Email Address:. This post is especially for those teaching the recorder to children in school settings โ but it might be worth a look if you are learning how to play the instrument as well. I hope that this brief post will be helpful to those teaching recorder in elementary school who have little or no background with the instrument as players themselves.
I thought about the topic of this post recently when I remembered that I have never encountered middle or high school students that had been taught recorder in elementary school by someone other than me who were familiar with this system.
Anyone who has stood before a group of children, each of whom holds a recorder in their hands, and tried to get them to all play the same note knows that the primary means for making sure everyone is playing the same fingering is to show them yourself on the instrument in your hands. However, for several reasons including accounting for differences in learning styles, being able to provide students with a reference to consult for fingerings when you are not there, and important being able to verbally describe fingerings , it is necessary to have a system.
The usual system that school and introductory recorder methods provide for fingering instruction is some form of chart that shows pictures of recorders or a more abstract stack of circles representing the fingering holes on the instrument, usually showing the holes that should be covered for each note filled in and the ones left uncovered empty.
Numbers articulated for a fingering indicate that hole is to be covered. This was the system to indicate fingerings I used with my own students thereafter. Walter van Hauwe provides similar and much more extensive charts in his books โ including many indispensable alternate and trill fingerings for advanced players โ for alto recorder, which is the primary solo instrument for the historical recorder repertoire.
