Recorder Lesson and Group 2/6/10

I just wanted to mention a wonderful thing we did in recorder group yesterday. We're playing a lovely Chacony by Purcell, that is arranged in four pasts - alto, tenor and unusually, two bass parts. The melody swaps between the parts, and there are many lovely dissonances. We did some work to help us with hearing each other's parts as we play, and playing our notes so the different parts are in tune. One thing we did was go through the piece and play the first notes of every measure, for the full 3-beat measure, to work on tuning. And then we would have one part play the actual music while the other parts only played the first note of each measure without holding it. We also worked on building chords from the bottom up, so that each successive part would tune to the lower notes. All of this resulted in a much better sound. We're fortunate to have such a skilled teacher, who focuses on the details in a very effective, and fun, way.