Recorder Forum Home Page › Forum › Teaching and Learning › New Player, what lesson frequency would you recommend for me? › Reply To: New Player, what lesson frequency would you recommend for me?
I think this is a question a teacher may be able to help you answer, especially once you’ve had a lesson or two and they have a feel for your goals and abilities.
I actually think when starting out you’ll want to take lessons with a greater frequency than lesser (to catch any bad habits you may not realize you’re picking up) and then later could scale back when you know your technique is solid and you need a teacher more for fine-tuning but not so much for “that fingering isn’t correct” or “you’re having this tonal issue” or “your posture is off.”
Assuming you’ve got 2318, notice how the book starts. Unit 1 covers Alto low notes C, D, and E. With the thumb covered it teaches to cover 1, 2 and then 3 holes using the left hand. It looks too simple. Just quarter notes, quarter rests, and some half notes. Too Simple. A self-teaching beginner might quickly pass over it all thinking they understand.
In addition– it looks like this is your first *wind* instrument (at least in a long time), so you’ll need time to work on tone and blowing technique as well as fingering and learning which notes go with which fingering, which is another reason to start at the beginning and go slow. I’ve noticed that just because I pick up the notes and fingering doesn’t mean that correct fingering *sounds* good (something that escaped me as a kid– I know the notes, let’s ignore tone!). In this case it’s not that you’d be learning what a quarter note is or what “C” is (which is why it seems easy to skip if you think “but I already know how to read music”), but using quarter notes to make “C” sound optimal.