How to learn to play the recorder from scratch: a step-by-step plan for beginners
The recorder is one of the few instruments on which you can learn simple melodies on your own, without a teacher, in a couple of weeks. Below is the plan that children follow in music schools, adapted for practice at home.
Step 1. Get your recorder ready
An ordinary plastic soprano recorder is fine to start with — the same kind that is sold for school music lessons. Find out which fingering system it has: Baroque or German. It is written on the body (the letters B/“Baroque” or G/“German”) or in the instructions. More in the article “What is a recorder”.
Step 2. Learn to hold the recorder and blow
The left hand is always on top, the right one at the bottom. The holes are covered with the soft finger pads, not the tips. You need to blow much more gently than it seems: imagine you are warming frozen hands with your breath. Start every note with the syllable “tu”. Details in the article “How to blow into a recorder correctly” and in the first lesson.
Step 3. Learn the notes in the right order
The most common mistake of self-learners is to start with the low C because “a scale starts with C”. In fact the low notes are the trickiest: you have to cover all eight holes without a single gap. Teachers start with the notes of the left hand:
| Week | Notes | What you can play |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | B, A, G | “Little Ladder”, “Hot Cross Buns”, “Au clair de la lune” |
| 2 | + upper C and D | “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, “Little Fir Tree Is Cold in Winter” |
| 3 | + lower E, D, C, F | “In the Field Stood a Birch Tree”, “Kalinka” |
| 4 and later | F♯, B♭, high notes | “Happy Birthday”, “A Little Fir Tree Was Born in the Forest”, “Oginski's Polonaise” |
Finger diagrams for all the notes are in the article “Recorder fingering”.
Step 4. Practice a little, but every day
For children aged 5–8, 10–15 minutes a day is enough, for older schoolchildren and adults — 20–30 minutes. Short daily sessions give more than one long one on the weekend: fingers and breathing remember movements through repetition.
Step 5. Check yourself
The main difficulty of practicing alone is that nobody tells you a note sounds wrong. Three ways will help:
- A tuner or our trainer — shows which note is sounding and tells you which finger to lift or lower.
- A phone recording — listen to yourself from outside: hissing and “squeaks” are heard better in a recording.
- The falling-notes game — counts a note only if it sounded right and for the right length.
Can you learn the recorder on your own?
Yes, especially the recorder: it has no complicated lip position like the flute, and the sound comes on the first try. A teacher speeds up progress and corrects posture, but for the first months you can quite well practice at home with the lessons and the trainer.