How I started Playing the Recorder

Hello everyone.
This is my first time posting in this community. I was going through some posts when I discovered this community, and I loved it. So now, I want to tell us how I started playing the recorder instrument.

I took an interest in the recorder instrument when I was in my junior school year. My Cultural and Creative Arts teacher instructed us to get instruments of our choice for our practicals. I had a cycle of friends, anyway. They bought the recorder instrument for themselves and brought it to school. Before then, I was already practising with the band because I had been playing in the band since my primary school days. But when I saw them with that instrument, I was amazed and happy. I requested to know how much they bought it and I was told. It was just #300.


SOURCE: THIS IS MY PROPERTY

I pleaded with them to take me down to the street to get mine the next day, and they obliged. I got mine, and we started rehearsing together. We had no teacher or a guide. Our teacher loved the band more. She would always be there. We tried a bit to get our "D R M F S L T D." And we were playing it anyhow. We didn't care anyhow it sounded, after all those of my friends then who did not know what music was all about celebrated what we were blowing. We did it through that academic term and got tired of it. We only learnt one more thing, it wasn't right but we played it anyway.

It was the song, 'I just want to say, baba oh, oshey.' It is a Nigerian song. Then, we stopped blowing since we weren't seeing results. That was how I left the recorder until COVID-19. People were always at home, we didn't have anything to do. It was just to sleep, eat, and sleep again. One of the days when I went outside to play football, I started hearing the sound of a recorder instrument. I traced the sound down to where it was coming from, and I discovered it was one of my friends. I went into his house to listen to his sound. His tone was excellent, and I enjoyed it. I had already thrown my first recorder away when it broke because I was not using it again. I had to go get another one. We started practising together every day. He taught me the ones he knew and we did it consistently every day. People did laugh at us including my siblings but I never paid attention to any of them. We kept doing it until after COVID-19. We gradually started going on outings and visiting concerts to learn from people.

I started watching YouTube videos to improve myself every day. I gave it my time and attention all the time. This was how I started playing the recorder without any teacher.

Now, I could comfortably play without being ashamed of what people would say.