What our customer's say!"Great for our Recorder Club", We have formed a recorder club at our community center where members can join if they can read music and understand timing. Those who have joined played other instruments but wanted to learn to play the recorder. These lessons provided great practice in learning new notes gradually, and improving our fingering dexterity. We have enjoyed playing early music and being challenged with increasing complexity.
"Doesn't feel like a finished product.", In praise of Recorder from Zero, the copia of authentic music was very stimulating and kept me busy for hours; Unfortunately, I think this text suffers from two flaws:
As a method book, it is pedagogically useless unless accompanied by lessons: What little instruction is included, near the frontispiece, is vague to the point of nonexistence; further, it would have been stimulating--considering the nature of the collection--to have some brief biographical and historical information about the pieces, especially considering that several composers (Praetorius, Gervaise, etc.) are featured several times. This lack of text, pedagogical or otherwise, makes the book feel unfinished.
Further, there are no long pieces included in the book, leaving the beginner without much of a sense of repertoire. The longest pieces offered are motets which take about forty seconds to play in allegro tempo, and only three or four in that category--the rest are extremely brief.
In a word, then, the text feels incomplete. I will not be buying volume 2.
"not quite from zero", The name of this book is rather deceiving. I would not call it "from zero" or for absolute beginners. This book assumes that you know how to read music, know where to put your fingers on the recorder for different notes, and probly that you are learning under a music teacher. For the self-taught, true novice like me, this book is useless. I ordered "Fun with the Recorder" by MelBay publications and learned how to read the music, where to place my hands for the notes, and learned one note at a time-- building. Now, as a second book of learning, I can appreciate this book, but certainly not from the beginning.
"Best method books I own", I bought both volumes of this book for my daughter then 8 based on recommendations (...). I was intrigued by the idea of starting her with "real" music from the get-go.
The books were a great success - it was a pleasure to work through the lessons with her and now she eagerly plays everything she can in both books.
The books themselves are beautifully printed and easy to read. They are mostly just the music with little or no text interspersed among the pieces. This means that a beginner will need some additional help with some of the basics - holding the recorder, breathing, basic fingering, etc. There are plenty of method books that cover those details, but no other books I know of give you so much interesting music. It's easy for beginners to get the feel for what early music and recorder playing is really like.
I strongly recommend these books. If you are an adult beginner with access to a teacher then I suggest you look for volume 1 for the alto recorder, if and when it is available. Altos are easier and more fun to play than soprano recorders if your hands are bigger than an 11-year old's.
"Best Recorder Instruction", Inspiration is a great motivator, to practice and to really play well. Charles Fischer, himself a performer of the recorder, has compiled such a beautiful selection of Medieval and Renaissance pieces,in characteristically eerie modes, that even beginners may be excited by truly beautiful music. This book is organized in step-by-step progression, from simple drills which very quickly graduate to really nice music, using simple finger combinations to more progressive, adding rhythm drills and theoretical instruction. Fischer has mastered the art of instructing with beauty, and artfully combined this with pure common sense. To combine artistic instruction with pedagogy is a challenge, indeed, and Fischer has done a beautiful job. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Early Music. --Drina Brooke, recorder instructor/performer, author, trained with internationally-acclaimed Eva Legene
