Have you tried using YouTube videos to inspire and motivate your music students? I have, and it seems to be working. I know that many of the videos that I discover on YouTube inspire and motivate me. So, I believe that they have a similar effect on my students ie. recorder YouTube videos for recorder students.
HOW I USE YOUTUBE VIDEOS IN PIANO LESSONS:
I love exploring as much of the piano in my first lesson with my piano students as possible. We look at the strings and hammers inside, the pedals, the keys, etc, and talk about them.
Then in the next lesson, I show them a YouTube video by ThePianoGuys in which they have used the different parts of the piano to play One Direction’s “What makes you beautiful”. If you haven’t seen it yet, it is worth a watch. It inspired and motivated me and I have noticed that my students are usually fascinated by it. Maybe some of them start dreaming about doing something similar one day….?
I have also used YouTube videos to revise the names of notes and other concepts in music. Two videos my music students particularly enjoy are “Middle C & The Grand Staff” Episode #7 Preview – Quaver’s Marvelous World of Music and “Lines & Spaces” Episode #9 Preview – Quaver’s Marvelous World of Music.
HOW I USE RECORDER YOUTUBE VIDEOS IN RECORDER LESSONS:
In the same way, recorder YouTube videos also help to inspire and motivate my recorder students. The two videos mentioned above from Quaver’s Marvelous World of Music were amongst them. (See also my Beginner Recorder LESSON 12) While preparing for my online recorder lessons during and after lock-down I came across so many recorder related videos and I keep on discovering more. They motivate and inspire me, and I believe that they also do the same for my students. My reaction when watching these recorder YouTube videos is usually the thought, “What a cool instrument!”. Isn’t that a thought we want our recorder students to have about their instrument?
SO, WHICH RECORDER YOUTUBE VIDEOS DO I USE TO MOTIVATE MY RECORDER STUDENTS?
BIG AND SMALL RECORDERS:
One of the YouTube recorder videos that I have also been using in my Class Music lessons as part of the section on high, medium and low notes, is “The Royal Wind Music in the Greene Space”.
Who would not be impressed by the 3-meter tall recorder that this recorder ensemble uses? It is a great way to end off a lesson in which we introduce the different sized members of the recorder family. (See my Recorder for Beginners LESSON 5). I trust that this video will inspire and motivate some of my recorder students to move on to playing the bigger recorders of a recorder ensemble one day.
In contrast to that, we have the sopranino recorder, as played by Orlan Charles in his YouTube video “Mickey Mouse – William Tell vs Turkey in the Straw”. What a fun video! The children really enjoy it! (I mention it in my Recorder for Beginners LESSON 2). His videos are also suitable for showing the whole recorder family to our students.
PLASTIC AND WOODEN RECORDERS:
In his videos, Orlan Charles uses good quality plastic recorders. In one of his videos, he plays the theme from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. I could not wait to include it in a pirate-themed recorder lesson! (See LESSON 17) I believe that fun and humour contribute to inspiring and motivating our students to also enjoy their instrument as the professional players in the videos do.
Professional recorder players usually have a whole collection of wooden recorders. When they perform renaissance and baroque music, they use the wooden recorders that were used by musicians from those eras. As beginners, our students may not be playing on wooden recorders yet. As teachers, we may not have the collection of recorders that professional players have, but we can introduce them through recorder YouTube videos.
OLD AND YOUNG RECORDER STARS:
It is always good to let music students listen to good quality playing. If you expose them to a variety of different players, you should be able to give every child the opportunity of “meeting” their special star, that is, someone they can identify with. It is good to introduce them to the older professional recorder players, who have been playing for many decades and are responsible for making the recorder such a popular instrument. These icons of a past era include among others Franz Brüggen and Michala Petri.
Maybe our young students can identify more with and be inspired and motivated by the younger recorder stars. Girls might be more likely to identify with young recorder players closer to their age, like the recorder icon Lucie Horsch, who already performed as a 9-year old. The boys may be inspired by another young recorder player, Adam Nlaci, who impresses with his abilities at the open recorder days in Amsterdam.
There are men who play the recorder professionally and there are women who play the recorder professionally.
RECORDER ENSEMBLES AROUND THE WORLD:
I think it is good to make our recorder students aware of the fact that the recorder is being played all around the world. They can be introduced to ensembles from Sweden, such as the Woodpeckers Quartet, from Taiwan, from Brazil, etc.
DIFFERENT SHAPED RECORDERS:
In this last YouTube video, the Brazilian Quinta Essentia Quartet play the “Game of Thrones” theme on square Paetzold recorders. This is another fascinating new development in the recorder world that we can expose our students to. Sarah Jeffery is a young professional recorder player who teaches everything you want to know about the recorder in her recorder YouTube videos, including how to make a recorder out of a carrot. She also shows us how to make different sound effects on the mouthpiece of the recorder – a great lesson idea for beginners! (I have included it in LESSON 20).
DIFFERENT STYLES OF MUSIC ON THE RECORDERS:
So much to learn! So much to share! There are also recorder YouTube videos of recorder players playing speed folk music, Jazz and old music going right back to the Middle Ages.
The list can go on and on, but I will leave you to your own journey of discovery on YouTube for videos which are suitable for inspiring and motivating our recorder students, or even for just plain fun! Please let us know if you find anything worth sharing with our students in the comments section below.
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