It's Recorder Time: Alfred Edtition

This book is really useful for beginners to wind instruments. A little bit musical theory knowledge is required. Very well paced

It’s easy to know which holes to cover from the way they introduce new notes. I like this book and am glad I bought it. If you can’t understand music staffs, learning to read that will need to occur relatively quickly since the notes in musical notation are not labelled past when the notes are introduced. I like this book and it has quite a few duets for teachers to play with students. I’d say this book is for a soprano recorder.

I bought this for my son (7 years old) and I to learn the recorder together. This is a BEGINNER book, and when I say beginner I really mean it. Although I’d never played the recorder before, I used to play trumpet and I blew through this thing faster than you can say “soprano.” That said, for my son, it’s been absolutely great. The pacing is perfect for the typical total beginner, maybe a little fast for my 7 year old son who had zero musical experience. It never gets complicated and I think it only goes up to D and I think only one sharp and one flat if I recall correctly. It does a good job of introducing new concepts and musical markings. You literally don’t need to know ANYTHING about music and you will do fine with this book. The song selection is very good and all the pieces are very short. For an adult they might get boring, but for a child the short song lengths are great because your kid won’t get bored. There are a good number of duets you can play with your child as well which always sparks excitement for my son. Again, this is best for someone with no musical experience or is a child. If you have any experience playing a music instrument, you’ll plow through this book pretty quickly and I’d recommend a book with a faster pace for the first octave and more in-depth songs. But if you have a kid you just bought a recorder for, this book is PERFECT.

I bought this in a Kindle version so it can go with me easy when camping. I’ve just got back into playing the recorder after a very long time so thought I’d start at the beginning. As an adult who has previous experience I breezed through this and picked everything back up again quickly. It’s definitely a beginners book.

I bought this book (kindle version) so I could learn to play the recorder someone gave my daughter as a gift. I went from absolute zero to playing simple songs with the help of this book alone. I had some previous -although very basic- knowledge of rhythm and musical notation which made it easier for me to move fast through the lessons. I don't know how useful this book would be to an absolute music-beginner, but if you have some precarious notion the book will definitely help you get started with this instrument. Another thing that's worth noting is the approach: as soon as you learned the first three notes you begin to play nice melodies; which is a powerful motivation booster.

This book is a great introduction to playing the recorder. It has a very useful explanation of the different types of recorders and their keys (Sopranino, Soprano/Descant, Alto, Tenor, Bass, Big Bass). The music is written for the most well known type of recorder beginners learn first (the Soprano or Descant pitched in C rather than F) and is a good introduction to any type of recorder. The fingering is baroque and a handy 2 octave, chromatic chart for the Descant recorder is at the back of the book which serves as a great reference. The content covers basic music theory for beginners and the notes learned span the first lower octave (including Bb and F#). A great book to get started with. Has some well known easy tunes and they are a nice selection that won't annoy the neighbors. Well worth the price.