With the altos M.I.A.the descants held the fort for the second August session. Interspersed with our known and familiar songs “The Floral Dance.” and “Mozart’s Lullaby” provided lots of new learning experiences - new high notes, trills and general pauses - all of which we will be dutifully practising at home. We had chance to revisit lots of songs from our earlier sessions and finished the session with a new piece, “Lorelei” and the beautiful “Skye Boat Song”.

Pat Treleaven

With the altos M.I.A.the descants held the fort for the second August session. Interspersed with our known and familiar songs “The Floral Dance.” and “Mozart’s Lullaby” provided lots of new learning experiences - new high notes, trills and general pauses - all of which we will be dutifully practising at home. We had chance to revisit lots of songs from our earlier sessions and finished the session with a new piece, “Lorelei” and the beautiful “Skye Boat Song”.

Pat Treleaven

"It was a hardworking session with lots of learning opportunities.  Some new songs, some favourites, some songs that “have potential “ which is music speak for...”will sound good when we get it right.” Time spent starting and finishing together, getting the breathing right and most importantly appreciating some lovely recorder melodies and harmonies.  Who knew the recorder could sound so good!"
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Pat Treleaven

On a chilly June day we chased away the winter chills as we combined our descents, altos and tenor to work our way through our repertoire of known and new songs.

Janet outlined the history of how our music notes came to be written down and we took this on board as we made our way through several new pieces using our developing sight reading skills.  Music is certainly an area that uses every part of the brain!

“The Wayfaring Stranger.” and “Comin’ through the Rye.” tested all our developing knowledge. They will, of course, be added to our practice list.


​Pat Treleaven

We started our session with the now familiar rounds, “ Music Alone Shall Live.” and “Haste Thee Nymph.” followed by the hauntingly beautiful “Auld Lang Syne” “Home Sweet Home” and “Brahm’s Lullaby” trio. Most of us were singing the words in our heads as we played.  Then it was time for music that marched or danced along - cue “Gavotte.” and “Allemande,” with their musical trills.  

Of course we are learning all the time.   How interesting to discover all the different musical conventions composers use to save paper. Miss them and you will be consigned to a scenic tour around all the notes!  We will certainly be working on “Maggie”again next session.  

Another hard working session.   It’s not every day that people installing solar panels get a recorder concert.

​Pat Treleaven
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“Music Alone Shall Live” proved to be an apt title as we made a lively progress through marches, lullabies, dances, rounds and airs. The descants, altos and tenors combined to play beautifully in songs with 2 and 3 parts, the altos getting special attention with some music written just for them. There was time to learn some tricky new notes and then...”And now let’s play it a little faster,” which we did ... with varying amounts of success.

A hardworking session with lots of new pieces to practise and master. Thank you, Janet and Fujiie.
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Pat Treleaven

The tricky lower notes are harder on a recorder so they received some extra practice this session and then it was on to the several new pieces that Janet had for us. Of course we practised our favourites. We are doing rounds and parts quite well now!

Some good fun clapping exercises helped us get the 6/8 timing right for Annie’s Song and Brian Boru’s March. We came home with quite a few new sheets to add to our music repertoire and practice sessions.
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Pat Treleaven

The Recorder Group met for 2019 and welcomed two new members and a tenor recorder! We journeyed through some familiar pieces with Janet cleverly interspersing some new challenges - high notes, pinched notes, accidental sharps and that dreaded challenge; ‘And now let’s play this a little faster!’ We did...and we played duets and rounds, two parts and three, plus some wonderful harmonies.
 
For the next session, people who want to practise new notes should come at 9:00 and the others at 10:00. Happy tootling.
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Pat Treleaven

With a brilliant patchwork display as our background, the Recorder Group opened the November Meet and Mingle’s Singing For Fun Concert.

We gave them French - “Ah! Vous Dirai - Je Maman, “ “Au Clair de la Lune “and the beautiful “La Mourisque”. We gave them Australian - the famous “Kookaburra” that we all learnt in Primary School. The Irish got a look in with “Brian Boru’s March” and the Hungarian component was “Hungarian Dance No 5.”

They gave us wonderful clapping and a delicious morning tea. Best of all we got to listen to amazing singing and piano playing, all with three different conductors. Brilliant!
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Pat Treleaven

A small but dedicated band met for October Recorder. As chance would have it, each learner this day had a descant recorder, so it was a different but charming sound without the lovely bigger recorders.

“The Skye Boat” song, in three parts was delightful as was “Bransle,” especially when Tomoko took on the challenge of those difficult top notes.

Of course we played some of our favourites but then Janet had some new songs for us - “Annie’s Song”which we recognised from our John Denver days, and “Allemande” a tune from the 16th century.

Multicultural that we are, we finished with Schubert’s “German Dance” and Brahm’s “Hungarian Dance”.

Another productive session and one step closer to the end of the year concert.
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Pat Treleaven.

​With our trusty recorders under our arms and sessions of recorder practice in place we were ready for our debut performance at The Coffee Club at the nearby C.W.A hall. Unfortunately, a timetable glitch saw us put off to another day.

Janet got us working on some new pieces and before we knew it we were trying new songs, with different parts and rounds, revising notes and learning new ones so any sense of disappointment was changed quite soon to one of achievement.

Our new audience, the portraits in North East Artisan’s Gallery 2, certainly enjoyed our performance.

From now on Janet will work with The Beginners and Advanced group together.  Please check for emails from Andy for times of extra practices on a Monday afternoon.

Pat Treleaven 

From Andrea (with Fuji's permission) - a wonderful comment heard whilst learning recorder this month...
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"I think my brain works too slowly. The note comes to my mind, but by the time it gets to my fingers it is too late." - Fuji

A wave of excitement/trepidation rippled throughout the Recorder Group as Janet announced “We’ve been invited to play at the Coffee Club over at the CWA Hall in a month’s time.

We quickly set about compiling pieces for our “Practice Makes Perfect” list.

The rounds “Joan Glover”, “Turn the Glasses Over”, “London’s Burning”, “La Mourisque” and “Kookaburra” all got a gurnsey as did “Au Claire de la Lune”, which we’ll play as a duet.

“Au Vous Drai Je Marman” is stunning when played in three partsand who could go past “Brian Boru’s March” especially when we get it right.

A month’s time.

We all went home resolving to practise, practise, practise.

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Pat Treleaven

France was aspiring to soccer glory on the world stage. In Benalla, armed with our trusty descants, altos and tenor recorders, Coach Janet had The Beginners and More Advanced Recorder Players ready to take on the French Music Team.

‘Turn the Glasses Over’ and ‘London’s Burning’ provided an efficient warm up and showed good strong team work with all players coming in at the right time and hitting all the right notes.
Then it was the French contingent.

‘La Mourisque’ was a challenge, especially when Coach Janet had us play it again and a little faster. ‘Au Clair de la Lune’ had some effective team plays which resulted in beautiful harmonies. With ‘J’ai du Bon Tabac’ were learnt ‘slurring’ (not to be confused with sledging). The French tried to trick us with the quaintly named, ‘Ah! Vous Durai Je Maman’ but we saw it for what it was - basically ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’ We played it beautifully - a real game winner!

​With the French team defeated we had a short play with the English - ‘The Floral Dance’ had us counting beats and rests. We danced a little with the tricky tempo Hungarians courtesy of Brahm’s ‘Hungarian Dance No 5’ and finished with the beautiful Scottish ‘Skye Boat Song’.

Well done team. Well done Coach Janet.

Pat Treleaven

For our next session The Beginners will start at 10:00 a.m. with The More Advanced coming in at 10:45.
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Janet Douglas

​“After a good bout of recorder-playing, a cuppa at NEA's café is just the thing. Well earned!”  Andrea Stevenson

North East Artisans proved to be a warm and colourful venue for Recorder this month. Surrounded as we were by beautiful art work, vases of artistically arranged flowers and fortified by the promising aroma of brewing coffee, the Recorder people warmed up with some now familiar recorder pieces.

Then… “The Hungarian Dance.” with its sophisticated tempo changes and squeeze box feel introduced us to folk music. “Ah! Vous Dirai-Je Maman tricked us with its French title, but it proved to be a nursery song that we knew quite well. When we played it in three parts it sounded amazing!

“The Floral Dance” was our piece de resistance and probably the longest piece we have attempted so far. We ended our session with some favourite songs where we are starting to feel more confident with familiar notes and musical concepts.

​A hard working, but very satisfying session.

Pat Treleaven.

‘One day, all of this will come quite naturally,’ a perplexed driving instructor once muttered to me as l clumsily tried to coordinate changing gears whilst manoeuvring the car, remembering the road rules and reading the traffic.

And so it is with recorder playing as we are busy coordinating the finger placement whilst reading the notes, working out the tempo and music signs and playing with the other recorder people.

Under Janet’s (non perplexed) tuition ‘London’s Burning,’ ‘Turn the Glasses Over’ and ‘Mon Amor’ are now relatively easy driving. ‘La Mourisque ‘has some tricky signs. Who knew : means do a quick u turn? Some of the signs are actually written in Latin! Looking at you, D.C al Fine! Tricky. ‘Au Clair de la Lune’ showed some good sight reading.

‘Brian Boru’s March’ had a couple of people exceeding the speed limits but this was soon brought under control. ‘We went out’ showed our versatility as we masterfully swapped parts. We are starting to drive this recorder quite well.

Pat Treleaven
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From June 13th the Recorder Group will be meeting on the 2nd & 4th Wednesdays from 10 am to 12 pm at North East Artisans.   There are some car parking spaces in the car park behind the NEA building in Fawckner

Just a reminder to everyone that the next  Recorder Group '4th Wednesday' morning recorder group session is on the 23rd May which is this coming Wednesday.  (May is a 'five Wednesday' month).

This Wednesday's session will be the last recorder group session in the U3A meeting room, at least for this year.  The recorder group has had to be relocated and is now timetabled meet fortnightly at North East Artisans on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays from 10 to 12 midday.  The first session at NEA will be on Wednesday 13th June.

We do hope that this change won't cause problems for recorder group members.  We could see difficulties on the 1st Wednesday for recorder group members who attend Playreading.  We could also see benefits in meeting on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays for two hours  in terms of learning and practice and thought we couldn't see U3A timetable clash affecting current recorder group members on the 2nd Tuesday.  We've since noted that Andi has a clash on the 2nd Tuesday with Bushwalkers which may affect her attendance at times.  Members may also have other obligations - please chat about this with Janet.