Thanks, notmusimum, I couldn't see any other makes, but thought I may as well check just in case.

Anacrusis, it's for a physics project (investigating frequency spectrums of different sizes and woods/plastic, etc), not to be played (very much) for the pleasure. But I thought I may as well get the best one within reason just in case i one day have the urge to play anything earsplittingly high. In the mean time, my physics set will have to put up with it for 2 weeks

Thinking of getting a wooden tenor over the summer. Anyone got any good recomendations? Currently, have a Moeck Rotenburg descant (palisander) and treble (ebony)...so that's a possibility.

I'll try to remember to bring my Kung Studio tenor along at the weekend, Hillyb, and you can try that.

Alternatively, if you're free on Friday morning, a few of us are going to the Early Music Shop in Saltaire.

Thanks, KJ. I have already tried your Kung and it was very nice (it's on my list of possibles!). Would love to join you on Friday morning but it's my last day at work before the summer hols!!

The thing with tenors is that because they are right at the extremes of one's stretch, different ones will work for different people.

I couldn't get on with either keyed or keyless Moeck Rottenburghs - my right hand didn't sit right on either. And that's despite the fact my good descant and treble are both Rotties.

Eep poor things.
At the request of my mother-in-law, I got out my sopranino this evening - played the slow movement from a Vivaldi concerto in C, but on my treble, and when she asked about the sopranino, produced it to do only the first bar - since that was already too painful for me to be able to continue, you can imagine just what effect a garklein would have . Puts me in mind of what Shakespeare had had to say about bagpipes being able to make grown men incontinent at the very sound.....

I agree with Shakespeare other half's a scot . Seriously I was fine about them until I was in a really tiny pub wiht some friends when these pipers turned up. The noise was unbearable.

Strange Emsoboe loves both the high pitch of the Gark and sopranino at the same taiem as the very low notes on the Bari Sax (which are great to play behind some unsuspecting person).

I love playing titchy recorders, but find I have to blow really gently to stop them squeeling. Still doesn't stop the love affair with my decant and sopranino. However I feel most comfortable playing the treble. I can be most expressive with it.

It is just having played cor anglais, and spent a spell using German Fingerings, I keep having to remind myself what the English ones are.

The London Recorder Centre - So many beautiful Instruments. I was too nervous to have a go as well as being hot and flustered from the tube.

But I have discovered that keyless Tenors will not be a problem. Don't know why, but I just like the idea of being rid of the keys.

The young Lady in there was very helpful and I should have listened to her and had a go, but I'm sure if I had I wouldn't have left empty handed.

On an aesthetic level I'm very drawn to the Aura Conservatorium recorders.

Which raises a question which puzzles me a little. Why is the Cor notated as a transposing instrument, whilst recorder players are expected to learn separate descant and treble fingerings? Just tradition, or what?

I have a fear if I go to Chiltern Street with it being home to both Howarths and the London Recorder Centre its a place to visit without my credit card or I will have new expensive instruments and a very unhappy husband.




German recorder fingerings have the Treble as a Transposing instrument.

But we shouldn't use German recorder fingerings...they're a compromise too far, made in the interests of making it "easy" to teach kids the recorder, and I'm sure are partly responsible for the current thinking about recorders being ill-tuned toys .

I'd agree with the keys thing - am very lucky to have rather large hands anyway, with long little fingers, but even bass recorders, where clearly the keys are needed, feel unwieldy to me - I also find the noise of them disturbing.

It gets more complicated still with the in-between recorders - fourth flutes, fifth flutes, voice flutes, all needing the player to learn the fingering set over again. I'd love to own a voice flute, so that I could play baroque flute repertoire, but am rather daunted by the idea of reprogramming my brain and fingers - it took me a whole summer to absorb treble fingerings properly twenty years ago, so I can't think how long it would take me to learn the voice flute .

I only learnt them because I was in germany at the time and wanted to play some treble recorder music. I knew the English fingerings first! Telemann I think it was, certainly something not composed for an ill-tuned toy. Can't remember what the piece was, can remember it was nice. It isn't as good as the Handel I'm learning now.

I actually know the English fingerings but occasionally the 'ol brain goes and does a flip-out!

Voice flute!
(It's easier than you think - pretend it's a bass and transpose the key-signature up a minor third)

W

(Don't tell your teacher I said that!)

We've had a discussion on those lines, and I've a feeling she told me that one too...then backtracked as being not a good idea .
I have a problem with it anyway, though....I've never learned to play the bass properly - though I can read the bass clef fluently enough if doodling on a piano, I find it very difficult to translate that into recorder fingerings; my bass is a pathetic excuse for an instrument, I've never been that drawn to consort music and have in any case found it difficult to find other recorder players here, so have been able to get away with just being a treble-clef player up 'til now .

This link was posted to a thread in the General Music forum:

http://www.paythepiper.co.uk/switching.asp


On the subject of the recorder (as a possible stepping stone to learning orchestra woodwinds):

"To experienced players the most important things about playing a woodwind instrument are the control of the breathing, and the tricky "embouchure" - the position of the jaw, lips, teeth and tongue and the way they act to create and control the sound. And of course the recorder is little or no help here - it has no embouchure to speak of (you just stick it in your mouth and blow!) and the amount of air required is tiny compared to the other instruments. So our advice about the recorder is ..... forget it! Use it for what it is - a very cheap and easily obtainable instrument that is easy to play and completely maintenance-free, and therefore extremely useful in primary schools. In the hands of skilled and enthusiastic players it can also be very beautiful, but as a stepping-stone to orchestral instruments it has little value."

Hmmm....

Please! This is the out of tune plastic toy phenoninum.

Oh start the recorder at 7 Jo then you can graduate to a "proper" woodwind instrument.

Well I play two families of Proper Woodind instruments the Recorder family and the Oboe family.

"a very cheap and easily obtainable instrument that is easy to play and completely maintenance-free"

That's the bit that made me laugh. Clearly written by someone who's never looked at buying a good quality wooden treble, never looked after a wooden recorder and doesn't make a distinction between "easy to make a noise out of" and "easy to play musically".

Cheap...hmm, even good recorders are less than good [most other instruments]. The only problem is that you can't just have one...

As for 'completely maintainance-free' ....that is until they need oiling, then get a crack, get fixed wrong because they're not particularly common, develop mildew... you get the picture

maintainance free... I'll remember that when I'm lovingly oiling mine.

Control of the breathing is just as important on the recorder as it is, say, on flute or clari! It's different, yes, but no less important.



Very cheap...er...yes it can be, but clearly whoever wrote this hasn't seen some of the wooden instruments you can purchase...
And as for 'completely maintenance-free', I shan't start...
Oh, and the final quote, I played recorder for three years before starting the clarinet. I found a good proportion of my recorder knowledge was nicely transferable...

But Barri and I who have used the recorder successfully as a stepping stone to another musical instrument, still value the recorder as a "proper instrument"

It did help me with Oboe fingering, it did not help me with the embouchure at all.

I would still teach recorders to school children. It provides them two benefits. if they do go on and learn another woodwind instrument, they have been taught some idea about breathing, and the basis of fingering.

It also gives them an instrument in its own right to learn, an instrument where there is plenty of consort music written so gives them the opportunity to play chamber music at an early age.

I don't think the problem is using the Recorder to move to an additional instrument. I don't know if this is what the other poster meant and I realise that it's been discussed before. The problem seems to be more to do with not getting the basics when learning Recorder. Quite often the Recorder is seen as a lesser instrument that doesn't require any specialist teaching so breathing etc it isn't taught to a really high standard.

Personally from experience the lack of skills on the part of people teaching Recorder in Primary school is much more of a problem than it being used as a basis to move on from. Perhaps if younger children were taught properly then there wouldn't be the abandonment of Recorder that there now is.

Our Music Service in the last year has begun to recognise that children want to continue at High School and some now do so. I wonder how many high schools throughout the country have someone in to teach Recorder. One member of staff brought about this change, she's not a Recorder specialist but had the enthusiasm and skills to keep people moving, hence making progress. If people feel they are achieving then they won't want to give up.

I was talking to my younger son's year 2 teacher.

She agree's there is nothing worse than the sound of thiry children screeching their overblown out-of tune plastic toys at you, yet she is a great fan of the recorder as an instrument. I said it all came down to the way the way they were taught to blow it from the start.

My aim is to become more of recorder specialist to become more attractive to the local music services, so they can see me as a singer and recorder player able to work with the Primary and Secondary sectors.

And the rest of us in this thread don't??

Recorder is my second study instrument (first study isn't woodwind) and I'm officially less bad at it than I am at any other instrument (I have the same grade in recorder and flute, but flute was two marks lower).



I posted the link as an example of the sort of misunderstanding that is prevalent when it comes to the recorder. That website seems to make three main points, two of which I disagree with.

'The recorder is no use as a stepping stone to other woodwinds.' - Disagree. Many of us started on recorder and then took up other woodwinds and found it gave us a head-start.
'It's cheap, maintenance free and easy to play.' - Disagree. It /can/ be cheap, but wooden ones aren't, nor are they maintenance free, and saying it's easy just reinforces the whole 'the recorder is just a silly kiddy instrument' myth.
"In the hands of skilled and enthusiastic players it can also be very beautiful" - Agree. Unfortunately this was the only hint given in that entire article of the fact that the recorder is a real instrument in its own right.

That article gave the impression that there are two main perceived purposes for the recorder - a stepping stone to other instruments (which the author disputes) and as a kids instrument in primary schools.
There's very little to alert people to the fact that it's just as much a real instrument as any other.

tI isn't that I don't agree with you on the aspects of how Recorder is approached. The girls go mad if I mess about and blow the Recorder I know exactly where the Teacher is coming from. It is all about the basics and getting them right. Plastic Recorders being abused is a mile away form someone learning to play the Recorder. Most Children won't be able to play properly without being taught correct technique. Sadly a lot of the people teaching in Primary school don't have the techniques, or interest, to pass on.

As I said one person can change things so good luck with your plans. It's great that someone is prepared to do something about it.

I agree with Teigr, even with my limited knowledge I recognise that Recorder only worked as a stepping stone to Oboe from the reading of the music aspect. It certainly gave emsoboe the confidence to try another woodwind instrument and whilst all her woodwind playing supports itself from the written music angle there isn't a huge similarity between the insturments when attempting to play them properly. It's strange that no matter where she wanders off to in her playing experiences she always goes back to Recorder and continuing to play after Primary was very important to her.

T. so do you or do you not agree that by starting primary school children with decent recorder teachers on the recorder and by getting them to the level that you have descant/ treble/tenor consorts around by year 6 you are failing their musical education or bringing it on.

Personally by that age I'd want there to be one bass player too so that the recorder is a proper instrument is getting cemented.

One or two of the better players may even have wooden recorders by years 5-6 if they start to learn in years 2 and 3.

The thing is they need proper tuition from proper recorder teachers.

Sore point at the moment...

W

Except I never said that!

I could already play the recorder when I started clarinet and it /did/ help. I can't credit it with helping with notation as I already had that from piano before I started recorder. But it meant I was used to thinking in terms of breathing, tonguing, slurring, etc, and had a head-start with the fingering. It also meant I'd got some experience of ensemble playing, which is something I /hadn't/ got from the piano.



Some of it may be conceptual, rather than physical, but the similarities are there. One of my organ teachers often talks about articulation in terms of bowing, which is fine as I understand what she means. Of course I'm not actually using a bow, but it's a handy way of describing the effect we're looking for.
When you already play recorder and take up another woodwind, you've already got a woodwind mindset established. You already know how to adjust your tuning and volume by altering the airflow. Your fingers are used to the general type of movements and co-ordination that's necessary, even if the actual fingerings are different. The details of tonguing might be different, but the concept is the same - you keep a steady airflow and break it with your tongue to separate the notes, rather than trying to use a separate breath for each note.
Someone starting a woodwind instrument with no prior instrumental experience, or coming from a piano or strings background, is going to have to get used to all of this from scratch, while someone coming from recorder will find a lot of it fairly instinctive.

This is why I disagree with the website article, which says that the recorder is no use as a stepping stone to other woodwinds.

I've read that article in the past and fumed as well!

Taught well the instrument is a wonderful stepping stone to other woodwinds as well as a fantastic instrument in its own right.

The biggest problem the instrument has is in much of it's teaching........I won't continue as I know I'm typing to the converted.

I think the thing I disagreed with most was the comment about breath control. Of all the woodwinds I play I find breath control most critical on the recorder. Clarinets/saxophones are very forgiving of occaisional blips in control, recorders amplify everything.

I know Willobie

Is there anything those of us who are enlightened can do about it. The recorder may be my fourth instrument pushing third, but that does not mean I am not passionate about it, and boy do I know about how exacting the breath control is! Fortunately years as a singer and oboist have taught me the odd thing or two about breathing, and years as a musician mean that my ear will not accept anything except the best from any instrument I stick in my mouth so horrid tone and bad articulation are not acceptable options.

Hear, hear! I found going back to the oboe after having taken the recorder seriously for a year or two very interesting - I had lost my "lip" but still had a better tone than I'd had before, because instead of using a degree of physical strength to support the sound just anyhow, I'd had to learn to control my breathing properly - the lower pressures required mean you have to learn to support the airflow in the right way if you don't want to sound like a kid playing on a toy...

...and it took a specialist recorder teacher to show me how to articulate and introduce any kind of subtlety into what I was doing, in other words to make a musician out of me .

Sorry I didn't mean to imply that my thoughts were yours. Just agreeing with your general musings.

I do think that Recorder could provide a stepping stone to other instruments but don't see why it should be like that and can't be enjoyed for it's own sake. It's really gone from could to would in lots of situations in that there are no opportunities to continue at high school and little specialist teaching.

Playing any woodwind instrument will help on one level with others and yes the student will be in the mindset and undertand about breath generally. Frankly I don't think this happens too much with Recorder teaching no matter how young the children are when they start. Emsoboe probably has brought more to her Recorder playing from Oboe rather than the other way round.

I know I'm sighting one families experience but it's all in the quality of the teaching and I don't think our experiences were much different to other forumites. Basically a disinterested Brass player who had little knowledge of Recorder technique and not much inclination to learn it, a lot of the time she turned up late or not at all.

The good thing about our area is the Recorder ensembles which do have all the Recorders in there and teachers who enocurage development to the best of their ability even though they themselves are not specialists.

The understanding of breath control will be very superficial though and whilst there are some transferable skills they can't be that indepth as everyone would be able to play every instrument and we know it's not true.

I think it's perfectly fine as a serious instrument in its own right /and/ useful as a stepping stone to other woodwinds.
The thing thing that's so horrible about that website article is that it doesn't really acknowledge either of these facets, instead dismissing it as just a cheap and easy instrument for primary schools.



Presumably due to having better teaching on oboe than recorder?
There's definitely no reason why people can use other woodwinds as stepping stones to recorder. :-)
Whether it works with recorder being the first woodwind depends on whether the recorder tuition is up to scratch.



That's exactly the problem. Turn a whole class of kids, armed with recorders (some of very dubious quality), loose with little or no specialist teaching and you have the very thing that's given the recorder such a poor image.
If recorder is going to be taught in primary schools, it would be better taught by recorder specialists, if possible to smaller groups rather than whole classes at a time, and the kids should have reasonable quality plastic instruments (e.g. Aulos, Yamaha, Dolmetsch).
I'm in possession of a 99p "recorder" (bought from a well-known high street chain) and it is a horrible horrible thing. I'm an OKish recorder player and I can't make it sound nice. It's barely playable. (I don't have it for recorder-related purposes, but to use as part of a music tech project, but it's so truly dire that I'm weighing up the possibility of using Yamahas for that instead).

I know someone who's a primary school teacher and who doesn't play any instruments herself, but is teaching recorder in school. How can she teach something she doesn't really understand herself?!
That's even worse than the example you cite, where at least the non-specialist teacher was some sort of muso!



Ensemble playing is one of the best things about playing the recorder.
I changed schools after year 5, and everyone at my new school had been learning recorder since year 4, so in year 6 (my first year there) we did stuff for SSAT recorders.
In senior school we had a small baroque recorder ensemble (playing mostly SATB, 2 to a part).



There's enough in common between the different woodwinds that playing any one of them gives you a headstart on the others, compared to starting with no prior woodwind experience. Of course there's still a lot of instrument-specific technique to be tackled with each new instrument and not every instrument will suit every person.

I'd agree that the best woodwind teaching one experiences is likely to be of benefit to any other wind one learns.

For me, that's been the recorder teaching I've been lucky enough to find, as it happens - my two recorder teachers have been and are so much better than the teaching I'd had on the oboe, that, had I had those recorder teachers first, I could have brought a lot to the oboe from my recorder-playing. Who knows, I might even still be an oboist. Glad I'm not, though...too much pressure .

Just a pity that recorder teaching is valued so little that it gets relegated to the untaught instructor to fit in with whatever else constitutes music in schools, so that the recorder goes on not being valued as something worth learning, whether in its own right, or as a stepping stone to others .

The best thing I ever did for my breathing was some very serious swimming training. 3 miles a week with the majority being crawl, and at least one session using hand paddles.

What this did to strengthen my lungs was amazing. I got to 6 stokes per breath and a long underwater start to each length.

I learnt Pilates and continue to practice it. It serves me well for singing breathing, recorder breathing, and oboe breathing. Recorder breathing is closest to singing breathing, the same muscles are required and the same ear needed to keep control of the tone.

Even after a Caesarean section I have good tough abdominal muscles for support, and I can feel good supportive lateral intercostal breathing.

argh, not another thread heading underwater !
*goes off to play van Eyck on the tenor*.

Cycling has done my cardiovascular system the world of good. I think any exercise that gets you breathing fully and deeply is going to help to some extent.

Anyway, getting back to recorders...having previously bounced loudly on this thread and apparently jinxed things, this time I'll be a bit quieter and just say: I tentatively have lessons starting in September with a Proper Recorder Teacher (just the one *bounce*, though, I'm determined this time it'll work out!)

hooray, fantastic news. If only there were a good database of specialist recorder teachers...and if only there were more in Scotland, since it took me a good couple of months to find anyone willing to take me on, a gem as it happens, but living on the opposite coast of the country to where I do .

I know the answer is in this thread, but I'm having difficulties reading through 43 pages to find what I want, so here goes:
Can anyone recommend a book/books/pieces for improving my treble recorder playing? I've got a few sonatas and I'm thinking of ordering the second "Time Pieces" book, but I'm also thinking about some sort of tutor book. I reckon I'm around Grade 4/5 level and I thought that this summer might be a good time to polish myself up a bit.

Hi FC.
You could try the Goodyear tutor for the alto recorder or Alan Davis' book on Treble Recorder Technique. There are plenty of easy sonatas by James Hook. They are a good start and fun and tuneful to play.

Thank you petrat.
I'm hoping to get a wooden treble later this year

No, I headed underwater. I play my van Eyck on the Descant, that's because I'm a little recorder person.
I like making the most pleasant sound I can from the Treble upwards. My tenor and I are not best friends yet.

I do play van Eyck on the descant too - my use of the tenor at times is for a couple of reasons - firstly, to challenge breathing, secondly, the bigger size of instrument is also more difficult to play neatly at speed - so if I can get a piece up to speed on that, I have the bonus of it being much less stress on my ears whilst working on it, and will also find it much easier to play well on the descant .

I bought my Dream descant specifically for van Eyck. The tone is great though I find it utterly unforgiving of any fingering discrepancies - eg playing a 2nd octave A any finger left even close to another hole (yes even RH little finger) results in a note that can only really be described as an Ab (flat A is too high )

*twitch, twitch*
argh, you've just reminded me to hanker after more recorders...... .

I know I posted asking for help with what to get next....but still haven't decided. Thankfully the budget is empty anyway

I was contemplating getting a Dream for the Van Eyck but they are quite fun on tenor actually, if less brilliant. The Kung treble I got is superb for Baroque but maybe I should go for one more powerful for the more modern stuff. My teacher put me in touch with someone who works mainly at A=415 'if I can lay my hands on one', and have just started French Baroque - could be voice flutes next. Oh, still don't have a bass or sop yet.

I used to have a beautiful A 415 alto. It was an ebony one, a Stanesby reproduction by Fehr, a maker that I admire very much. It had single holes and a lovely creamy sound that my teacher loved. I wish that I could have afforded to keep all of my recorders over the years but the mortgage got in the way. My search for a subcontrabass has come to an end too. I have a maker but also a price tag of £9000 so I shall have to pass on that. The Kung contra will be my next buy.

Go on get the Dream you know you want to! I love the tone it produces....it is a bit of a brute if I'm being honest and not really a 'blending' instrument. I was planning to get one of the all plastic ones but one of the all wood ones that were at the Greenwich festival had a big pink flashing neon 'BUY ME' sign over it (I pretended I was being virtuous having walked away from the most gorgous cherrywood Kung on the grounds that I couldn't justify the cost')

I suppose it goes back to having a recorder for every occasion, or the best compromise...

The Dream range are fabulous value and superbly styled, but they aren't really suitable for extensive high-note music. If you compare them with a much more expensive 'Ganassi' type recorder there's much less undercutting of the toneholes. On the other hand, some of the so-called 'baroque' models from say Küng can sound surprisingly full on the bottom range, but still have enough character and subtlety for the higher tesssitura - more money of course too!

That's the trouble with recorders, once you get started there's no end to what you could feel the 'need' to buy