Hands up if you teach the recorder using a tutor book? My PhD research shows that an overwhelming 90 percent of recorder teachers regularly use one.
The humble recorder tutor book is a uniquely British invention. Following the publication of Thomas Greeting's Pleasant Companion (or New lessons and instructions for the flageolet) in 1675, London's music publishers marketed the recorder as the new ‘do it yourself’ musical pastime. Becoming a recorder virtuoso could be mastered in no time at all, with just one book.
The tutor book (TTB) has remained across generations of recorder players for over 400 years. But is it time to ditch TTB? I think it is, and in this article I will endeavour to explain why.
How the recorder is viewed and the tutor book's role in this
Researchers from Keele University reported in 2001 that: ‘Learning to play the recorder at school makes children lose interest in music for life.’ My own academic research has shown a trend whereby huge swathes of children do not continue to learn the recorder past primary school. Many teachers responded to say that they found it difficult not to lose pupils to ‘the saxophone teacher down the hall’, or that parents felt the need for their children to move onto a ‘real’ instrument.
Thematic analysis showed that recorder teachers found the instrument's low social status to be the most difficult aspect of recorder teaching. My research indicates that negative perceptions are held not only by parents, but music teaching colleagues, music examiners and even the institutions where these teachers are employed.
Why is the recorder thought of in this way? Keith Swanwick, in his seminal book Teaching Music Musically, explains that the music taught in schools should reflect pupils’ musical lives outside the classroom. He argues that pedagogical musical material, written for that singular reason, creates a ‘musical subculture’ of school music that gradually turns children away from music education.
As part of my research, I reviewed the five best-selling recorder tutor books. The repertoire exclusively contained original jazz and pop-style compositions, traditional folk and hymnal repertoire. That's it! Undoubtedly, repertoire is not the only thing that could link the recorder to children's daily lives, and no doubt there would be huge copyright issues with publishing popular music – notwithstanding how quickly ‘popular’ music becomes ‘unpopular’ with children (in my experience, sometimes within a week!).
I looked at the backing tracks that came with the books. Surely these would contain beautifully recorded examples of recorder playing. Nope! The best-selling tutor books contain backing tracks but do not provide a real recorder for the pupil to listen to, only MIDI or electronic alternatives. Therefore, even when the pupil is practising, it is still only them playing the recorder. None of the repertoire links to their daily lives and they have still only heard a recorder in school, played by their recorder buddies and their recorder teacher, to music they have never heard before.
In her 2006 book, How Popular Musicians Learn, Lucy Green explains that those who learn an instrument through informal methods and are truly encultured into the music they play are more likely to continue with musical involvement later in life. Popular musicians teach themselves to play the music they enjoy through a method of trial and error, without the aid of a teacher.
Back to TTB. I teach a lot of primary school, group recorder lessons. I have them in groups of four for half an hour. At present, writing in the summer term, I can say that only one student still has their book in a workable condition and regularly brings it to lessons. One book has genuinely been eaten by the dog! Added to this, I am bored of TTB – bored by its over-reliance on the acquisition of pitched notes and, quite frankly, its uninspiring repertoire.
I've devoted four years of my life to researching beginner recorder pedagogy. I own almost every recorder book in print and I hate them all! While researching tutor books and teaching additional instruments myself, it seems that tutor books for other instruments fair better than those for the recorder. Is there a more positive route to recorder teaching aside from the tutor book? Here's what I now do in my revamped recorder lessons.
Moving beyond the tutor book
I aim to enculturate my pupils in the recorder and look towards popular musician colleagues and their haphazard, informal learning style. Lessons go like this: ‘What would you like to learn to play today?’ Then I say, ‘Great, can you sing it to me while I find it on YouTube.’ There hasn't been a song or request I have been unable to honour. Take That, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, ‘Baby Shark’ and one very special request for ‘Daddy's favourite song so I can play it as a Father's Day present.’
It has been a triumphant experience: I've found pieces of music I have never heard before and I am finding my teaching more fulfilling. Gone are the weekly emails: ‘Please can you remember that your recorder lesson is on a Friday and please bring your book.’ Instead you can find me, headphones on, recorder in hand learning to play my pupils’ favourite melodies, and then at the piano or with a guitar working out the harmony.
Popular musicians may traditionally learn in absence of a teacher, but my pupils need me. They need me to decipher and simplify their favourite songs so that they can play the recorder and have a satisfying musical experience.
Pop music is popular because it's easy! Almost every song that has been requested has been pentatonic or in the aeolian mode of C or G. The music lends itself perfectly to being played with just a minor third. For those of you who use the Kodály method, the correlations between popular music and the folk music and melodic intervals endorsed by the big K himself are undisputable.
My beginner recorder players don't play all the notes of the songs. They are playing notes (usually C, A, G and, for the very brave, E) along with the song. We use rhythm cards to learn how to read the rhythms they are playing, and I have flash cards with the pitches on a stave.
In terms of differentiating group lessons, I find that the more advanced groups come to lessons desperate to show me that they've learnt ‘this bit of the song’. I don't mean to brag, but it seems I've reached the holy grail of instrumental teaching: my tiny Year 3 pupils are going home, putting their favourite song on YouTube and playing the recorder to it. Not only are they practising what we have learnt in the lesson, but they are coming to lessons having learnt more without me than with me.
I have even received videos from parents showing me their child playing their songs. Parents haven't got a clue what ‘Mike Oliver's Tank Top’ is. It's just a ‘recorder tune’. However, they do know ‘Can't Stop the Feeling’ because it has been requested through Alexa a million times and their child can't stop singing it. Now, parents are hearing their child play music they recognise. Most importantly, the parents are seeing and hearing tangible progress that they understand.
Messages in practice diaries now read: ‘Please practise playing the notes C and A along with the chorus of this song to a rhythm of your choosing.’ Parents seem to understand and appreciate this more than: ‘Please remember to use your tongue in bar 4 and the rhythm goes ta ta ti-ti ta.’ I teach pupils in school and have never met the majority of their parents. Most of the parents I deal with have no prior musical experience. It then relies on the seven-year-old pupil to explain to the parents: What's a bar? What's a ta and what's a ti-ti? (If it needs practising, chances are the pupil still doesn't fully understand.) How do you use your tongue to create sound?
Does technique depend on tutor books?
This brings me to technique. I know many of you must be screaming at the page, ‘This is all very well, but I like my students to articulate using their tongue and play with a balanced technique. I still need my tutor book.’
Robert Ehrlich, professor of recorder at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and outgoing principal of Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin, says that ‘an indication of the instrument's humble position in the pecking order of children's music-making is the crude superficiality of many [recorder] tutors.’
Walter Van Hauwe, author of The Modern Recorder Player is also unimpressed by TTBs, saying that ‘all recorder methods […] are based on getting instant results: a short explanation about the position of the hands, the thumb-hole half opened […], some air, a tongue, and “hey presto” the first tune can be produced.’ He goes on to say that the neglect of the fundamentals of recorder technique at the start of the learning process can actually be counterproductive.
He says that the approach whereby one teaches lots of notes in quick succession to provide quick results means that quality sound-making is left behind. If more time was taken to ensure correct technique as opposed to learning lots of notes, recorder playing would become easier and more efficient in the long term.
In my new-style lessons I find myself focusing more on instrumental technique and musicianship than on learning as many notes as possible. My aim is now for my pupils to play three beautiful notes, perfectly in time, using and reading a variety of different rhythms, in different time signatures along to their favourite songs. I aspire for them to sing in tune to their favourite songs during their lessons, and I take time to include singing games and warm-ups as part of the lesson.
In relation to TTB, Ehrlich writes: ‘The ignorance of many elementary details of instrumental technique, sadly typical of school recorder teaching since its inception in the 1930s, has had profound effects on recorder playing outside the schoolroom.’
The argument regarding the lack of technical consideration in recorder tutors is consistent with my search for the perfect recorder book and further academic evidence in my PhD. Ehrlich goes on to say that ‘fingering, to give just one example, has generally been taught without reference either to bodily posture or to the hand and finger positions necessary to hold the instrument comfortably.’
