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Rating: 
Summary: The book is fantastic but the CD uses a synth recorder
Review: I bought this book for my daughter's 8th birthday. She has already learned to play recorder using the Mel Bay book "You Can Teach Yourself Recorder" and this was a book for *fun*. The selection of tunes is vast and the choices are great...folk tunes, hymns, Christmas pieces. There are a number of pieces that I didn't think I knew until I played them...they had renamed them something else. Solo, duet and trio options make for a lot of playing fun, especially if you the parent, or other siblings can play along. Even though I play the recorder too, I bought the book with the play-along CD so my daughter could play even when I was busy or if she just wanted to play on her own. I am a bit disappointed with the CD, as all the parts are played by an obvious synthesizer, NOT another recorder. Sounds really canned. However, I am not sure this will bother my daughter. All parts are played at once on the CD and all the example/practice pieces are played as well, which is nice for the student still learning the notes. She (Penny Gardner) gives the page number and song title before each piece begins and there is a low tone that counts the beats of one measure before the piece begins, to set the tempo. Despite that small annoyance, this is a great collection and one that young or old students will love because there are so many pieces that they will recognize and want to play, and the duet/trio options make it sound good enough to play for a recital, church or other program. Also, if you are musical enough, most pieces could have an easily improvised piano or guitar accompaniment to do with a solo recorder.
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