209 | Top 5 Recorder Misconceptions (and What to Do Instead)

The recorder may not always get the love it deserves, but it remains one of the most powerful tools in the elementary music classroom. In this episode, Bryson breaks down the five most common misconceptions about teaching recorder. He shares practical ways to move past the “mini-band class” mindset, how to differentiate without losing joy, and why focusing on process over performance creates deeper musical growth..

Whether you love teaching recorder or prefer ukulele, barred instruments, or something else entirely, this episode offers a thoughtful reset: a reminder that our instruments, whatever they are, are simply tools for exploration, confidence, and connection.

Episode Chapters:

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:18 Myth 1
• 4:49 Myth 2
• 7:30 Myth 3
• 9:43 Myth 4 
• 11:51 Myth 5
• 12:56 Takeaways
  
  

Links and Resources: 

• The Elementary Music Summit®
• Elementary Newbie Guide
• Disabilities Guide
• Steady Beat Survival Guide
• Join Elementary Music EDGE™

Use coupon code PODCAST at checkout for 50% off your first month of Elementary Music EDGE™ today!

Have questions or want to share feedback? Reach out to us at hello@thatmusicteacher.com - we’d love to hear from you!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:18 Myth 1
• 4:49 Myth 2
• 7:30 Myth 3
• 9:43 Myth 4
• 11:51 Myth 5
• 12:56 Takeaways

Transcript

Bryson Tarbet: 0:00

I'm not gonna lie and say the recorder sounds amazing 100% of the time, but I also think it's really foolish for us to completely write it off. Just for those reasons,

Speaker 2: 0:12

you are listening to that music podcast with Bryson Tart, the curriculum designer and educational consultant behind that music teacher in the elementary music summit. Each week, Bryson and his guest will dive into the reality of being an elementary music teacher and how music can truly be transformative in the lives of the students you serve. Show notes and resources mentioned in this episode. Can be found@thatmusicteacher.com.

Speaker: 0:47

Hello and welcome back to this episode of That Music podcast. Today we are gonna be talking about the recorder of it all, and I want to start off by saying, I know that the recorder gets a lot of hate. But I think it is one of the most valuable pieces and tools that we can use in the elementary music classroom. Now, with that being said, I know that it's not everybody's cup of tea. So if you are somebody that is really not into the recorder and you've made a shift of something to still give them an active music making experience with an instrument, like maybe you're, you've shifted into ukuleles or ar or whatever you do, you boo boo. But what I wanna talk about today is those people that feel like they're just. Have to be, there has to be a better way. And we're gonna be talking about five misconceptions about the recorder in the elementary music classroom because again, it's one of my favorite things to teach ever. I've seen students light up that didn't light up for so many other things, so for so long, and to me, that's what makes it important. So let's dive in talking a little bit about the recorder in the elementary music classroom. Last week in episode 2 0 8, we talked with Aaron Elliot about how the recorder can get, kind of get a bad rap, and how we can do it instead to make it purposeful, joyful, fun, and something that both students and teachers look forward to. So if you haven't checked out that episode, we will put the link in the description of wherever you're watching or listening now. Uh, but you're definitely gonna wanna check that out, episode 208, with Aaron Elliot. So, let's go ahead and talk about these five misconceptions and why they're wrong and what to do instead. The first myth I want to get outta the way is that the recorder is taught only to prepare a student for band. And don't get me wrong, I know that if a student ends up moving into band, especially a wind instrument, especially something like clarinet, the recorders, that's gonna be super helpful. But I think that's that word only that's really important. I think sometimes we feel like the only reason that we're teaching the recorder is to prepare them for a band program. And the reality is, is not all of our students will go into a band program. Not all of our students will play wind instrument, you know? You know, there are some transferable skills for sure if they were to go in for a different, uh, instrument family. But what I want us to get at is that the recorder is a valuable instrument. In its own right period, point blank. It's teaching core musical concepts like melody, rhythm, breath control, the, the, the perseverance of chall, of, you know, working through a challenge regardless of their future musical path. It is a fantastic tool for general music education because it can be like, it can take them so many places. Uh, I don't know about you, but every time I get my hair cut, I get kind of in the same conversation. Now, on a little aside, I'm one of those crazy people who just like walk into a great clips and get my hair cut. It's never great, but it, that gets the job done. Uh, but so I have these conversations'cause people don't know me and they say, oh, what do you do? And I, you know, I say, oh, you know, I'm a music teacher, da da da. And it always turns back to, oh, do you teach the recorder? And there's usually two conversations that we can come from this. First, oh my, my kid just got a recorder. It's so loud, da da, da. Or it's like, oh my gosh. I remember when I, when I was in school and I prayed the, played the recorder, you know, I wasn't very good at it, but like I had a lot of fun, dah, dah, dah, dah. And that's what I want us to focus on. The reality that we have adults remembering fondly doing that. And that's why I think it's important for us to remember that even though there might be some reasoning behind, you know, learning the recorder in fourth grade to help you in fifth grade band, don't let that be the reason you do it. Let that be an added bonus. So here's an actionable tip. I want you to shift the focus of learning a new instrument to using the recorder as a tool to explore the musical concepts that students already know and that they would be going through anyway, even if you weren't using a recorder. Uh, instead of using a method book, you know, maybe you throw in some folk songs that they've already known, um, or use repertoire that students are already familiar with to find that connection between all the music they've done up until this point. To the music they're doing with the recorder. On that note, let's move on to myth number two, which is that the recorder unit must look like a mini band class, and I'm using like all the air quotes if you're not watching on YouTube. Now, first of all, there's nothing wrong with teaching a band class, like a band class, like, and I know that there are so many ways that you can make, um, beginning band active and move in so many different things, but I think that the vast majority of us, if we were to think back about what we observed in undergrad of recorder. Was likely they paused what they were doing. All the other stuff that they normally do, they set up chairs, music stands, and they kind of did a method book. They started on one thing. They moved to the, you know, they go through, they, maybe they're doing recorder karate. You're learning a song, you're testing a song, you're moving onto the next song, and it's just such a polar opposite to how the rest of the school and rest of the years were going. And I think, again, the having some structure like this is, is helpful. It's important for us to remember that when we're using the recorder as a tool, rather than, you know, shifting gears completely and moving into a, a specific quote unquote unit, that's where we kind of get ourself into trouble. This is really cool. You know, one of my things that changed me forever is when I started looking at the recorder, not as a separate unit. As a new way to explore what we're already doing. Um, my first year of teaching, I really struggled with the recorder. I really wanted to do right by it. Um, I knew the students were really excited about it. I just wasn't having a great time and at the time, I, I, I, I logged into the American Orff Shoulder Work Association's video library that they have as part of the membership. And I just, I knew that there were some recorded stuff in there, so I started looking at it and I started noticing. How that approach was so movement based and so explorational. And so using the recorder as a tool for all the other things that they're playing games with the recorder, they're doing what we normally do in class with a recorder. And that's what really changed it for me, is realizing I didn't have to teach it one strict, stringent way thinking, you know, we start here, then we go here, and then we end here. And it really allowed me to, to change it up a little bit. So here's an actionable tip. I want you to incorporate some movement and maybe some game-based learning into your recorder unit. For example, maybe you're using a singing game that the students already know, um, and then they're going to learn it on the instruments and maybe half of them play the game. Half of them play the song on the recorder and then switch. That's a way for us to show that. We're just shifting the way we're doing things. We're not completely starting from scratch. Myth number three is that every student must master every note before we can move on as a class. And this really leads to frustration from students, both students that are struggling and both students that are really excelling. And it's gonna lead to disengagement, which is gonna cause classroom management issues, which is gonna cause people to be. Little terrors on the recorder being loud and blowing overblowing and just making noise because they're bored. And I think this is really where important because we need to make sure that we're differentiating our instruction. Um, and I know we have all kinds of conversations about differentiation and, and what we, we do or don't know about this, but one thing, like big, big shift in my, my teaching was when I realized that student, it's okay for some students to be moving on and learning a new note. Some students are still working on BAG, it's allowing them that opportunity to, to progress at their own rate, um, but also giving them an opportunity for everyone to come together to play together. So, for instance, if I have some students that are still in BAG and then we have some students that are, are learning, you know, moving on and learning some other notes. All right, cool. When we're doing some group or individual practice, let them practice their trickier songs, let them practice the songs with more notes. Um, maybe we add in a, uh, a high C and then we can do a little desk camp part. We are gonna add two parts. Then, so students are still using BAG, let 'em still use BAG on the song. Giving them an opportunity to, to kind of have their own little journey on the recorder is really, really helpful. So the actionable tip here is having your students level up their practice. Uh, for example, maybe you can have one student play, say a play the melody if they're still, you know, working on some simpler notes. And then have another student who might be a little farther along. Uh, maybe they can add in a, a second part. Or maybe at a rhythmic part, even take the recorder out of it or kind of just give them something new to allow them to be a little bit more in depth. Um, be if they're feeling a little bit more advanced. But the whole point here is to, is to make sure that students don't ha, don't feel like they're holding the rest of the class down, or have resentment for a student who's struggling because we're all waiting on them, right? We wanna make sure that everyone knows that we're all gonna move forward from beginning to the end. We're all gonna end in different places, and that's okay. So speaking of the goal, let's talk about myth number four, which is the goal is the performance. And I think this is something that we, we don't do on purpose, uh, but we as, as music teachers often feel a lot of pressure to have high quality performances and we. Unintentionally a lot of the times put that pressure on our students. And I always kept it really low stakes. My performances were always, whether they were recorded or not, were always, this is what's, this is kind of how we do things in the music classroom. And it's not gonna be perfect, but we're gonna show you some of the, the ways that we do this. And the same thing goes with the recorder. Um. You know, I wanted to show the learning process. I wanted just show how we learned a song by rote. I wanted to show how we learned a song. Um, by note, I want to just show how we could take a song and add a b section where they could improvise, um, and really show that process rather than the product. One of my all time. Teacher, big, full heart moments. Um, I ended up spending about a week in a hospital, um, a few years back, um, with nasty appendicitis. Um, and I actually missed the fourth grade recorder concert. And it was to the point where I was just like, yeah, I I'm can't be here. Like, it's not happening. I, I'm admitted in a hospital and the fourth grade teachers. Took it upon themselves to make it happen. Um, and I, you know, I was in my, my hospital bed, I came outta surgery and I had a video waiting on my phone of the students who had their performance, and they did it without me. And that was a really cool thing because it just showed that they were ready, they were prepared. And I, it wasn't because I drilled it into them and we had a thousand practices, it was because the performance we were doing. Just what we had, how we've been using the recorder since I gave it to them in January. Um, so an actionable tip here is to just celebrate those small wins. Focus a little less on the performance. The performance is gonna happen, focus more on the process and having fun and enjoying it, and giving that intrinsic motivation. And then finally we have myth number five, which is that the recorder unit, and I hate the word unit, so bear with me, is just about the instrument. I think this is where we can l lose out on a lot of really cool opportunities. You know, for instance, why, why do we teach recorders? There's no recorders in band class, so why are we doing it in fourth grade? Let's have that conversation. Let's talk about, you know, the, the, the parts and history where the recorder was significantly more popular in, you know, the classical or, you know, the performance setting than it is now. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about baroque composers. Let's talk about how, um, there are similar instruments from so many different cultures and, and, and parts of the world. Let's talk about that. Use the recorder and the instrument and the, the process of us doing that. So start these conversations. Let the recorder be a gateway to exploring all kinds of other things that relate, and that's really where you can see so much more depth. Rather than just learning how to play hot cross buns. So I hope I was able to at least bring some light to some of the five myths and misconceptions about the recorder in the elementary music classroom. Um, again, I know that the recorder's not for everyone. Um, I, I have a sensory disorder. Um, I love the recorder, but I literally, I legitimately need to wear earplugs when I'm doing full class instruction because otherwise I won't make it through the day. So I know that it's not for everyone. Um, but what I hope is that regardless of if you use the recorder, so many of these different things can apply to so many different strategies. So same thing with ukulele, or if you're using Arina or maybe you're just using Glock and spiels, or xylophones, um, or, or boom markers or whatever. If you're having kind of a focus on a new type of instrument, use that for more than just. Face value, use that as an opportunity to dive deeper into the curriculum, to cover those responding standards, to really get students thinking about how everything connects. And that is really where the magic happens. That's where I noticed I was having a lot more fun. The students were having a lot more fun and we were all leaving just a little bit lighter than we were when we started. Alright, next week in episode 210, we're gonna be talking about the parent perspective.'cause that is a whole other thing when you have a recorder and you send it home. So we're gonna be talking about that. So be sure to be subscribed if you are not already, wherever you're listening or watching. Be sure you're gonna, you're not gonna wanna miss this episode. Um, so with that being said, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of That Music podcast. If you could do us a huge favor and leave us a review or a comment wherever you're watching on YouTube, wherever you're listening, on Spotify, apple Podcast, wherever. If you could leave us a re a review, um, let us know what you like, give us some stars. We'd love five. Uh, give us some reviews, um, would really be helpful. The, the podcast Grow and get us connected with other music educators just like you who are ready to uplevel their teaching. With that being said, thank you so much for joining us, and as always, thank you so much for making a difference in the lives of the students that you teach.