Older people I can deal with (when they fall over) but younger (than, say 50) I'm flapping about and panicking. What's the number for the ambulance?!?!?!

Has anyone got any advice about slurring (apart from practice)?
On clarinet I just do it and I've tried to slow it down but it's not helping me to work out what I should be doing on recorder (and I can't play one after the other due to mouth issues so it's a long time between one and the other to try to remember). I'm sure I'll get it in the end but it's frustrating

Also, Mr and Mrs upstairs have moved out so I'm making the most of it

Slurring as in getting fingerings neat? Or as in, playing smoothly if the same note has slurs marked over it?

Practice is the key, yes, and it does come with time - doing just two notes at a time, oscillating between them slowly and evenly, and then trying the old dotted quaver-semiquaver alternately trick, first just a pair, then another pair, then doing series of two pairs all under the same slur, then three, then four. Then reverse the rhythm, so that you also learn to slur in the other direction for the same pair of notes. It takes time, listen to yourself hard, and it'll come.

For slurring the same note - just barely barely tongue - I use the softest d I can, like the one the French use, or even n, or l. And.....just a thought....you can cheat with difficult fingering-pairs using this too - whilst switching fingerings, articulate the softest consonant you can find. This is strictly speaking not the done thing, but can come in very very useful when playing a note which just doesn't like sounding without articulation.

*pretends it wasn't her wot said that*

for absent neighbours ....

Which wooden soprano recorder is considered to be a good solo recorder? I am sure there are many. I have a maple one which I am told is good for ensemble playing.

I'm afraid the answer to that is "many" just as you suspected .

For my last exam, I played Castello's sonata prima - the YMOTY player, Charlotte, played the secunda for the woodwind final, to give you an idea of the style of the piece - on a baroque-type descant, in boxwood: I did a pre-exam concert, which my son recorded, and so could listen back to what I was sounding like. I realised straight away that I was pushing the little instrument far too hard, looking for a very open and lound sound, and it just wasn't there . Not surprising really - the piece in question is much better played on a transitional instrument, so pre-baroque: such a recorder looks like a peashooter (as Cyrilla once put it ), has a wide and rather cylindrical bore, making it loud, just a tad raucous if pushed, and clear. My baroque one is too unassuming and sweet really, but would be good for later material. Oddly enough, and it's probably just a reflection of the way I buy music, I seem not to have much later music for descant though - it's much more likely to be for treble, and the material I do have for descant would most of it be best on a peashooter...

*still clings to boxwood though*

I have just had a look on the Early Music Shop's website and am in love with:

Moeck, 4204 Rottenburgh Soprano (Boxwood)
YRS61 Soprano (Boxwood)
Mollenhauer 5123 Denner Sop C" (Olivewood)
Moeck 4208 Rottenburgh Soprano (Rosewood)
Moeck 4204 Rottenburgh Soprano (Boxwood)
Mollenhauer 5122 Denenr Sop (Boxwood)

Looks as if I will have to wait until Xmas. Those of you with multiple recorders, how do you keep them all blown in?

I thought recorder would be a nice cheap hobby, after aquiring my first plastic alto a few months ago.
How wrong I was, as I now realise
I need:
A renaissance recorder as I love that early music stuff,
A baroque ensemble recorder and a solo baroque one too of harder wood
All the above in descant, treble, tenor and bass, and plastic copies of all of these for practice purposes.

So I think I need about ?10,000.

I did some exams ....now I play in the recorder orchestra, it's not hard, actually: I don't play the descant there, except when the really top players are absent, when I'll sometimes be drafted in as a substitute, and I rarely play treble there either, because this tends to be where most of the single-instrument owners land. That means I'm on tenor, bass, great bass or occasionally contra (the last one borrowed), and since we play for almost three hours and within that time are playing four or five pieces, sometimes more, most of my big instruments get a workout. At home I'm trying to learn voice flute, so tend to play that first in any playing session, and with my duetting partner I'll play a mixture of treble, tenor and bass for a couple of hours once a fortnight. That seems to be enough to keep them all ticking over, especially as our harpsichord is currently at low pitch - if my husband is chumming me on that, the voice flute and low treble come out, if I'm on my lonesome, then the rather better high treble gets a blow.

That is exactly what I thought, katemorrisviolin. It is going to cost me more than the acoustic piano and the digital piano put together at this rate.

Thanks, anacrusis. It's a relief to know I don't have to practice playing on 21 recorders (if I ever have that many) every night.

Yay!! new recorders came today!

But I was out all night so I haven't played them yet but they do feel nice in the hand!

With plastic recorders, what care measures should be taken? I've got a cleaning stick but nothing to do on it - what should I use? Also, is it best to leave the recorders assembled or to take them apart after playing?

So excited - can't wait for tomorrow and starting playing. Now I need to buy some proper treble music!

You forgot you need an A415 set as well

Yay indeed

You can put a piece of cloth into the slot at the top of the rod and dry them out. I occaisionally give my plastics a bath in luke warm water other than that I pretty much ignore them. It's probably best to dismantle between playings so the joints don't get stuck.

(in a very small voice: although lovely wooden instruments are lovely, it's still possible to have quite a lot of fun with a few plastic recorders; recorder can still be a reasonably cheap hobby!)

(actually, let me pontificate about wood etc., very briefly in brackets, partly from an organ perspective. Since the sound of a whistle comes from the vibrating air, not from the solid part, the material doesn't matter half as much as shape - design of bore and mouth [proviso: surface finish matters; workability and strength influence what can be achieved, and obviously response to moisture is critical in a recorder; but overall physical shape dominates everything else when it comes to timbre]. As such, I wonder how often recorders in palisander sound "strong and rich in overtones" because good recorder makers associate palisander with that timbre, and select it when they're making and voicing a recorder to sound that way. Perhaps it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy)

RAM, have fun!
Oh, and despite my rant about recorder playing in plastic being cheap and by no means doomed to bad tone, if ever I get the chance of collecting beautiful wooden recorders, I'll give in to temptation very happily...

Limh - Different woods do make a difference. Andante-in-C and I conducted blind tests on a number of our instruments a while back, playing the same music with the same technique each time, repeatedly swapping between instruments, and we were able to identify the differences between recorders of the same model from the same manufacturer in different materials. I think we tested something like six descants and five trebles between us.

However you're right that the player will make more difference to the sound quality than anything else.

Mess. Descant and Treble are going to have their bath today... If I end up with a sopranino and descant the water was too hot....

Perhaps test water with the elbow first and add a few bubbles ...

[Sorry, couldn't resist!! ]

I put it there for someone to comment on - I'm having a happy morning

If I do it in cold water might I get a bass?

I'm rubbish with water temperature so I'm going to run some and leave it then see what it's like.
I'm more worried about getting the bubbles off....

Did you both end up with the same favourite descant and favourite treble?

I do agree, I was only joking.....but if I came into some unexpected money, I would go on a mad spending frenzy in the Early Music Shop. I think it's the same with anything: I did all my guitar grades on a very cheap bottom of the range instrument, and did very well. Someone wise once said to me that it's the soft squidgy thing attatched to the back of the instrument (the player!) that is the most important part of the instrument.
I'm not going to buy a wooden recorder until I get to a half decent standard. I have to save up, anyway. Maybe in a year's time....

Where do all you wooden recorder folk get your feathers from? can you buy them from anywhere?

The feather I use sporadically is left over from when I still played the oboe - I find feathers just a bit freaky, but my parents live in the countryside and from time to time we'll happen across a good long pheasant tailfeather when out on walks. I give them a somewhat neurotic wash in soap and warm water, let them dry and then will use them if needing to do any finnicky but gentle cleaning. Otherwise my recorders get mopped with the silk-hankie-in-slot-of-cleaning-rod arrangement (silk hankies bought cheap from craft shop, white ones, supposedly for painting in pretty colours). I have the Moeck oiling kits for my older instruments, and a recycled from an old shirt strip of linen turned into a pullthrough for oiling the voice flute, which needs different oil because its maker has started the oiling process with different oil.

On wood and sound - limh, it's true that the inner contours and shaping are the most important, but there are a couple of good reasons why the different woods should show slightly different characteristics. I know that there have been claims that one can't tell between materials, but the different woods have different densities, and since generation of sound sets up resonance in any solid body, that factor alone will make some difference in which frequencies and which of their overtones resonate and how. Add to that that the grains are different - I once carved a model ear out of limewood in response to a challenge from a consultant I was working for years ago, and had heard that if you wet wood, the grain rises slightly as the wood at the surface of the carving swells. I duly wet my ear, and then sanded back the resulting fuzzy surface, doing this three or four times. The ear became very very smooth to touch....and the consultant was rather impressed . The point of that being that again, different woods will raise their grain slightly differently when wet: again this is likely to change the sound, and that will vary depending on the structure of the grain. I do find that I can't play the really hard woods that nicely - whatever it is that I do with my approach doesn't seem to work for them all that well: the only exception to that is the one instrument I got to try out which had been thoroughly played in....

I have just read Brian Blood's manual of over 20 pages on how to look after your recorder. Scary. What is the longest anyone can practice on one recorder, be it plastic or wooden, and how much practise do people do each day? I did about 50 minutes yesterday and about the same today, 20 minutes on the wooden and 30 minutes on the plastic.

I was just quoting Piers Adams, who calls the recorder he plays Van Eyck on as 'looking like a peashooter'...




Bagpuss and I used to play in a group where the leader had a cleaning lady called Mabel Parrot. Mabel Parrot thought that she really, in honour of her name, ought to have a pet parrot - and said parrot kindly donated his feathers to our group - who all now proudly bear recorder cases containing Mabel Parrot's parrot's feathers...






Ooo...I know Brian well...he has a Brain The Size of Asia...

I don't practise each day

But when I do - I can't concentrate for much more than about forty minutes to an hour, usually: the longest I think I've ever done has been two hours at a stretch in the run up to some of those exam things, and even then not every day by any means. This is one of the reasons I gave up on memorising scales and arpeggios - had I ever managed to memorise one, it'd have take all my practice session time to learn the lot to a state where I'd not forget them, so opted to learn by playing music.

At the moment, I'll work on the voice flute, some Hotteterre or some Bach, first, whilst my brain is still fresh, until I catch myself drifting off and making too many mistakes. Then I'll move to some lighter relief on the treble, often doodling my way through whatever's lying around without formal working, and if I get a second wind will possibly switch instruments again and do another very short session of work. An intense week involves playing five days, mostly it's fewer than that. Length of time taken on each instrument varies a lot and goes by the sound - once it muffles it's time to think about giving the poor whistle a rest, especially if frequent clearing of the windway is needed. For my 415 treble that can be as little as twenty minutes if the day is humid, or if it's cold - the bass usually lasts rather longer before going hoarse, but starts to protest if it's been played for most of an orchestra rehearsal.



Well, it's a very good term, and I've talked of wanting a peashooter ever since I read it .

On a Good Day I might get an hour's practice in. But, that won't all be on the one instrument! How long I play on one instrument is as variable as the weather (almost literally - yesterday at my lesson everything fugged up really really quickly, which teacher kindly proposed was down to the recent weather conditions. The lots of rain=high humidity=recorder already partially fugged up before you even start )

The problem at the moment is that I am trying to do too much on one instrument - with exam imminent (G7 on 29th June), I have my list A piece (wot I played at Egham), my list B piece, and a whole load of scales. Definitely pushing it on the one instrument, but I want to practise on the instrument I'll be using in the exam. I suppose I should do scales at lunchtime and pieces after work! Of course, it won't be a problem come the exam, as I won't have to do every single scale and arpeggio (three or four times each until I get it right enough times in a row )

I practice violin for an hour about 5 times a week as it is my "main" instrument. Recorder gets whatever time I can find in between, so it may be 5 or 6 20-minute toots a week, or one 3/4 hour session with a couple of ten minute toots a week. All on plastic. I wish it could be more.

Although, over the last fortnight I've been thinking about switching to considering my recorder my main instrument, because I'm better at it after 4 months of work than I am at violin after 2 years of work.
Decisions, decisions.......I'm a working married mum of teenagers so time is so precious........

Good luck Maizie!

Thanks for your answers, everyone. They are really helpful. I imagine that the people who go to SRP sessions for three hours must have to take more than one recorder.

That is good going, katemorrisviolin, as far as your practising is going, especially with your time limitations.

Good luck for your exam, Maizie.

Er, well, yes, this is only achieved by having a shocking neglectful attitude towards housework.....and a husband who would rather have a happy wife than a clean kitchen.

Anyone starting the pinched notes ?

Avoiding pinching just now....


....cut thumb gradually improving, but still have steristrips in evidence.....

I have only done high E.

Which recorder is that on? I can comfortably get up to the C (above the stave) on descant and F (again above the stave) on treble (and dare I say sopranino?! ) but that's the extent at the moment.

I've been thoroughly enjoying messing about with my new recorders - the treble certainly is a wonderful instrument . I really want to start playing seriously and to that extent I'd like to buy some proper recorder music. Is there anything that anybody can suggest in the vein of Telemann (but not a fiendishly fast or difficult piece! ), as I really enjoy his music?

Two octaves will keep you going for a goodly long time
In TG scales/arps, you won't need a G until G6, and then Ab pops up in G7. There's an optional F# in G8.

At my first lesson when I restarted, one of the first things we did was go through 'all' the notes on my treble recorder. I was OK to F, and I knew G...but that day I learned F#, Ab, A, Bb, B and C! You don't need top C very often (I believe Telemann has one tucked in a sonata somewhere...)

Speaking of Telemann, RAM, the Fantasias would be a good investment if you are a fan. Check the syllabuses, but I'm pretty sure there are movements for all levels of players.
You should be able to find a facsimilie on IMSLP, though note that might be in the wrong clef (French violin clef, treble clef but with G on bottom line) - I'd not recommend using a French violin clef version just yet, but proper published editions will be in normal treble clef There may be treble clef version on IMSLP too if you're lucky, but either version would at least give you an idea of the complexity of the music.

A plastic Yahama Soprano YRS 302B and a wooden Yahama YRS-44. I could do it in isolation but not within a piece of music neatly.

It really is great fun messing about with the recorders. Tons to learn I am looking foward to learning properly. I've been playing Christmas songs this evening.

OK, I've more time this morning so I've had a look.
A movement from a Telemann Fantasia first appeara on a grade syllabus at G3 (TG). Faber's "Concert Repertoire" has a coulple of Telemann pieces in that appear at G2 (AB, LCM and TG, for the thoroughly minded!) [or if you buy Faber's "First Repertoire", it has the same pieces in it but for descant rather than treble]

I am rubbish at working out how easy music is or isn't by looking at it still So I am very reliant on grade listings - but of course that doesn't mean you can't find things within the same book that are less than G3, or that you have to wait ages before having a stab at it (like when my teacher lets me murder something from the FRSM list now and again )

For anyone and everyone, here is a link to the "Scores featuring the recorder" on IMSLP: Link There is a sensibly clef'd version of the fantasias for treble recorder there

Also to note, if you are looking at IMSLP or other similar facsimilie-type things. When sufficiently old music refers to being for 'flute', it means a recorder. A bit later, you find the transverse flute come in, and that's what we call a flute these days.
Recorder = flute a bec = flauto dolce = English flute = 'flute'
Modern flute = transverse flute = traverso = German flute = 'flute'
With music this old, though, it's worth remembering that it was really written for anyone to play on any instrument. One of my G7 pieces was written for musette or violin or flute or recorder or any other instrument (yes, that's really what the original front cover says! ) So if you find a bit of music that fits and it doesn't say 'recorder', it doesn't mean you can't play it

A lot of viol music will say for recorders or viols. Don't forget vocal music as well - madrigals, mass settings, motets, these can often be played instrumentally. In fact some 'lost' choral works have been recovered from instrumental versions of them.

Finding them quite challenging, to put it mildly!
High A, Bb and C so far (using Orr Bk 2).

Have decided to take the plunge and enter for G1 (treble) in the autumn. Thought I needed something to aim for...

Well done, niobe. Which pieces are you playing? It will be a while before I do grade anything but am enjoying the start of the journey and am sure my teacher will suggest it when she thinks I am ready.

oh I'm getting so depressed about practice. As a parent of a 4-year old who doesn't need sleep, and working in the public sector where they've sacked about 30% of the staff but think the rest of us can do all their work on top of ours while reorganising completely the way we do everything, I seem lucky if I get 5 minutes in a day, grabbed at a bus-stop while cycling to or from work. This is my first time off since 7.15 yesterday morning, and I can hardly start recordering at midnight!

Thank you Maizie for saying we can get by with 2 octaves for a while. That's a relief.

(back to very small voice: thanks, all, for comments on instrument materials. Oh, no, I didn't mean that I don't think there's any influence of wood; I just was getting a geeky-science wonder about how important it is compared to other things. Anacrusis, thanks, yes, utterly agreed about the effect of grain and surface of different woods, especially around the windway and mouth. I still need convincing about resonance! You're making me think. KatyJay, thanks for sharing experiment you did with Andante-in-C. Can you also distinguish different examples of the same model in the same wood? (i.e. is there much variation caused by the individual hand finishing and voicing of good-quality instruments?). Sorry, anyway, everyone, to go on at such length. Can't help it, I'm a geeky-science-type by education and keep trying to understand things that don't really matter. I'll shut up now...)

Practical question: with my aulos treble, the aulos recommended fingering for 2nd octave E-flat is X12-456-, which works for me, but is very different to Dolmetsch's X12--56- and X12--567, neither of which is any good at all for me. Is this normal for conventional fingerings to fail miserably for the higher notes, or am I doing something wrong? For top F-sharp, Aulos calmly gives X1-345-7, which I've tried in isolation, not in music, and seems OK, but I've never seen it anywhere else. Is there any point in learning it if it's aulos-specific; should it work?

Thanks for putting up with me, all...

Once you get up to those notes, they do tend to need a bit of experimenting with - they unfortunately do tend to be instrument specific (probably actually manufacturer specific, but if you're like me you have three differenat brands). So if you find something that works, learn that one!
I think that the recorder fingerlings web page has fingerings arranged by brand so you can look up what different manufacturers recommend. Or you could just look up the note and try all the versions and see what works best for your instrument

Haven't decided on the pieces yet but thought I would stick to one book (for practical reasons) so I'm waiting for Time Pieces vol 1 to arrive and will then make my choices from the AB options.
Need to have a goal to keep myself focussed otherwise, as a self study player, I know I would readily stay within my comfort zone - and that comfort zone would be very comfy!

Keep going Limh, and do experiment with mutes for practice at odd times of the night. Remember you can practice your finger dexterity without blowing, too, and also mental visualisation of your playing away from the instrument also is of huge benefit.
Your attention to detail is a good thing, and entirely necessary for any musician who's serious about making progress.
Niobe, there are some super pieces in Time Pieces vol. 1, it really is a very enjoyable book.

Thanks, that's good to know. I don't have any local contacts who play recorder so I decided to buy Time Pieces on the basis of the AB G1 list - it just seemed easier to work from one book as we generally do for other exams.

niobe, good luck, it's a wonderful journey. I'm glad you're asking about suitable material to play; you are so right about finding a way to set yourself a goal and pull yourself out of the comfort zone. That is something I find difficult without the guidance of a teacher.

KateMorris and Maizie, thanks so much for the encouragement which caught me at just the right moment. It hadn't occurred to me that having to practise silently might actually be a positive advantage from time to time. I'm off to finger quietly...

Don't know if SRP may be of assistance here? (www.srp.org.uk)

Just a quick question - when buying recorder music, if the type of recorder that the musuic is written for is not specified will it be suitable for all recorders as they are all in the same key?

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/The-Ba...corder/6375216#

Gosh, how daft is that? They really don't specify, and though the answer is likely to be that this has been put out by someone who doesn't know that there is more than one size, you can't be sure...especially as a great deal of the recorder music from mainstream baroque would be for treble . So- I'd guess it's for descant, but there is no guarantee. The two crits at the bottom of the webpage suggest it's suitable for kids, and again that would tend to support the descant theory, but it'd be nice to know for certain, wouldn't it?

Hi Tenor Viol, thanks for mentioning the SRP and I have made contact with a branch.
My Other Half is buying Time Pieces for my birthday so I hope it will arrive this week!

I believe the same thing may be available from abrsm, here, where it's classified as descant.

Hhmmmm - how annoying I was hoping it'd be for treble.

Would it work to play it on treble or would things be harder than they should be? Does anybody know of any collections of this sort that are for treble and preferably of varying difficulty.

Thanks limh and anacrusis for the help

The book is also listed on musicroom's website, which conveniently has a sample of one page. The trumpet voluntary goes down to the low D, so descant it is.

The Baroque Solo Book is for treble. It's imtermediate to advanced standard but has a lot of music in it so will last you a long time.