Recorder in the Kodály Classroom

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At the OAKE Conference, I attended a workshop on recorders presented by Debra Burton and Margie Orem from California. I found their take on teaching recorder refreshing. I have a quote from a Kodály teacher in Texas who said that "teaching recorder is a necessary evil that she trys to just get out of the way as soon as possible." I agree that sometimes I view the recorder as more of a nuisance than an asset. I conducted an on-line interview with Debra and Margie about how recorders can be an asset not a nuisance.

K.Johns: Why is teaching recorder important to the Kodaly teacher?

Debra Burton and Margie Orem : There are several reasons. Here are a few of mine: 

1. The recorder gives you a logical reason for students to learn absolute pitch names. You can teach Do Re Mi and use hand signs, but when you read recorder music it adds the treble clef and therefore makes it essential to teach absolute pitch names. 

2. Even though the soprano recorder sounds an octave higher than written, it is easy for the students to hear and helps students who are having trouble getting into their head voice or (as the case for many of our third graders) staying in their head voices. We love to use the phrase "make your voice sound like your recorder."

3. Playing recorder gives our third graders, especially our new students who have transferred from another school and are just starting with the Kodaly method, a chance to review easier Do Re Mi songs and So Mi La songs from 1st and 2nd grade and get "caught up" in their understanding of melodic intervals and steps and skips on the staff.

 4. Playing recorder (especially using games like "Doggie, doggie Where's you bone?") gives us a chance to practice this 1st and 2nd grade material many times and gives the teacher more opportunities to make individual assessments of singing voices, pitch matching, sight-singing as well as recorder playing.

5. Adding the recorder as a short part of your music lesson adds variety to your lessons and works on small motor skills and digital dexterity as well as addressing kinesthetic learners.

6. A good Kodaly teacher has already taught students many Do Re Mi songs that are instant recorder repertoire for B-A-G and So Mi La songs that work well with A-G-E so you do not have to "re-invent the wheel" when it comes to material.

7. Conversely, playing recorder can add songs to your repertoire that were too difficult or too long to learn in 1st or 2nd grade when you taught Do Re Mi and So Mi La.

8. Playing the recorder works on proper breathing techniques. When you put a recorder in a student's mouth he/she is concentrating on fingers and notes so much that he/she breathes naturally through the nose and expands the diaphragm rather than incorrectly lifting the shoulders as he/she sometimes tries to do when singing. Playing the recorder in a relaxed manner encourages a natural, relaxed singing voice. We are always telling our students that the voice is an instrument and that singers are athletes. One of the most important things they must learn in their training is how to breathe correctly.

9. Playing recorder allows teachers to continue to work on musical concepts like dynamics, tempo, articulation, phrasing and form in a new way with longer songs and staff notation. Example: You can still play games like "Lucy Locket" for dynamics, but with the recorder (which has a very limited range of dynamic capabilities) it becomes essential for EVERY student to do small increases or decreases in sound to make crescendos or diminuendos which is what we really want to accomplish in our choral teaching as well. It is not one or two students singing louder, but every student singing a little louder that makes a good crescendo.

10. Teaching the correct way to practice becomes a way to practice tempo. You must always start slowly and work your way up to faster speeds.  However when students advance, they discover that it is easier to play fast songs than slow songs because they take more breath support and require more concentration to stay together. It also allows us to use the half note, dotted half note and whole note rhythms and rests more than they naturally occur in children's songs.

and finally, the reason that made us start recorder in the beginning:

 11. Our school starts band in 4th grade and recorder is a great pre-band instrument because the left hand goes on top and the right hand below just like on flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, saxophone and even the French horn, trombone, violin, viola, cello and double bass have the left hand on the top. Our instrumental teachers love to work at our school because our students come to band and strings knowing how to read music on a five line staff and count rhythms so that all the band and string directors have to do is teach the students how to play the notes on the new instrument.

K: Do you have any recorder resources you could recommend?

We do not use any books as a text-exclusively, but we use a lot of books as resources. They are, in order of importance:

Teaching Books

Recorder Routes I and II by Carol King; Memphis Musicraft Publishers.

Carol was my first recorder teacher way back in the day and I really think her material is presented well. I also agree with her order of note presentation as BAG and then E and D. This book is great for teaching music and not just recorder. I pull out Carol's songs and teach them using the Orff-Schulwerk process that she describes so well in her books and include rhythm instruments and Orff instruments in the final product. However, these songs and games could be used without any instruments other than recorder and voice.

Recorder Express by Artie Alameda; Warner Brothers Publications Artie teaches BAG followed by C' and D' and we often use her book (we have a class set of these and they stay in the music room) as a way to review for 5th graders and let them play familiar folk songs with the CD accompaniment.

The Recorder Guide by Johanna E. Kulbach and Arthur Nitka; Oak Publications This is "the Bible" for your own personal musicianship. It teaches soprano and alto recorders side-by-side and at a fast pace. If you can play out of this book, then you will stay ahead of your students. It also features many soprano and alto duets and comes with an accompaniment CD now.

Then we use all of the games that I used from the 150 American Folk Songs and the 120 Singing Games that use Mi, Re, Do for B-A-G and the So, Mi, La songs and games for A-G and E

Performance and Teaching Pieces (Recorder suites rather than method books) Introducing B-A-G by Don Muro; J. D. Wall Publishing, CO.

Give Me Five by Don Muro (B-A-G-E-D)

Seven Switched on Songs by Don Muro (B-A-G-E-D) Easy Eight by Don Muro (starts with B and adds a new note each piece A-G-E-D-C'-D'- F#) More Easy Eight by Don Muro (starts with B and adds a new note each piece A-G-E-D-C'-D'- F#) Six for Two by Don Muro (Soprano Recorder Duets)

Selected Recorder Songs from Music k-8 including "B A Superhero," "Breeze Blown B-A-G" and "Twilight Snowfall."

These pieces are easy melodically, but rhythmically they may contain elements that we have not addressed at that grade level. So we usually teach the piece by rote with hand signs, using stick notation or a note stack and pointing to the pitches in rhythm and then come back at a later time and discuss the written staff notation.

There are many other recorder methods and books available and I am always buying new ones to examine and have in my personal library, these are the ones that we use the most in the classroom. The recorder Club that meets after school changes music every year depending on the personal and talents of the group members. We try to play SAT and SATB music by classical and contemporary composers as well as some popular music.