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How to choose… what to play and when

Every school and teacher has their own requirements for music lessons, and we aim to support each one. Our teaching materials have been tried and tested in thousands of schools over many years and our methods have helped countless children to play a musical instrument fluently for the first time.

So whilst we cannot tell you exactly what to do in each lesson, we can offer everything you are likely to need to develop high-quality Ocarina playing with your classes.

If you start with this website, you will find plenty of video examples of what teachers have achieved with their children in their lessons.

~ These video ‘examples of good practice’ will show what is possible with classes of Infant and Junior children.

~ The videos of Playing Tips may be used directly with your classes for teaching purposes.

~ And if you watch the Teaching Video Ode to Joy you will see how a complex piece of music is broken in to manageable chunks, in order to make it playable at an early stage.

Notice how the young teacher…

  • Gives an overview of the whole piece
  • Separates out each part for special attention
  • Practises each part separately
  • Puts each section together with the next
  • Prepares the whole piece for a performance

This approach of isolating and integrating works well. Over 1,000 children taught themselves to play Ode to Joy from this video in advance of their Royal Albert Hall performance in 2013 and were note perfect, even though most had only been playing the Ocarina for around 6 weeks in total.

Most teachers use Ocarina Workshop books as the basis of their Ocarina lessons

Play your Ocarina and Adventurous Music-Making Books are self-explanatory and children enjoy learning to play a broad repertoire of graded music through their pages. The accompanying audio CDs feature high quality, musical backings that encourage good musicianship.

With 20 or more tunes in each title, there is plenty of material to fill a term or a whole school year with any single book. Indeed, some teachers take children through one book in the first year, another in their second, and so on. And with these two extensive series of books, the repertoire is broad and varied.