Chris Pauline Rachel Alison Sally
Pauline
care assistant. When I was first asked to help Pauline with her music I was told she had had recorder lessons in the past, so together we chose recorder as the instrument she would work on. Her past lessons had obviously stayed with her, as she made fast progress straight away. It was only the lack of a teacher that had been stopping her from enjoying her talents on a regular basis.
SPECIFICS - Although Pauline had been taught a lot on her recorder, she had forgotten much of it. It came back over a period of months, but at first she had trouble getting a consistent tone from her instrument. Always ambitious, she had asked to play "I Close my eyes" from the musical Joseph as her first tune, a tricky one for someone who had not played for so long... however, as is often the case, in my experience, her love of the tune gave her the momentum to do the work required to play it, ...eventually. The lowest note on a recorder (descant) is a C, it requires all the fingers to play it, and it demands a certain amount of control over the breath so as to blow with a smaller amount of force, for the note to sound properly. If the player has smaller than average fingers and hands or does not have good control of their fingers it can present a real challenge, and unfortunately many 'favourite tunes' (except the very simple ones) I have come across in books need a low C; the recorder has a limited range anyway, even with the 'overblown' notes at the top of the range - transposing tunes so they can be played on the easier-sounding notes is the way around it.
After a few months Pauline was able to play several tunes, if they had the notes written out as letters underneath. This was fine if there was someone there to write the notes out, but it interested me to think that if she was able to work the notes out herself from the stave, and write them out herself underneath, it would empower her to be able to continue with her recorder whether or not she had a teacher - she would just need to buy the music for a tune and she would be away… another ambitious plan ! I was pleasantly surprised to find that practising finding out the names of notes seemed like good fun to her, so we spent a bit of time each session on just that. I had learnt from my work with Chris (see his notes) that patience and no time-limit was the way to go; seven years on Pauline is able to work out most of the notes in a simple tune, using a key, and writes them underneath the music so she is able to play it. She has now played in public, and has never yet been at a loss as to which tune to ask to play next !
Our sessions begin
with scales and arpeggios (she knows several now), then we spend time
working on whichever tune she is trying to learn, and when she has got
far enough with it, I accompany her on guitar. We finish with her working
out note names, either for the next tune she wants to work on, or random
strings of them for practice. I cannot claim to have worked any magic
here - all the progress Pauline has made has been due to her own hard
work; she just needed someone around to support and guide her.
PAULINE'S COMMENTS
- "I
like one to one .."
MD 2003
