I've been searching on the famous auction site (I'm slightly addicted when it comes to instruments! ) and I'm quite keen to expand my recorder collection. I'm very keen to get a treble but there are a couple of lots that come with another recoreder - one that comes with a descant and another wiith a soprano.

My question is which do you think would be more sensible to buy for someone early into their recorder career (the treble is the same make and modle in both cases)? I already have a descant, but as some people may know - it's bright green and not very good!

Also can a recorder limit the ability to play notes or is it just me - I still can't get anything higher than an A (second octave)!

At this stage stick to plastic and set yourself a budget that if the instrument proofed rubbish it isn't too much to loose.

Is the 2nd recorder a soprano or a sopranino? If soprano that's a descant as well. What manufacturer are the recorders?

Hi RAM

Don't be put off your descant by the fact it's bright green. The coloured Yammy descants are perfectly good instruments, and I know one ex-forumite who took one into her grade 7 recorder exam with no ill effects to her marks. (Actually, she had three, one blue, one pink and one green, and mixed and matched the sections to take a stripey instrument into the exam. But that's another story.)

Certainly unless you've got a badly abused model, your green Yamaha will play across the range perfectly satisfactorily, and the big challenge for a learner is getting the technique to make that hapen. That takes time and practice.

Getting a treble is a good idea, but I'd be inclined to go to a shop and try some out rather than buying off E-bay. That way you have an idea of what you're getting rather than potentially a nasty surprise - of the instruments I've had from E-bay, one was totally disgustingly filthy and needed to be washed and disinfected before I could try it out, another still stinks of smoke despite my having washed it and left it out to air for several weeks.

I'd also at this stage agree with CJB about starting on plastic. You can get perfectly good plastic instruments for relatively little cash, and again they are capable of playing to and beyond grade 8.

Whoops! my mistake it is a sopranino! Both of the trebles are made by Aulos and so is the sopranino, the descant is made by Kent.


I think it must be me then! I'm going to get some help tomorrow and I will be thinking about lessons starting next term......

I have truly fallen in love with the recorder!

RAM, I love my Aulos treble. But they only cost about 30 pounds new, so don't pay a fortune for a 2nd hand model.

Wooowwww, been listening to Piers Adam Youtube clips again, after the last anacrusis post. Defies description. Stunning. Wow. (and I agree, not many people could get away with that drama. But he can, definitely.). Hey, I tried the 0-1 trill (outside, fairly windy, fairly deserted playground, a bit rubbish-strewn sort of place), and yes, I can see it can work. I'd never have guessed in the quiet of the garden shed!

May I pick your brains?
I have been lent on long term loan, or rather my recorder group has and I'm in charge of it, a beautiful old rosewood (I think) treble moeck rottenburgh no. 439. It must be an obselete model as it doesn't seem to exist on the Moeck and early music shop websites.
It's a beautiful thing in good condition with ivory on the mouthpiece and bands of ivory at the joins.
It has not been played for ages, so I shall be playing it in carefully after I've recieved delivery of my maintenance kit and given it an oil.
I couldn't resist a little toot on it though, and it has a raspy husky sound under the notes. Looking up from the labium into the mouthpiece it looks a little rough around the hole where the wind comes out above the edge of the labium.
To those in the know, will this raspy sound improve with playing in, or is it a sign it needs servicing/revioicing? I'd be grateful for advice. I live in Guernsey so travel to a specialist recorder shop for advice is not an option, I'd have to send it by post and muck about with customs forms etc.

Sounds to me as if there may be quite a bit of crud on the block - and if it's a rosewood instrument, I'd be inclined to get someone else to knock the block out and give it a sand down/scrape/whatever it takes. It may be partly responsible for the rasp, though I'd have thought the more likely difference made would be in the direction of muffling. And yes, careful playing in and oiling as needed would be advisable .

Thanks for your reply, what do you mean by muffling?
Sounds like I shall have to send it to a recorder doctor after all.

like trying to play through a bread roll.....(or, the speech equivalent would be talking through a bread roll)

that's exactly what it sounds like! how could someone neglect to keep their beautiful rosewood instrument clear of gunk to that extent? amazing! I'm glad to give this rescue recorder a new home. But it's very frustrating to sit here gazing at it's beauty and not being able to play it yet.

I'm not a regular on here, but I just got a Yamaha Recorder (30BII or something like that) for the sake of missed opportunies in primary school. ...But on the lower register (Lowest C + D) it squeaks - if I only let in a TINY amount of air, it plays normally, but it makes the notes so quiet that its a PP! Any solutions to this problem?
Thanks

(P.S: do Yamaha fifes count as a recorder? They're listing it as one on their catalogue! )

One more thought - if you have a stiffish but not too huge feather, you could try pushing that carefully down the windway from the beak end to see if you can shove anything out - but my maintenance books talk about the need to sand a block if really cruddy, hence advice to go for servicing first. Despite owning Tim Cranmore's book, Obedience Training for Recorders, I haven't yet dared take blocks out of my good instruments, to see if I can do basic block and windway cleaning myself.....and haven't got round to trying to do so on one of my more naff ones.



Descant or treble? If descant, I'd be looking to make sure the foot is at the correct angle for fingers, if it's a three piece recorder - fiddling with foot position can work wonders. Also worth looking for cracks to see if there are any leaks.

Fifes? In same category as sopraninos in my book

If it is the cheapest of the Yamahas then he bottom couple of notes are really weak.

Thanks for the replies...


Descant - I will try adjusting the foot position as it is a three piece one



You mean the recorder... or the fife? In the case that you mean recorder, it is not the cheapest of recorders but it was a not-too-expensive one to experience on as I already play the clarinet and violin
'Tis this one: YRS-302B

I meant the recorder. The one you have is good - the cheaper version isn't bad but does require a bit more nursing of the bottom 2 notes.

Your Yamaha 302 should be fine, VCQ.

as well as the suggestions CJB and anacrusis have given, I would suggest checking your right hand position, to make sure you're not leaking air by not covering the holes properly.

How to do this? Hold the recorder horizontally in front of you with your left hand. Make sure your ring finger is properly covering the double holes for D. Then adjust the footjoint so your little finger is covering its double holes properly. Once you've done that,relax the rest of your hand onto the remaining two finger holes, and then place your thumb at the back where it is comfortable. After that, bring it up to your playing position and put your left hand fingers on their holes.

This should give you the best chance of a good note on D and C.

I really love Bach's trio sonatas for organ, and have been wondering what they'd sound like on recorder. After finding some recorder versions I didn't much like, of the other sonatas, I found this clip of the 1st movement of sonata 1 on a mixed consort. I think it's absolutely lovely. It's also convinced me that lute players are worth knowing (are they lautists?).

Nah, just lauts surely?

Sorry. OK, OK, I know "lutenist" is the right word.

Silly-Old-Bag x

Lutenists
Classical guitarists are pretty useful to know too! They can do clever re-tuning to play early lute stuff.

Oooh, thanks for lutenist. Actually reading the commentary I see he's actually playing a mandarin, but not being stringy I wouldn't know the difference.

Seriously, though, it's a lovely fresh sound. I don't know how I passed the age of 40 without ever having heard the recorder/old-twangy/old-bowed combination of instruments. I'd never have guessed that such a strong contrast works.

I'd love to play as part of a group one day; the only thing I miss when playing recorder compared to organ is the harmony side of things. And music is always more fun when it's sociable. But I need to play better first...

OK, so we've sorted out lutenist... but it's a mandolin - a mandarin is either an old Chinese civil servant, a dialiect of Chinese, or a citrus fruit . I take it by old-bowed thingy you are referring to the bass viola da gamba? See my profile photo for mine.

Jokes apart, mixed consorts are good. The classic is of course made up of bass viol, lute, cittern, bandora, recorder, violin.

OK, so I am losing my braincells this morning. I thought Tenor Viol said a mixed consort had a banana in it. Presumably to go with Limh's mandarin.

But then, if you can have a recorder made of a carrot, surely anything's possible.

While we're (back) on names of things, I like the idea of players of very small recorders garkling (probably in a nice bathroom).

I've just discovered (being a bit thick at times) that the CD that came with my Gudrun Heyens baroque anthology not only has the full music, but also the harpsichord-only "karaoke" backing. Failing a genuine lutenist, it'll have to do for now. Fun ahead!

Thanks, all, for useful instrument naming!

Having fun slurring three notes on the recorder, especially B to C! Practising low D to try and make sure it ALWAYS comes out by tonguing gently. Any other recorder beginners out there having technical problems?

Yes, at the moment my DuGuDuGu is slower than my DuDu. My DuDu can be very fast so I'm wondering if I need bother trying to DuGuDuGu to be honest. I get in a right muddle with it.
When I think no-one is within earshot at work I quietly practice dugudugudugudugu......dududududu....tutututututututu......luruluruluruluru......I hope no-one's noticed me doing that!

Yes too. Most trivial thing that is, and probably always will be, an endless struggle for me is moving cleanly from note to note, without odd noises and transients between the two. And when slurring, some notes move with a definite change, while others seem to waver from one to the other. I mean, if tongued sounds tAAAAA.tIIIIII, I like surred to go AAAAIIIII, not AAAoooeeeiiiIIIIIII, if that makes any sense? Hard to put it in letters! Any slur to/from bottom C-sharp on my treble seems to come out badly.
Other trivial things are some notes I'm not very good at (bottom A-flat on my treble, sounds very weak compared to other notes in the vicinity. I think I tend to slightly obscure the half-hole that's supposed to be open; some of the top notes are still very hit-and-miss for me, and I can only play them LOUD, so I don't know what I'm going to do if I ever encounter a bit of music where the higher bits need to be as quiet or quieter than the low bits. And I need to learn to breath in FAST when there are only small gaps in the music. That's a problem of learning alone; there's nothing to stop me taking a few seconds pause between phrases when I run out of breath, irrespective of whether it makes musical sense.

Excited possible recorder owner here!
Any opinions on the Aulos 209 treble and the 207 sopranino?

Also anybody know the difference between the 209 and 309 treble?

Thanks

Welcome to the club, RAM.

I suppose it is good we can hear where we are going wrong, katemorrisviolin and limh. I even dared to record myself playing and could hear the hesitations and the lack of legato. Now dynamics is another question; there really is not much, if any, going on for me. Looking forward to having a lesson with Bagpuss in less than two weeks when she can start to sort me out. I am enjoying it though and want to learn the recorder really thoroughly and hope I can be very good at playing it.

Please share what you learn for the benefit of those of us who can't afford or can't access lessons!

RAM I think that's the 209 aulos I've got, I'm very happy with mine. Plastic will never have the richness of tone of a wooden one but it's great for a beginner like me to have a plastic one to learn and make mistakes on, you don't have to treat it with too much respect! I'm not frightened to experiment with the left thumb as you can't damage it, and you dont' have to worry about spit and condensation, it's easy to clean. The only duff notes are the low half hole ones but that may be my technique. Mine cost ?23.00.
Get a sopranino from aulos, not yamaha, I got a yamaha to save me ?2.00 compared to the cost of the aulos and regret it, it's husky.

RAM - I, too, have the Aulos 209 treble and (to me) it's really nice. Thomman.de (spelling?) has a 'listen to' bit on their site of what it sounds like.
Mine was 15GBP, supposedly new but it was the last one they had, hence the price.
(I also have problems with the right ringfinger half hole - hmm. That was technical )


Does anyone disinfect their recorders?
My treble gave me a sore throat (well, I could have got the sore throat on the same day and it was just a coincedence - hence the 'supposedly new' above) and my descant hasn't been played for years and is pretty grubby so I would like to try and clean them but I don't know what to use. They're both plastic but I don't want them to disintegrate!

I dont' think you can do them any damage with soaking them in ordinary detergent, or soapy water or some water with washing up liquid, then rinsing them, then pulling a cloth through them. Poke a strip of blotting paper through the windway.

Thanks for the advice - all going well I'll have bought the recorders by tonight.

I feel that I made some good progress on the descant today, the second octave felt a lot more secure but I (and probably my family and neigboroughs ) can't wait to try the lower sound of the treble!

I much prefer the deeper sound of the treble. I find it much more expressive. If you don't want the mental effort and confusion of learning different fingering yet, beg borrow or steal a tenor for an even more yummy, chocolatey masculine sound!

I have completely neglected my violin this weekend in favour of recorder practice. Violin feels like a chore, it frustrates me. It's such a blinking hard instrument to play, recorder gives me so much more back at the level I'm at. I'm seriously thinking of concentrating on recorder for now, and putting violin on hold until my kids are older and I have more time. I don't want to upset my violin teacher who is a wonderful person. I feel like I'm at a crossroad.......

Being a clarinettist that poses no problem to me - I do it without thinking! I find it more difficult when the instrument had the same fingering for both octaves!!

I don't know the difference between the Aulos 209/309 treble apart from price. I bought the Aulos 309 and it is great. I was initially a bit concerned about buying a plastic treble but I have no hesitation in recommending it. However, I should add that I am only a beginner, the experienced treble folk around here may have a different view.
BTW I bought mine via Amazon. There seemed to be quite a variation in the prices elsewhere and Amazon suppliers definitely had the best deals on the 309 at the beginning of May (?27.15). Certainly cheaper than local high street music shops.
Hope this helps. Really enjoying my treble playing and thinking about taking G1 in the autumn -my challenge!

Oh, KateMorris, don't forget violin totally, it's also a beautiful instrument! But I sympathise with the problem of combining practice and small children. Recorder is so practical; you can take it anywhere and have a quick practice in 5/10 minutes between other jobs.

Glad it's not just me who struggles with low half-hole notes!

Having huge fun today trying to play along with the karaoke harpsichord. It's probably not good for me though, because it encourages me to ignore mistakes and bad things, and just fly along for dear life hoping I end at about the same time as the "accompaniment".

*waltzes back in after playing waltzes with the Scottish Recorder Orchestra*

Managed to include my left thumb in with the stack of celeriac I was chopping to make soup yesterday....oops. Our orchestra librarian steristripped it after the third or fourth plaster went red and soggy during our committee meeting before the rehearsal, and I played mainly big instruments later on in the afternoon. Half-holing is sooooooore . The low accidentals were a breeze by comparison, today.

Next question - would it be better to learn to chop veg left-handed so as to preserve my half holing thumb, or would that risk damaging fingers on my dominant hand and therefore be a Bad Idea? Or should I just take up the kazoo instead?

Hopefully the thumb will heal in time for the big concert in October, in conjunction with the Dortmund Recorder Orchestra....

*puts nurse uniform on*.
I recommend getting some surgical rubber gloves, tight fitting ones, and cutting the thumb off them, putting that on your thumb and securing with surgical tape. It will act as a second skin so you can still occlude the recorder's hole and feel things through it, but iff you bleed during playing it won't matter.
Edit: hang on that won't work for a thumb. Next time, chop your finger instead!

Delegate the chopping activities, Anacrusis. I did that years ago and it has saved me a fortune in surgical tape....

*makes inventory of fingers and thumbs in her household and reckons there may well be enough to keep family in soup for a while*

*and looks up recipe for beetroot soup....*

Sounds like a good plan. Hope you recover soon.

YAY!!!

I'm now the owner of a treble and a sopranino recorder, both made by Aulos, and bought at the very reasonable price of ?13.07 (plus postage ) Recorders really do accumulate quickly!

Can't wait to start exploring some more serious recorder repertoire - bring it on Telemann!!

RAM, enjoy! Welcome to the world of F-based instruments.

Anacrusis, roast vegetables still with all their bits on seem quite trendy amongst TV cook shows. Maybe you can just stop prepping vegetables. Otherwise Katyjay is right, delegate! You're a doctor, I believe? In the labs where I work, we technical people tend to discourage the more highly-educated/qualified staff from handling sharp objects... Hope your thumb grows back soon (Seriously, thumbs and fingers are painful, I do hope yours recovers quickly). In the meantime you'll have to continue in your consultant role here; I do so enjoy not only the benefit of your expertise, but also your fun choice of words (playing through a bread roll; a metronome with frills).

*covers all bases by roasting beetroot*

My son has just been experimenting with ideas around the use of metronomes, and has developed the Metronome in Compound Time. He props up one side of it and plays in 6/8 .

Yes, I'm a GP and therefore know less and less about more and more: I'm about half way there, having worked as a GP for about 18 years now, and having another similar number to work....well, that's if we aren't made to carry on til 70, anyway. Eventually I'll know nothing about everything* and then can retire.

Tomorrow I'm due to play with a fellow recorder player, maybe a violist, and a continuo player - probably baroque music, though I never can tell: our keyboardist loves modern music, which in turn is a big challenge to me, as I don't know its idioms that well. I've pointed out the Dead Thumb problem, and therefore will hopefully get to play my bass - thumbholing is still unpleasant, but at least the hole doesn't need quite the precision placing the treble would. Just have to hope I dodge catching legionnaire's disease before tomorrow: the current outbreak is in my practice area, and has caused us to be somewhat busy over the last week.

*unlike hospital specialists, who end up knowing more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.

Thsi is true In one of my choirs, we have a plethora of medical personnel - 5 consultants, 3 GPs and too many nurses to count. One concert day, during rehearsal, a member of the choir collapsed. The medical fraternity descended. After about 30 seconds, the nurses took charge and delegated the most senior consultant to phoning for an ambulance. His skills must have been exemplary - paramedic and an ambulance were there in moments .

Wow! ?13.07, a bargain! Enjoy your recorders

That can't be true but it's a funny joke!

GPs are wonderful, hard working and kind people, I admire all the GPs I work for. Your hands are definitely too precious for you to be handling sharp knives.

I have a wood question: I'm saving up for a wooden recorder and have done a bit of reading about it. I get the impression that the softer, cheaper woods are good for ensemble playing, and the harder more expensive woods are good for solo stuff. As I have opportunity to do both and only want to buy one recorder for both activities, is there a good all-rounder wood that will be good for both? I'll probably buy a Moeck of some kind. If anyone can give me advice I'd be grateful. Price is not too much of a problem as if I need an expensive one I'll just wait longer till I can afford it. This is a long term thing.

Gosh, again it's soooo individual....so my individual choice, pretty much instantly, would be boxwood, every time. It's hard enough to be durable, without being as insanely hard, and let's face it, heavy as the likes of ebony or rosewood, and also less likely to trigger allergy than those two. I happen also to like the colour of it, but that's very individual too . Remember that there are no truly softwood recorders - softwoods are derived from conifers, in the main, and are more splintery and open grained than hardwoods: all woods used in recorder making are hardwoods, it's just a matter of degree. Maple is the easiest to work, and therefore the "softest" of woods used: it apparently has a tendency to warp, so a new instrument made of maple can change quite a bit. I'm not sure, but think I may also have read somewhere that it's more prone to mildew - it may just be that it's easier to see mildew on it, as it's very pale. I own one maple instrument, now out on long term loan, and its tone is not as sweet as that of any of my other instruments, but that can also be a reflection of model, so is difficult to compare.

My gentler instruments are made of pearwood - the a'=415Hz treble, my Kung bass and a tenor I rescued from a dusty corner in a music shop: even the bass is a more powerful beastie than the Yamaha plastic basses being played at orchestra yesterday though....our conductor couldn't work out at first why the second bass section was so much more audible than the first basses, despite there being fewer of us, and the conclusion was that the instruments were to blame . Cherry seems to make a more assertive sound than pear, box ditto, and also olivewood (I love the grain of olivewood ).....and then you get to the very hard woods, rosewood, kingwood and ebony, which sound clear, assertive and demand a lot from their players.

I shall pass on the concerns about sharp knives to my family: husband uses blades a lot for his work with harpsichords, so dodging a bit of the domestic trudgery may well be possible. Thanks too for the compliment regarding my profession - I certainly know I have a lovely team to work with, in one of Edinburgh's most deprived areas. I did once stop for someone who'd fallen in the street and had sustained a very nasty break of her leg, keeping her distracted and finding something waterproof to put over her and keep her warm til the ambulance arrived. The other person who'd stopped asked me was I a physician, and when I admitted I was, he also 'fessed up. We were tickled pink to find that neither of us was of that much use, me being a GP, and he a professor of tropical medicine . At least my best skill is knowing what to hand over to others to fix .....

But I bet to the 'person in the street' with a broken leg, a medically trained person is preferably to any other person in the street, even if you're trained in something not immediately useful!

On topic, I have a passion for boxwood too Part of it is knowing that of the geniuine 'original' old recorders that exist, there are more in boxwood than in all other woods put together. So it's appealing to me for 'historically authentic' reasons, even though I know there's probably nothing historically authentic about my recorders and my playing

Olivewood is simply beautiful but as yet I don't yet have anything just for the prettiness and at the moment no excuse to buy anything either...I'm sure I can think of something, though perhaps something I'll use (the 415 descant I bought last year hasn't really been played post playing-in, may have to start again if I ever find a reason to play it )