FIRST BK RECORDER (1st Music Series) Paperback – 29 Aug. 1997

At the end of this review, I will post a list of all the other tutor and tune books for descant(soprano) recorders that I have. Descant, of course, have the same fingerings and tuning as tenor recorders, so are applicable to both, unlike tutors for treble (alto) recorders.Each of the various types of tutor for descant have their merits and demerits and which book(s) you choose will be down to personal preference. The 'New Recorder Tutor' and 'School Recorder' books are gimmick and cartoon-free and get down to the nitty-gritty of musical notation and recorder playing from the very beginning.'Recorder from the beginning' takes a somewhat more relaxed approach with amusing illustrations, but it is still well-focused on the need to understand musical notation alongside developing a good knowledge of how to play the recorder.Both of those book series have a long history of being used in schools.Usborne's 'First book of the recorder' goes to the other extreme and doesn't so much pepper its pages with cartoons, snippets of information and mini-jokes, as plaster them. For some folks, this will be a serious distraction. The 'Look inside' option provided by Amazon will illustrate what I mean.But - and it's a big BUT - once you become accustomed to the style and take a serious look at the content, you will soon see that the Usborne book is up there with the best of them when it comes to providing the means to quickly learn both the rudiments of musical notation and theory AND the skills needed to play the recorder. Also, whereas some other tutors provide exercise after exercise for a long time before actually introducing tunes that young players might know, The Usborne book first develops a few simple melodies as soon as is practicable, and then introduces actual well-known tunes at the earliest opportunity.However, I do take issue with the idea of 'A tune with minims' (page 11) being called a tune when it is really an exercise based on playing the note B to fit with a rhythm ... but Usborne arn't alone in taking that approach so it would be unjustifiable to penalise them for it.There is, let's face it, not a massive amount of scope for presenting actual melodies in the early stages when learners have only got, say, 2 or 3 notes to use. (ALL tutors start with the notes BAG). Tunes to consider using or adapting (or using just a part of) could be 'Merrily we roll along' (used by Usborne), 'Hot cross buns', 'Sleep baby sleep', 'Mary had a little lamb'.The one line that Usborne doesn't seem to take once B-A-G have been mastered, alongside some basic notions of musical notation and timing, is the idea of encouraging learners to invent their own tune or song, or to use simple nursery rhymes as the basis for creating simple melodies. This surprised me after seeing how much they like using cartoons to present ideas or facts, and strikes me as an opportunity missed.They key to whether you like this book or not will be your reaction to the splattering of cartoons, tips, facts, hints and instructions. I would also say that the consequent splitting up and separation of text-blocks can seem chaotic and distracting. But upon closer inspection, you start to see that by taking this approach, Usborne actually manage to focus attention on particular points. (eg: on page 13, a little man points down onto a line of music. His speech bubble says 'This is a crotchet rest'. This does make you stop to look whereas you might not make the connection so easily if the information was presewnted as dry text.)Possibly the main disadvantage of what I have described as the 'chaotic and distracting' approach is that the early pages and stages of book do not seem especially linear and you can find yourself hopping here and there to read each speech bubble or area of text. Unless you're careful, you can end up dissipating your concentration and moving towards a 'scattergun' approach of jumping from one bright, intriguing or attractive cartoon to the next.All-in-all, I think the Usborne tutor still has a lot to commend it. It is bright, cheerful and packed with information, useful guides and an early use of simple melodies. It is, however, not all that easy to 'work through' in the sense of following a linear line of thought and development. It's all rather flash and looks as if it's designed for youngsters who have grown up in a culture of cartoons and grasshopper thinking.Even so, I think 4 stars is just about fair.If you want a more traditional approach, other books to consider might be these ... Recorder from the Beginning: Bks. 1 & 2 The New Recorder Tutor Book 1 The New Recorder Tutor Book 2 Descant (or Tenor) School Recorder Books: Bk. 1 The School Recorder Books: Bk. 2 Books of easy tunes for recorder to consider might be these ... Very Easy Recorder Tunes (Activities) FIRST RECORDER BOOK OF CHRISTMAS TUNES Music for the Recorder: Folk Songs of the United States: Recorder/Solos ----------------------------------On a totally different, but hopefully useful and relevant tack - if you are faced with melody-line notation that you do not know and want to hear (and if you have the patience to enter it into a program) I STRONGLY recommend the FREEWARE program Finale Notepad 2012. It is powerful, easy to use, intuitive and perfect for this task. I have uploaded several demos/tutors onto Youtube.

Good info, not enough pieces to practice. An ok starter book.

I thought this book would be great for my 6 year old son, it is great to share a love of music with children. When I look at the picture on here, it appears to show a book with a real blue recorder on top, this is just an image of the recorder on the front cover, not a real one as I thought. Silly me! Anyway.....the book itself is very informative with lots of info on notes and scales, music symbols, breathing as well as how to hold, clean and look after recorder properly . A section near the back has a table of different brands of recorder and the material it is made from, listed from the cheapest at the top down to the most expensive at the bottom. Throughout the book there are little cartoon characters stating interesting facts and giving a few quiz questions, this really grabs the child's interest. There are many tunes to learn , with different rates of difficulty including...Hot cross buns, When the saints go marching in, , Can-Can , I Saw three ships, Morning has broken to name but a few. There are also Christmas carols to learn and some songs for the child to try out with a friend- What shall we do with a drunken sailor being one of them. Overall I think the book is fantastic, an excellent book for children New to playing an instrument. Everything's explained in an entertaining way and the cartoon characters really liven up the book

This book has lots of good useful info for kids and I would definitely recommend. It's Colourful with nice illustrations. I find it Works well alongside a simpler step by step guide to get you playing quickly - for that I chose a 'first' book with a brown cover. This book defo offers something more tho!

My 6 yr old girl has started learning recorder at school. I wanted a simple book to help explain the notes/symbols and also a few simple songs. This book does both these things and my daughter seems happy with it. The only downside is that the songs at the back don't have the notes showing underneath - so you have to learn the notes first. But this book will teach you them - just a matter of practise!

I ordered this book, as a gift for my daughter for her birthday from her sister. Sadly the first copy went missing in the post, but Wordery did everything they could to get a second copy over to us, I was very pleased with their customer service and will definitely be using them again in future.As for the book itself, it's very clear and easy to use for my 8 & 6 year old daughters.

I am teaching my daughter (7) the recorder and bought this book to help, along with another book.I found this one very user friendly, colourful and nicely laid out. Easy step by step guides, showing clear pictures for forming notes.Some good songs to learn with a few Christmas ones thrown in.I would recommend this book but get another alongside it.

I couldn't make head nor tail of this book but luckily my daughter (almost 7) has found it very useful with the help of her Dad who has some musical memory! I believe it's the best beginner's book available.