Welcome to the fora EMC. Lovely to see another recorder player here. I feel the need to buy several more recorders, and all of the ones that I have ever owned back again too. I think that the only way that I will ever get my subcontrabass is to make one. (First catch some big termites and choose my tree trunk I think!)
Nice website by the way.

Thanks for the welcome petrat

If Fred Morgan made all those drawings and measurements of lovely historical recorders, perhaps someone can make a DIY subcontrabass drawings set? I'll buy the paper and pencils...

I bet there's some very handy folk around who'd welcome a challenge - just a bit of reverse engineering and a trip to Jewsons!

At last a thought for what to do with the tree I have to have chopped down next month! It has huge veins running through the trunk that make the wood unsuitable for doing much with.

One day I hope my skill level will justify a really really good recorder, but for the meantime the mass produced wooden ones are fine. I think to progress further I need to find a real specialist but would have real difficulty finding the nerve to approach one or the cash to pay one

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If Fred Morgan made all those drawings and measurements of lovely historical recorders, perhaps someone can make a DIY subcontrabass drawings set? I'll buy the paper and pencils...

I bet there's some very handy folk around who'd welcome a challenge - just a bit of reverse engineering and a trip to Jewsons!
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Lateral thinking is always good! I have actually looked into making a recorder on a week's course but alas a subby was not possible. This may be a totally stupid idea but a renaissance recorder is simply a tube with a few extra bits fitted so I am toying with the thought of getting a length of drain pipe, adding a wooden headjoint and keys somehow and making my own Heath Robinson one! I know a metal worker or two who might just be prepared to help with the keywork. With a nice paint effect it could look like finest ebony on a good day with the light behind it.

The Paetzold humungous recorders look like IKEA flatpacks, folks... .

*tries to think of suitable IKEA-style name for a subcontrabass*. "Fooooomp" maybe?

Or maybe WHOOOOOM! Does everybody remember the elephant joke?

Don't think I've ever heard the elephant joke: do tell....

I'll add it to the jokes thread in the cafe.

*disappointed* That means I'll have to go in the cafe...
*goes on an elephant-hunt*

*decides she doesn't need a subcontrabass recorder - not even a flatpack one* .

Just a quick happy post as I now have a maple Moeck Rottenburgh which is very nice and sounds lovely and does the things that my plastic Aulos didn't do. And I got it (second hand) for a ridiculous bargain which is always good.

Happy recorder fun!

Moose

Well done! Hope you get hours of pleasure form your new Recorder.

Oooooh, sounds nice......enjoy

mum came around with an early birthday pressie. I wanted to open it early so she could hear how it sounded and she presented me with 'baby'.

'Baby' is a Moeck Rottenburgh Sopranino in Box. Much as I am fond of all my recorders I now have a favourite child.

I have never cone across such sweet a toned Sopranino in my life. She is a delight to play, and confirmed I am definately a small recorder player.

I can produce nice tones from my Adler, but it is like chalk and cheese a Moeck Rottenburgh is another ballgame.

Emsoboe has a Moeck Rottenburgh Sopranino, it also has a lovely sound.

Hope you enjoy yours.

Sweeeeet!

I recommend getting hold of the music 'The Bird Fancier's Delight' - a collection of short pieces from the early 18th century that were meant for training birds. "A variety of species including nightingale, bullfinch, blackbird, canary, woodlark, skylark, linnett, parrot, mynah bird and house sparrow could be trained by placing them in a darkened cage and playing a suitable tune to them over and over again on a bird flageolet or a small recorder..."

Also, many years ago, I remember seeing Michaela Petri live, playing the Vivaldi Concerto RV443 on a Moeck Rottenburgh sopranino - sparkling and virtuosic for sure. There's a YouTube performance by her HERE.

I hope it gives much pleasure!

I'm getting hold of RV443. I should manage the largo. I can always work my way up to the other movemements. The Bird Fanciers Delight sounds like fun.

The Vivaldi's a fellowship piece, folks.
I know because I tried to learn it before even getting any lessons, and was suitably stunned at my audacity when I finally found it on an exam list...

Having said which, I did give the largo a blast at YAP and AP's wedding - on a treble, to save everyone's ears - and it cleared the room....

I can't decide on my favourite recording - it wouldn't be Michala Petri, she's brilliant but doesn't move me. Probably Marion Berbruggen, or maybe Dan Laurin, who also plays it on a treble.

That has to be one of my favourite pieces both to play and to listed to. For me the choise has to be Giovanni Antonini. Not to everyone's taste I know, but for bright and bubbly Italian baroque stuff his performances really work. It took me several weeks of slow donkey work to get the notes under my fingers.

He's on Youtube playing that - we have a friend who says he doesn't like listening to Italian music unless played by Italians, so he'd love that performance too... it is most theatrical....I'm pretty sure I've posted the link before, but amazingly this thread is rather long now, so for anyone who missed it and wants it again - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U67EHW13-kY

Needless to say, the time I was attempting to learn the piece, it took me rather more than a few weeks to get anywhere much - it was before I'd learned double-tonguing, and although I might manage to make a slightly better fist of it these days, I'd still not try to perform it. *hopes she might one day be good enough for this one*.

This is just making me more determined!
Anyway, I think "Baby" has a better tone.

better tone than what?

Giovanni Antonini's Sopranino recorder.

I like his performance, but prefer Petri's steadier tempi.

I feel able to attempt the largo... as for the rest, well I think it will come in time, but probably lots of it.

However I feel comfortable with small recorders. My fingers feel more flexible with them for some reason... probably something to do with small hands.

To be fair it isn't the best recording. I would be impressed if your boxwood Rotty sounded as fine as his ebony sop. You must have had a very lucky find indeed. Have fun with the Vivaldi.

seing Antonini perform helped me to try to channel movement whilst playing a bit more - his gymnastics are distracting, to say the least...I once saw him live, and had to shut my eyes to be able to listen.

On the size of hands thing - like Robodoc, I know my gloves size, and for the same reason... with a size 8 hand, I'm completely comfortable with my keyless tenor, and just as well: I'm learning Shinohara's "Fragmente", which bounces around from the top of its range to the bottom and back. Can't say it makes the most of the wonderful mellifluous tone of a tenor though .

Yes, he does like to conduct with his whole body when he performs. Still my favourite Italian baroque soloist though.

I'm currently in the middle of the Recorder Summer School near Beverley. The 'course concert' last night was given by the Flanders Recorder Quartet. It was absolutely stunning - not sure whether we should be inspired or demoralised...

W

Oooh fantastic - again, they're on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kLl3WTlfzo...feature=related - and I've been lucky enough to have shaken hands and had a chat with both Han Tol (the really really tall chap) from the Flanders Quartet, and Antonini (who isn't tall at all) too .

If it isn't too disloyal, though, my "best" handshake is still Alfred Brendel .

This is a while off yet, but I was wondering if anyone might be able to help...

For my physics coursework next year (some time in the Autumn), I'm doing an investigation into how different characteristics (length, wood etc) alter the harmonic spectrum of a recorder. I think its probably a bit like what Rosemary did a while back.

I'm fine with the different lengths, as I have everything from sopranino to tenor, and will get a garklein in plastic, but only have access to three different woods at the moment. I would have gone to the music shop and borrowed theirs, but a. they don't have very many, and b. I'm really not in their good books recorderwise at the moment ( ie recorder-still-not-fixed-fiasco ).

So this is where you come in: if you have a wooden treble recorder...

1) do you have some means of recording it?
2) would you be willing to play and record a 2-octave chromatic scale?
3) what woods and models are your recorders?

Ideally, I'd like to stick to mollenhauer denners, so that all thats changing is the wood, but obviously there might not be enought variation in wood type without including other models.

Really, I'm just looking for an indication of whether or not this could work.

Thanks,

Sarah

My treble is a mollenhauer student methinks and its pear wood.
I am most jocund, apt and willingly to recorder a 2 octaves for you.

Very good.

You could ask Liz at Elida Trading to play them all for you My eldest tried all their Descants at the Leeds Forum Concert last year.

I thought they only came in descant

I've only got a Moeck Denner treble (in box)
Do also own a Mollenhauer Denner (in box) but it's a tenor....
And am lousy at scales!
Good luck finding the right folks though

sorry I made that up. Its a Canta.

Very good.

That makes more sense, thanks

shall I do one then?

not yet, I need to make sure I can get a decent number of different woods first (I think i'm at three at the moment, but I think i really need at least 5). I'll let you know though.

Does anyone know when double holes started to appear on baroque recorders? I went to the musical instrument museum in Berlin earlier this week and was quite suprised to see that the Rottenburgh alto recorder on display there only had single holes. There was a Denner recorder there too, also with single holes and a lot of others by makers whose names I didn´t recognise.

I gather that the best collection in Germany is in Nürnberg, must try to go there one day.

The set of Chester recorders in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester are Bressan ones and have double holes. He was making instruments in the early eighteenth century. I have always assumed that double holes were a Baroque development but do not know for certain when they were used first. There are many single holed recorders around until the late Baroque and although we tend to talk about "Baroque fingering" there was not really one standard set of fingerings.

sarah123, I have a Kung Studio treble in cherrywood. Wrong make, model, but it might be a different wood for you.
Note that I wouldn't be recording direclty to the computer - I can record on to casette, then I have a casette deck in my PC I can upload with (yes, really!)

Happy to help if I can be of any help but aware that not having the 'right' recorder and a convoluted recording method might make me unsuitable!

I think that should be ok, as long as it wasn't a really crackly cassette recording. I don't think the make will really make much of a difference, and its looking unlikely that I will get a set of matching ones anyway.

Petrat, as an aside, have you ever heard these played? I was lucky enough to hear Alan Davis and colleagues perform on them at the Museum itself, many years ago. I have the record they made, with some delicious 'flattement' scattered throughout the the performances. Interestingly, Nicholas Lander describes the recording as 'ghastly...

I understand that Carl Dolmetsch took charge of them during the war years, and 'improved' them by finishing and revoicing some of them! Chester Council's website has a good article on them - HERE.

Yes, I have heard a recording of the tenor and alto and was very lucky to have been allowed to play the alto once back in the days when they would let you if you asked nicely.
I remember reading that Carl Dolmetsch had to improve the bass recorder as it was stillborn as he called it. That seemed such a load of old rubbish when the amount of wear around the finger holes was clearly visable. They looked a little bruised and battered in real life but are often touched up a bit for photo calls.

I somehow don´t think anyone gets to play the recorders in Berlin. Hmm, I feel a trip to Nürnberg coming on.
It was also interesting to look at all of the materials used - a couple of recorders were made completely out of ivory.

It is always worth asking. If you are a serious player or doing research they might well let you handle them and even have a short tootle. I was able to look at an instrument at the Welsh Folk Museum when I was a student in Cardiff.

Nürnberg would be unlikely to let you - they certainly didn't let a colleague of my husband's touch any of the harpsichords, and the risk to woodwind of someone tootling down it is rather greater than to the keyboard instruments of someone pressing a few keys, because of the humidity of human breath. My husband works in a museum of early keyboard instruments - a playing collection, but still with major restrictions to access - the sister collection up the road, which has lots of other early instruments including a bewilderingly huge collection of clarinets (several hundred), and a few recorders, flutes and oboes - but restrictions on playing any of these are much, much tighter.

IT'S BACK!!!

It's taken 59 days, but it got there in the end. They've replaced the head-joint and have bushed the thumb hole and its as good as new (I even have to play it in again ). They also, for no particular reason, have sent me back the cracked/spotty old head joint, which now has no block, so is no use whatsoever Although I may nail it to my wall or something

The really weird thing though is that they say the crack (at the top of the head-joint) was probably caused by the wearing away of the thumb hole, which somehow caused pressure in the joint, which caused pressure all the way up the head-joint. This doesn't seem hugely concievable anyway, and given that it was only a couple of months old, so the thumbhole hadn't had much of a chance to wear down yet, it really doesn't seem likely somehow.

oh well, all that matters is that it's back and happily sleeping on my shelf again

YAY!!
you have a lot of practise to cach up on now

Very good.

Unfortunately I can't play it much yet. Havin to play it in again is so frustrating

at least you have it back.
what recorder is it??

My olive mollenhauer denner