MrsBrown's philosophy of life and stuff

I had a lovely play on the piano with Rose this evening.

It was late and we were both avoiding her bedtime.  We sat together at the piano and I played the songs she's up to in the book we've got out for her.  She showed me the pieces she already knows and then I watched the lightbulb go off when she worked out she could read the finger numbers to work out what notes to play.  She played the new song a few times, practising her newly discovered technique.

Then she asked me what the 2/4 numbers meant, and I played her new songs again, while counting out loud for each bar.

I'm really enjoying watching her learn to play.  She doesn't have a teacher or formal lessons, she just has 4 adults who'll variously play the piano themselves and will pay her a bit of attention when she's interested.  She'll also sit at the piano and play for herself - this afternoon she modified one of the pieces she's learned because it "sounds lovely" when she changes the last phrase.

I was keen for my other children to learn music.  I spent money and made them practise.  It was crap and they learned little until they decided to take it on for themselves.

Now the three children at home are having a lovely time playing around with music and teaching themselves.  They're even inspiring me to sit down occasionally.

Here are the recorders I bought. I bought every recorder in the shop!

This is the page you always find when you do a recorder related internet search, and these are the pages with useful sheet music:

http://www.spielleut.de/musik.htm, I particularly like the way this saltarello is laid out with the chorus and verses separate.

This site is great for duos - i only I could get the sheet music into a printable form!  Also the by line is worth it - "Didactic two-part compositions of the Renaissance and the Baroque"

This site is useful for finding choral music too.  I'm interested in the Renaissance music and Medieval music section (it's a bit thin)