Teaching Recorder: Creating Excitement in the Instrumental Music Classes

Abstract

In this paper we describe strategies for teaching recorder in elementary school. We seek to answer the following question: How to develop teaching strategies that allow students to make music since the first lesson in a pleasant, and appropriate to their musical environment, age and technical level? Traditional musical education focuses on the teaching of instrumental technique and musical notation. These approaches may inhibit or discourage beginner’s music students. Furthermore, in many cases, the repertoire chosen by the teacher does not take into account the student's everyday lives. Thus we developed a recorder method for beginners based on the principles of learning folk musicians, seeking technical and theoretical work in context and meaningful to the student. This method was applied during the year 2013-2014 in four classes of elementary school in Brazil. In our article, we describe the process of creating songs for beginners and the results of its application in the classroom. We present the scores for these songs and analyze their implications for teaching and learning music. The results indicate that: (a) the style, arrangement and technical level of execution of songs worked on in the classroom can be determinant stimulus for beginner students continue with their musical studies; (b) approaches that value the music active listening allow the student to develop increased autonomy in the classroom; and (c) an exciting musical practice should take into account age, musical knowledge and student's reality.