Learning Recorder - One Year retrospective

When life took a few wrong turns I stopped being able to play trombone, it felt a bit like part of my life had gone missing.  I've been living in apartments ever since and I've always been afraid to start practicing again because it seemed inevitable my neighbors wouldn't tolerate the loud noise.  There isn't really much of a way around it, trombones are loud.  With my career not really moving anywhere in a hurry and housing prices raising much faster than my income does it doesn't seem likely I'll be in a house where I could practice trombone in the forseeable future.  So it had felt as if playing music just wasn't going to be part of my life anymore.

About a year ago that changed.  One was a friend gave our son a recorder as a birthday present.  My father, who is a recorder player, mentioned he was a self taught recorder player and suggested my son could self teach as well if he was motivated enough.  This took me totally by surprise.  When I learned to play trombone I had never heard of anybody seriously attempting to self teach an instrument if they wanted to play it properly.  I hadn't known the recorder had a reputation for being an instrument that you could self teach.  Also, we learned one of the main reasons the recorder fell out of favor as an instrument was that it was too quiet to compete in the orchestra's that developed during the romantic era.  But a quiet instrument is just perfect for us.  Once we knew, my wife and I decided it would be fun to learn how to play together and we started down a new road together.

So now that it has been a year, what is it like to try to learn the recorder without a teacher?  In some ways it is a lot harder than learning to play the trombone.  There is no one to catch it when you hold the instrument incorrectly unless you catch it yourself.  There is no one there to diagnose what isn't working when a technique just fails to come together.  There is no schedule of performances to prepare for through the public school system.  But, there is the internet.  There are online web forums where people discuss learning the recorder, where people swap self recorded videos of there own playing for feedback, and where you can find information about what books to buy and what brands to favor.  There are high quality youtube channels where professional recorder players share tutorials.

Unfortunately the internet isn't as convenient as it could be, especially if you are new to the recorder.  You can't trust amazon product listings or reviewers to know whether a method book is for Alto or Soprano recorder.  Some listings will claim a book is for both when it isn't.  Some enthusiastic but ignorant product reviewers will claim that as well.  Online sheet music dealers will claim to be able to special order books they can't actually get their hands on.  Many recorder method books are bad quality or are written for children who can't read music or both.  Many of the good quality recorder method books published more recently are only in foreign languages.  Many of the good English books were published in the 1960's or 70's and have gone out of print or are only available from specialty stores that charge high prices.  But with determination it is possible to get your hands on good quality English recorder method books meant for adults who don't want to relive their elementary school glory days of playing nursery rhymes.

What is it like cost wise to pick up the recorder?  Comparatively speaking, very cheap, especially in comparison with other hobbies or instruments.  Just for a quick comparison, many video games can be completed within 60 hours of playing and cost $60/ea.  So video games as a hobby often can cost around $1/hr even before you factor in the cost of buying and periodically upgrading the video console.  If you buy a $300 nintendo switch and then a new video games once every month or two your first year expenses will be between $720 and $1,020.00.  For comparison, a good quality resin alto recorder can cost between $25-$60 depending on the brand and model and for all practical purposes they don't wear out.  I bought a $25 dollar model and have been very happy with it.  The  two volumes of Hugh Orr's basic recorder method for Alto cost me about $40.00 and I still haven't finished them after a year of steadily studying them.  So the core expenses for my first year of music study have been only $65.00.  Sure, there are side expenses on top of that such as a book of scales and arpeggios, reference materials, additional sheet music etc.  But most of those we didn't strictly need and our total expenses aren't in the hundreds of dollars and won't get anywhere near the cost of a video game hobby.  In comparison with other musical instruments, a good quality recorder above a student model generally costs between $300-$900.  Most good quality musical instruments easily cost much much more than that and even the student models often cost that much.

So if you love to play music but are stuck in an apartment like me, a quiet instrument like the recorder is a wonderful choice.