Notes

This presentation was designed to help you learn to play the recorder. You move through the lesson by clicking the mouse to move from slide to slide. Click on the symbol to play sound clips. Take your time to read and practice each slide. You should be able to play a song on the recorder when you finish this lesson.You know when you have students that come in the middle of the year, it can be difficult to catch them up on the recorder. I tend to forget to cover the basics and they end up jumping in in the middle. This was developed to help with that problem. It introduces the student to the recorder and gets them started. I do not normally move this quickly in the classroom, but here the student can practice and repeat the lesson as necessary. I hope that you will find this a helpful tool in your classroom. The part that you need to clean is the mouthpiece.
This rod does not clean the mouthpiece.You need to add a small strip of cloth to the rod to use it to clean. Many students end up with too big a strip of cloth and the rod gets stuck in the recorder Turn the recorder so that the thumb hole is away from your body Cover the area below the mouthpiece with your thumb and give a quick blow into the mouthpiece. (If you do this correctly you should not hear it.)
Wipe off any moisture that is on your thumb and repeat two more times.The recorder was very popular in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s. It was then almost forgotten until the early 1900s, when instrument maker Arnold Dolmetsch became interested in it. Through an accident his recorder was lost. Luckily, he had taken careful measurements and based a new instrument on the old design. This was the beginning of a revival for the recorder. 1 The recorder in your right hand is where we will begin…...Be sure to hold the bottom and move it to your chin……With your left hand give a thumbs up….On the back it must go.Add 1 it’s B Add 2 it’s A Add 3 it’s G you know It is important to completely cover the hole with your finger!If you don’t, air will escape and you will squeak.If you are covering the holes correctly you will see small round “bubbles” on your fingers.Music is written on the staff These lines are labeled
E G B D F We use many silly sentences to remember these:
Every Good Boy Does Fine
Empty Garbage Before Dad Flips
Every Gorgeous Babe Does Flirt
Elephants Get Big Dirty Feet
Elvis Goes Belly Dancing Fridays The staff has four spaces.These space notes are labeled
F A C E For the first song on the recorder we will use B A G This is a B on the recorder Play four short B’s. It should sound like this This is an A on the recorder Play four short A’s. It should sound like this.This is a G on the recorder Play four short G’s. It should sound like this Now Play B-A-GThe pattern we are going to play is
quarter, quarter, half note
or ta, ta, ta-a.
It sounds like this:
On the staff it looks like this:Repeat that phrase B A G A phrase is a musical sentence
Now for the third phrase We will play four g’s, then four a’s. These notes are eight notes and we count them ti-ti-ti-ti ti-ti-ti-ti.
It will sound like this:

And it will look like this Play the fourth phrase B A G You just played your first song!The song is “HOT CROSS BUNS” and the whole thing looks like this:

Practice this until you can play Now let’s review what you’ve learned A staff is made up of 5 lines
1 finger b 2 fingers a 3 fingers g Congratulations!You have learned a lot!Now you can go play your song for your teacher and you are ready to really get started with the recorder!