If you're looking for some great ideas and insights into how to teach recorder to your students, this is the episode to hear! I appreciate Natasha's enthusiasm for teaching and her gentle demeanor in working with students (and teachers too!)Natasha Thurmon teaches K-5 general music, choir, strings, and Orff ensemble at Boldt Elementary in the Northside school district. She has a BME in Music Education from Pacific Lutheran University and an MM in Music Education from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She completed her Orff levels and two master classes at Trinity University, where she now teachers Recorder. Natasha is Past-President of the Central Texas Orff Chapter, and also serves on two subcommittees for AOSA, currently chairing the social media subcommittee. She has presented at various workshops locally and at state conferences, as well as at the national AOSA Conference and for Orff chapter workshops. She serves on the Professional Development Committee of her local AFT union as an organizer and presenter for district employees.
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE SHOW
Jessica: Hi Natasha! I'm so glad you're here.
Natasha: Hi!
Jessica: I would like to know did you always want to be a music teacher?
Natasha: Yeah not at all. I thought that I wanted to be a doctor just 'cause that seemed like the right thing to do. I don't know. And I realized in high school that I didn't like any of my classes that ended in -ology like biology, chemistry, physiology, all of those classes and we were preparing for our high school Solo and Ensemble competition and our ensemble that I was in won for the first time ever in our school's history. And it was really exciting and so much fun and a bunch of folks were like 'hey you're really good at this - maybe you should be a music teacher or something like that.' And I thought, 'well, you know, I love all of my music classes and I really enjoy them. I had never thought about turning it into a career and I just kind of did and I haven't turned back since.
Jessica: Did you know that you wanted to do elementary age?
Natasha: Yeah, like everyone because their recent experience is with high school, like pretty much everyone goes in wanting to teach secondary music and I was one of those people too. In my very last semester before student teaching, you know, I made the switch. I had gone to a northwest ACDA Convention and it was great, but when I thought about all of my experiences with going to Kodály and Orff workshops, it just didn't compare and I realized that elementary was where I wanted to be.
Jessica: What were some of your musical experiences then? You shared that your school was the first ever, like you were part of the first ever ensemble to win. Did you sing growing up a lot?
Natasha: Yeah, I joined elementary choir and really liked that. And then, you know, I joined band in sixth grade and I wanted to play the drums because I had been in this really strange Buddhist marching band which was really fun. Also a little random. And my parents - I think back on it now and I kind of cringe a little bit - they said, 'well don't you want to play a real instrument? Like the flute like your aunt did?' And I thought, 'Sure.' I didn't realize it was then a dig at percussionists because I had no idea. So I played the flute and then all through junior high and high school and college I ended up playing in band and also in the choir and doing youth symphony on the weekends. I think that really made me a stronger musician being both a vocalist and instrumentalist.
Jessica: Oh I'm sure. Do you find - we're going to be talking a lot about recorder - do you find the breathing for flute similar? Like did it help you when playing the recorder?
Natasha: Breathing? Not at all. I actually think that my vocal training makes me a better with my recorder tone than my flute playing because with the flute it requires so much more air. In fact, I think the only instrument that requires more air than the flute is the tuba. I remember reading that somewhere. I don't know if it's accurate or not, but I spent so much time working on my vibrato and building this big, large sound on the flute. And on recorder I really have to control that sound quite a bit more and I feel more like I sing into the instrument than I play into the instrument. Fingering wise my flute playing definitely helped me to become a better recorder player with my technique.
Jessica: Okay and I just ask because in all of my Orff levels it always seemed like the flute players had just this like most beautiful tone on recorder. So I always wondered, I wondered like how that transferred, you know.
Natasha: Yeah and in my level 2 when Chris was my recorder teacher in level 2 - Chris Judah-Lauder - she really kicked my hiney and said you've got to rid of that big, giant vibrato and it really took me the whole two weeks to pull back and even my tone out and make it a little bit smoother. When you have in a levels class or with a class with your kids with up to 20, 30 kids using this big air or with adults using this big, heavy vibrato, it really has a negative affect on the sound of the whole core. Whereas when you're controlling that tone and making it more pure, then it helps people to blend a little better.
Jessica: So when did you first learn to play the recorder?
Natasha: In college in my elementary methods class. I remember growing up my sister had like an old flutophone or something like that and a little method book and I remember playing around with it, but in college was when I really first started learning how the instrument worked.
Jessica: And did you start on soprano?
Natasha: Oh yeah. Yup.
Jessica: Nice. Yeah, I remember learning. I learned to play the recorder - I think it was in second grade - and it was like this bright yellow recorder and we were so excited about it, but all I remember about it is being really loud and squeaky. And it was like a unit, you know. We didn't play it very long, but we were so excited. And then I didn't touch a recorder until like in college towards, like the music methods course, you know.
Natasha: Yeah. Just like me.
Jessica: Yeah. So I'd like to know a little bit about the background about why the recorder and kind of when the recorder was first used.
Natasha: Sure! So when I was working on my Master's at UTSA we actually did the history course I was required to take was Early Music History and so for my final project I wrote about the history of the recorder which was really fun and a great opportunity for me to geek out on something that I love so much. And the recorder really came into existence in the Renaissance Era so there are actually - they still have artifacts of the original recorders that were first invented. It's not technically considered a recorder unless it has seven holes in front and one hole in back. Anything else is then considered part of the flute family, but not actually a recorder. What we don't tell our kids is that back in the day they actually had two holes on either side of the bottom for the pinkie and it was the recorder player's choice whether they put their left hand on top or their right hand on top and then they would take a little piece of wax to cover in the other part. But I don't tell my kids that. I tell them you put your left hand on top. Yeah right?! I don't want to have to deal with that. Ahh!
And then in the Baroque era when the flute started gaining in popularity, then unfortunately that's when the recorder started waning and not becoming used as often as it was.
Jessica: Can you kind of share how the recorder came back within the Orff work?
Natasha: Yeah, well in the mid-twentieth century - early mid-twentieth century - there was kind of this early music resurgence and that's when people started getting more interested in early music again. You know, music from the Renaissance and Medieval Era. At the same time, it was also when the Güntherschule was established in Germany in that twentieth-century era. And the focus was not originally not on young children, but on young adult women who were looking for a background in dance and movement. And there were a lot of these different schools, both formal and informal, but what made the Güntherschule so different was also this emphasis on the musicianship of the dancers as well. So they would often learn to play instruments and accompany themselves through their dances. Since their main background wasn't in music, then they needed to find instruments that didn't have a strong technical requirement on the front end to make it sound halfway decent. Like I've been playing violin amateurly for years and I would never consider accompanying someone who was dancing because I just don't have that skill with the instrument.
So, you know, there was a musicologist who said to Orff, 'Hey, you should bring in the recorder to go with all of these drums and percussion instruments that you're using. That's going to be that smooth sound that's going to even out all of the sharp instrumental sounds that you have going on.' So, you know, they found someone who created some for them and the box came in and it was Keetman who like basically looked at it and was like, 'you know, there's no fingering charts or anything so give me a few weeks and I'll kind of figure it out and teach it to everyone else.' And that's basically what happened. And while that was going on was also when the recorder started getting introduced in elementary music classes. Really mostly in Great Britain so I think the two of those going hand-in-hand helped fueled the recorders resurgence in the twentieth century.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. I can only imagine what that was like for Keetman to have this instrument to figure out. I would think that would have been really fun.
Natasha: Yeah, it's so crazy to me that she was like yeah-yeah I'll figure out. That's so cool.
Jessica: Yeah. I would have enjoyed that. So why, why do you think, I know I have ideas as well about this question, but why do you think we should consider using the recorder with our students.
Natasha: Hmm, that's a good question. You know, there's always the tried and true arguments for it. Like you know, some people call it a pre-band instrument. Some people actually really hate that they call it a pre-band instrument. Though I do understand the argument behind it. I certainly tell my kids that, you know, your left hand goes on top in recorder. If you join band, so many of those instruments also have the left hand on top. For me, it's really more than anything else, the recorder is another medium for my students to experience music. So, you know, I've definitely had kids who were kind of indifferent to music in fourth grade when we start playing the recorder. All of a sudden it sparks this interest in them. And in the reverse you also have the kids who really don't necessarily enjoy the recorder. That's why after we learn the basics of it it becomes weaved into everything that we do. So kids can have the recorder as an option or they can choose it as another option, but for how much I see my kids who love to play it, I can't imagine why someone would take that opportunity away from those kids, you know. All of our kids express themselves differently so I want to give them every opportunity they can to see how they feel most comfortable expressing themselves.
Jessica: Yeah, I completely agree with that. I like too how the recorder, like you said, different timbre and I like that it's just a different sound compared to a lot of the unpitched percussion instruments or the barred instruments or singing voices, you know. A lot of us use all of those things or a mix of those things, but I like what the recorder adds just as far as the tone and just that opportunity for them to experience something else. Something new. You know, many opportunities in many ways to do different musical things, for lack of a better word. When you first bring out the recorder to your fourth graders, what are some ways that you first introduce the recorder to your students?
Natasha: Hmm, that's a great question. Before I taught recorder at Trinity, you're required to shadow at another course and I studied with Nick Wild at the Villanova course. And he, and I know he said he borrowed it from someone else too because that's what educators do, right?! We beg, borrow, and steal. But he showed me this brilliant thing from the Music for Children Volume I which you know is basically the main source material that we use for our Schulwerk levels. Everything in the first volume is in C pentatonic and he transposed it to G and it works perfectly for your kids. So there's this great little melody in there, but before he even teaches the melody, he has a little speech that he uses with it first. And what's so brilliant about it is that before I even get my kids worrying about fingerings and how to cover the holes, we're doing all of the other activities like get them working on tonguing and using gentle air and we're, you know, first we're isolating the tongue and using the syllable 'doo' to practice that flicking motion. Then we're holding on to the barrel and doing the 'doo' as I like to tell the kids into the barrel, but not actually worrying about any holes yet. And then we move to the holes after that when they've, you know, figured how to get their fingers to work because it's so many things for the kids to have to do and remember all at once. So when we break it down into the little steps, they feel more success.
Jessica: So you take the head and the foot off and you just use the barrel itself?
Natasha: No, I leave it on, but I just have them use their pointer finger and their thumb just to wrap around the, like the, barrel between the window and the top hole. So they're not covering any holes and we're just blowing gently into it to practice our tonguing.
Jessica: Oh that's nice. And it's probably softer too.
Natasha: It's supposed to be!
Jessica: Yeah!
Natasha: I would think. You know, the biggest struggle is, for me at least, is getting the kids to use that gentle air and I use all different kinds of analogies. You remind them every five seconds. When they play as a whole class, it's really hard to control and the second I group them into by row or if I do boys or girls or this group or that group, then all of a sudden they're so much better at controlling their air. But it's, that's a constant struggle.
Jessica: Yes. Definitely. And I love the idea of taking the Music for Children volumes, even though their all in C pentatonic for that Volume I, just transposing it to G. It's just genius, but yet that's not something before my Orff levels that I would have thought about, you know and yet it's like...
Natasha: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah.
Natasha: We're always supposed to read the music as it's written and then you're like, 'Oh wait no.' In elementary you do what's best for your kids and you transform the music to help your kids make good music which is so empowering when you finally figure it out.
Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. And so I know all of us kind of have different strategies for teaching students the fingering and the notes. The most familiar or I would say the most common, at least up to the last couple years I feel like, has been B-A-G. And then I have some resources where they do high C and A. I know some teachers use G and E. And so I'm just curious as to which approach you take in teaching your students what fingering and notes do you start with.
Natasha: Yeah. I did B-A-G for a long time and B-A-G is great because like you said, that's where the majority of the resources are. So if you're not feeling strong on teaching recorder, B-A-G is a great place to be. I switched to G-E a couple years ago because it, you know, we're starting with one of the most challenging things of having all three fingers down with the left hand and then immediately engaging the right hand. Which is challenging for the kids, but man - from there when we go to A and B, it's such a breeze for them. And then the nice thing with G-E is that if you're in C pentatonic, you're tonally playing So to Mi and you know you can really pull a lot of stuff from there.
Jessica: Yes. Yes, that's what I was thinking too was using a lot of those So-Mi songs they might have done when they were younger. That would be a great segway I think to putting it on the recorder.
Natasha: Definitely.
Jessica: Yeah. How do you encourage proper tone and help the students understand to use, because this is something that I struggle with, how to get them to use their tongue rather than just blowing? Even if it's gentle, there's such a difference between the tonguing and just blowing. So how do you encourage that?
Natasha: Yeah, that's a huge one. I'm luckily now at the point where typically with my kids, most of them will be tonguing. And I'll only have like 5% or so come play for me and they're doing that blowing air thing. Usually I'll go back and refer to the initial lesson where we say the words to a poem and then we replace all the words with the syllable 'doo' and I have the students describe to each other and then to me exactly where their tongue was going on the inside of their mouth. And then we just keep doing that same 'doo' syllable, but silently without actually saying it out loud. And we'll probably whisper it once in-between too. So speak the 'doo' out loud, whisper the 'doo,' and silent 'doo' and really think cognitively about where their tongue is going inside of their mouth. Then explain to them that every single time they play, that's the place their tongue needs to be going. And most of the kids figure it out. I did actually have a student the other day who came up to play for me and she was still struggling with that so then I played for her and gave her some examples. We worked through it together. Then once it clicked into place, she was like, 'Ugh! Okay - now I get what's going on.'
Jessica: Yeah, I feel like once it clicks, you're pretty well golden. It's just getting them to that point.
Natasha: Yeah, it's a fairly abstract concept.
Jessica: Yes. Yeah and when you have a class playing or even a group, what can we look for to determine if students are overblowing or simply not covering the holes correctly? What are the differences that we would hear in those two issues?
Natasha: The obvious one is if they're really loud, then they're probably overblowing. If I hear, like if we're playing E or G, and I hear not only louder, but also up an octave, then the problem is probably overblowing because what they're doing is they're overblowing into the upper register. If I hear other sounds that don't fall within the notes I should be expecting to hear, like I've kind of trained my ears to listen for G or E or high G and high E so if I don't hear those sounds and I hear other sounds, then I'm assuming it's probably going to be the fingerings. And the hardest one to catch is that back hole.
Jessica: How do you listen to your students play individually? Because so often we have, many teachers have very large classes and you're playing, but it can be chaotic and loud if they're all playing at different times in small groups, so how do you find ways to listen to students play by themselves?
Natasha: Yeah I totally know - Yes! We have seven 6th grade classes at my school right now and we only have a six day rotation so we actually have one class that gets farmed out to the others so I have now 24-26 fourth graders in a class and it can be hard to hear how individual students are doing.
There is a couple things that I do:
1. My music room is open three days a week before school in the mornings for what is called Music Lab. It used to be called Recorder Karate because Recorder Karate is not a part of my curriculum, but the kids could do it in the mornings before school, but not it's open Music Lab so I have kids in my Orff Ensemble who will come in to work on parts or I have kids who have questions about other things so it's just like the room is open. And so the kids who are coming in for Recorder Karate, it's really easy for me to hear them individually because they come play for me and I can hear them.
2. In my classroom setting, whenever we hear a new note I always make sure that I take a few seconds to listen to every single kid on their own to make sure that they are simply capable of getting the correct sound out. I've trained my kids to know that - hey, you know what? Someone's going to make a funny sound on their recorder and there's a pretty high chance it could be you when it's your turn so we just give them time to figure it out and move on. So I always make sure I listen to each student individually there, but I don't feel it's always necessary to listen to them all the time. It can be a little stressful for them so we do a lot of group work in groups of 2-4 in class and that allows me to listen to groups in smaller settings so I can still hear the individual students and give them individual feedback without necessarily isolating a student on their own in front of a bunch of other people.
3. And then we'll do a lot of class recordings which will go into our Google Classroom so it's really easy for me to go back and watch videos and you know if I maybe missed something when a kid played for me once, I can go back and listen to it later.
Jessica: Yeah. I was going to say I don't have my students play individually every class. It would be too much and sometimes what I find that I'll do, I have 21 fifth graders this year so I'll break them into groups of 3 or 4 and we'll play, say there's an AB piece - the A section will be played by one small group, all of us play the B, then the next group plays the A section, all of us plays the B, but that lets me hear them in small groups too, but I agree with what you said. I don't think we need to hear them by themselves every single class. Particularly if they're playing the recorder throughout the year and not just a two month unit or something, which I think is more - just my opinion - I think it's more beneficial for them to play it over a longer period of time and integrate it with other things. Speaking of which - my students enjoy recorders, though I'll also say that they also enjoy lots of other instruments and do you have a way that you incorporate other instruments along with the recorder so that it's more than just a recorder ensemble piece, but that there's other timbres with it?
Natasha: Yeah absolutely. They always feel so cool when they do that. I have one piece where I just play - it's just a 12 Bar Blues piece - and I play guitar with the kids. And they just think they're the hottest thing ever. Hey-if that makes you excited, awesome. Last year we won a grant for ukuleles from TMEA so I dipped my toe into the ukulele pond and taught my fifth graders some C and G chords. And I had one class, man, all we were learning was that C chord and we happened to have a piece that we had learned on Alto and Tenor recorders prior that was also in C pentatonic. So I said, 'Okay - half of you grab these, half of you grab those. Let's put a couple of you on that.' And on their first ukulele lesson, we ended up putting together a song that had Alto, Tenor, and ukulele and they just thought that they were the coolest thing and I agreed with them because it was really cool.
This year we're taking our fourth graders to the Symphony for the link-up concert series. I've never done that before, but my understanding is that the kids get to play with the symphony and you know they give us all of this great information and music that we can use and I can curtail it to my kids so I'm really excited to see what that experience is going to be like for them.
Jessica: I've heard other friends who have done that where they take their, a certain grade level to the symphony and play along with it. I just think that would be a really magical and amazing experience for the students and for the teacher, too. You know, to see it all come together.
Natasha: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
Jessica: Yeah. And you mentioned that you do alto and tenor recorders with your students. So how do you incorporate the alto and tenor recorders?
Natasha: Yeah I began building my alto and tenor recorder collection probably about five or six years ago. I still do not have a class set of each. I have about twenty altos and I think fifteen tenors so with the two combined, I actually teach alto and tenor at the same time. And I really enjoy it because it's another hook for the kids when they're in fifth grade and they're king of getting a little, you know, tired of school in general. They're excited to go middle school and the use of the bigger instruments totally brings them back in. I also have a couple basses that I'll throw in there now and again and they really enjoy that too.
We actually, we'll use Venn diagrams to compare and contrast what the alto and tenor sound like compared to the soprano, both visually and aurally so that they're thinking a little bit more critically about what's happening. And then, you know, we do talk about the fact that the alto fingerings are different. Since I'm not really digging into it a lot, I don't go too heavy into it, but I do make sure that they're aware of that information. A lot of the parts we learn on the alto and tenor recorder are going to be ostinato parts that don't have too much melodic trickery to them. It's easier for them to grasp it..
Jessica: You have a great way of simply telling them the difference between the alto and soprano fingering without, like you said, going too far into detail and making it overly complicated. Tell us about what you call 'Home Base.'
Natasha: Oh yeah, so on my sopranos it's B-A-G, 1-2-3. They get that locked in and they just know that, right? So when we switch to the altos, I just say, 'well you know what. On your soprano recorder you're home base is B-A-G. You know those notes: 1-2-3. On the alto recorder, you have a home base too. The only difference is that it's E-D-C. ' And they're like, 'Oh." And I'm like, 'Yeah. No so big. Not a big deal.' And when we're first dipping into things, I will often times give them a visual that has the letter and shows the fingering and so then they can start associating the different letter pitch with the instrument. If I were doing like um a recorder ensemble or something like that where there are melodic parts across all the different instruments, I would most definitely approach it differently, but since we're not really approaching it from that way, I try to use as simple of devices as I can to help them.
Jessica: Yeah. I just think that's fantastic because we don't always need to always make it more complicated than it is. And so just being able to say 'this is your home base; this is what it is' and then I feel like the kids will just take that and run with it and they don't need a whole lesson on transposition or this being in the key of - you know - with F as the lowest pitch compared to C - but makes it simpler so that they can run with it.
Natasha: Mm-hmm. And actually it was me using it myself and going 'Oh!' and then that kind of helped, this really helps me. I should use this with my kids.
Jessica: Yes. I think sometimes we find the things for our kids because of the things we're trying to work on ourselves. You know? What helps us will often help our kids.
Natasha: For sure.
Jessica: What do you find is the value in teaching alto and tenor recorders compared to simply just sticking with the soprano?
Natasha: Yeah, I think the biggest thing for sure is engagement. I actually did a study in my Masters program and it didn't necessarily go the way I was expecting it to because I have no expectations, but the question I had in my study, what it came down to, was why are kids so excited to play it and then all of a sudden they hate it so quickly, you know? And for me, anecdotely the conclusion I came to was that the kids think it's so cool and then they actually get it in front of them and they realize it's actually a huge amount of work to make it sound decent. And they just expect it to happen, you know. And it's like, no you have to put in some effort and putting in that effort after a while can get, you know, difficult for some kids. But yeah, honestly it's in fifth grade they've had a year of recorder. They're kind of over it and moving in to that older grade level and getting to try these bigger instruments is, for some reason with kids, things that are bigger or incredibly smaller, are just kind of hook their attention so if me giving you a recorder twice the size of the one that you're used to is going to keep you engaged in my classroom, then I'll give you that recorder.
Jessica: Absolutely! I definitely go more in depth with my select recorder ensemble and then in sixth grade we do a lot with alto and tenor recorder and by the time they're in eighth, they're using all the way through bass and sopranino. And they are more fascinated with the bigger and the smaller. And the pitches and like you said, the engagement piece is, I don't know, it just makes a difference I think. So it's - yeah. Is there a piece that you've done with your students that has been your favorite or one that you've returned back to?
Natasha: Yeah, I was thinking about that question. Nothing specific really comes to mind.
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