After filling in the notes and getting a sense of what it should sound like, I began learning to play my two songs on recorder! I started with Jingle Bells since I was more familiar with that one. It was fairly easy to remember the notes but it took me a moment to switch my hand placements in between notes. I did a very slow playing of the song to get my hands used to the notes and movements. I did this about 3 times. I then did the same for Ode to Joy. This one was a bit more challenging as I couldn’t quite remember the tune until I played a few notes. I also did a very slow play through for this song.

After a few plays, I went back to playing Jingle Bells. I decided to try and fully learn this one first instead of trying to do two at the same time. I broke it up line by line and focusing on being able to play each line at full tempo before moving onto the next. Once I have these I will try piecing it all together and seeing how I do. If this strategy works, I will repeat it for Ode to Joy.

My roommates told me they could hear me playing which I thought was funny. It’s a good thing it was only 4pm when I began practicing! I will now spend a few more days trying to learn Jingle Bells line by line before I switch songs. Hopefully that goes quickly so I can start trying to film them!