I was eight when my dad handed me a recorder: my first musical instrument. Along with others in my class I used a fingering chart to read the music to popular songs of the time. Our descant (C soprano) recorders pierced the air with faltering versions of The Wombles, the Z-Cars theme (a tune called Johnny Todd) and international folk songs brought to us by the BBC’s community music programme Singing Together.
It is impossible to overstate how vital Singing Together was for my music learning. These educational radio broadcasts were produced in Britain from 1939 to 2001. They provided classrooms full of kids and teachers, many of whom had little or no musical knowledge, with the principles to sing, play and enjoy making music. I was extra privileged because, with dad being a teacher, our home had back issues of the Singing Together booklets that I could pick through.
In my twenties, and with a ukulele in my grasp, I re-imagined my childhood if I’d had a ukulele instead of a recorder. It seemed obvious that the ukulele was a superior instrument to learn on. As kids we could have been strumming, singing AND soloing. The ukulele offers so much more than the single tootling notes of a recorder. Since then I’ve been pleased to witness the uptake of ukulele by educators and children alike. So, I was surprised to see the headline:
Recorder Makes a Comeback in Schools.
Have things gone full-circle so soon? Over the last two decades myself and others have sought to encourage schools to teach ukulele. Is it possible that I’ve been wrong all this time and the recorder is a better instrument for learning music?
I grudgingly concede that the recorder was instrumental in getting me to think of myself as a musician. It gave me the confidence to believe I could play other instruments. Over-confidence in fact. I discovered that clarinets, saxophones and all woodwinds have similar fingerings to the recorder. By age 13 I was bragging that I could play any instrument ever invented. (I couldn’t of course. I only assumed I would be adept on violin, trombone and contrabassoon if only I had access to them).
Thinking about it now, I wonder if the drawbacks of recorders may also be assets. My dad would laugh at the memory of fellow teacher Miss Gorman visibly wincing as she faced the penetrating and discordant cacophony of her class of keen recorder-blowers. To her it was fingernails on a chalkboard. Recorders, by their very nature, are shrill, strident, screeching, … and other unpleasant adjectives. Much of that has to do with overblowing. When you blow a recorder too hard you get an over-blow which means the note suddenly jumps to an ear-splitting űber-treble that can make a grown man weep tears of desperation as his bairns practice Frére Jacques at the kitchen table.
This may sound like a bad thing. But looked at from an educational perspective learning to regulate the air going through the instrument is how we get good at breath-control. Breath-control is fundamental to all blown instruments and also to singing. While ukulele practice offers a more soothing experience for both teachers and parents, as a player, you won’t learn much about volume control since ukuleles don’t ever get loud.
For ease of tuning the recorder wins hands-down. They arrive in-tune, straight from the box, and then stay that way. Ukuleles, on the other hand, arrive completely out of tune and forever after require vigilance and maintenance to keep them playable. For a teacher with a class of thirty, taking armfuls of ukes from a storage cupboard, removing them from thirty cases and boxes and tuning each one individually is quite a process. Inevitably, tuning knobs get knocked and they are all out of tune again. Most teachers don’t have time in their day for this.
In the 1960s and ‘70s Chalmers Doane went across Canada teaching teachers to teach ukulele. In a very direct way James Hill has continued this work. In the early 2000s I received two dozen ukes (possibly bought in Chalmers’ time), in various states of disrepair, from a school that could no longer use or store them. James Hill took them off my hands and donated them to a school that he knew could use them. James grew up in Langley, home of the Langley Ukulele Ensemble, and the district is a fine example of how ongoing ukulele infrastructure can work if the leadership is there.
But, when ukulele teachers leave, the school ukuleles wind up languishing in a cupboard. And the problem of storage in schools can be a big one. School populations near me are expanding to the point where school-service music teachers report being shown to storage rooms in which to TEACH their one-on-one lessons.
I’d originally thought of ending this piece by saying, “Both instruments have pros and cons but as long as you learn on something it doesn’t matter which one you pick.”
But I’ve had a change of heart. I think recorders have the edge. As a long-time and very keen proponent of ukulele (and I feel awful about saying this) I think the recorder is probably a better instrument for starting out on.
Recorders don’t need to be tuned; they take up negligible room in bags and cupboards and are nearly indestructible. Their simplicity could also be their greatest strength: you only get one of each note, you don’t have to think about singing while playing and there are no chords to mess up.
Both ukulele and recorder require a system to help teachers to teach them but the powerful advantage of programmes like Singing Together is that they make it possible for teachers with minimal musical knowledge (and no clue about tuning) to lead a singing plus recorder group.
I’m willing to be proved wrong but I seem to have reached the conclusion that the ukulele is probably the best, second instrument to give to kids.