Recorder Improvisation and Technique Book One: Beginning with the Soprano Recorder

The first book in the Isabel McNeill Carley Orff Essentials Collection, Book One of Carley's three-book sequence, Recorder Improvisation and Technique, has long been regarded by her students and colleagues as the quickest, most thorough and musically sensitive introduction to the recorder as an instrument for ensemble playing, improvisation and personal creativity.Through gentle increments, from echoing what the teacher plays (often an improvisation itself), to Q+A exchanges (that also model song structure and develop sensitivity to tonal centers), to longer improvised melodic phrases and percussive ostinati, this learning sequence makes the progression toward confident improvisation both unremarkable and easy. The three-book Recorder Improvisation and Technique series is cited in the American Orff-Schulwerk Association's "Supporting Materials - Sources" for recorder instruction.These books provide the definitive guides to teaching improvisation in the Orff Approach, - here applied to recorder teaching. As new notes are introduced, exercises in ear-training and technique precede specific assignments in improvisation. Folk songs and dances and short pieces arranged or composed for recorders and Orff ensemble supplement the exercises.