Dr J's Emporium of Musical Education

It is Thursday evening (start of the weekend in the Middle East) and I find myself sat here at a loss.  Tomorrow should be the 3rd Dukhan Triathlon with the longest event, in which I intended to participate, being an olympic distance race (1500m sea swim, 40km bike and a 10km run).  Over the past six months myself and a few colleagues have been training up to 5 times a week, with blood, lots of sweat, and a few tears along the way, and working up through the previous super-sprint and sprint distance races in the aim of taking part in this 'biggie'.  But then the weather had other ideas..... Screenshot of Windguru.com - 6.6mm is a LOT of water! Now, although not a preference, I do not mind swimming in choppy water or running and cycling in wet/windy weather, but the race has had to be postponed due to the accompanying thundery weather.  The event will now take place in May but, due to the heat at that time of year will only be a sprint distance race (750m swim, 20km

Slowly but surely I am persevering with looking into applying Orff Schulwerk ideas in the classroom.  And I have just reached the chapter of Doug Goodkin's Play, Sing & Dance  about using the instrument that sends shivers down many music teacher's spine - the recorder ! Personally, and having been initially thrown out of recorder classes for not practicing (I was 7!), I returned to playing it during my teacher training and now love playing the tenor recorder as it has a warm, rich sound.  A number of teachers I know laugh and make comments about not understanding how someone with my qualifications can stomach the sound of the recorder.  Worse, others have told me that it is irrelevant in the age of the ukulele.  I believe that these thoughts are at best a little misguided, and at worse closed minded and borderline uneducated.  I agree that the recorder can be a little grating with classes of 30, but after spending hours tuning ukes and guitars only to see the pupils ret