the SRP but have yet to attend a meeting. I expect playing with others will keep me on my toes.

Thank you all again,

Fiple