I have been playing recorder for years and have always wondered if there is a difference between talking about descant and referring to a soprano recorder. Personally, I prefer "soprano". "Descant" sounds too ... well, "descanty" (high!). What do you think??

Soprano and alto are the ones more readily understood across the pond and in Europe - but I grew up with the older UK descant and treble, so prefer these. Either way, I'd much rather listen to the lower-pitched of the two!

I prefer to use Descant and Treble too.

Soprano and Sopranino are too simular and get confusing

Descant always sounds like something you learnt when you were little and people think its not a real instrument... i prefer to call is Soprano.

Garklein
Soprano
Alto
Tenor
Bass
Great Bass
Sub-Contra-Bass
Contra-Bass

And so on..

I much prefer soprano and alto. As soprano means little soprano there has to be a soprano somewhere for it to make sense, otherwise perhaps it would be called superdescant or something! One of my former teachers always called the smallest of the bass recorders a basset and I tend to do this too.

sopranos are scary on principle....

I agree, but if you look at the traditional choir setup you have bass, tenor, alto and then soprano. The voice sung against (higher) the soprano voice is called the descant (where I come from at least!). So technically you could say that the sopranino can be called "descant". Not that I use that term for the sopranino! Just thought about that now, reading your post!

Also, from a different view: In my home language the terms for "soprano" and "alto" are directly translated to "sopraan" and "alt" respectively. That probably adds to my interest to the use of these terms.



And the sopranino is probably worse! Im playin the piccolo parts for a musical that I'm doing at the moment on the sopranino (my picc playing sucks!). I feel very sorry for the poor clarinettist sitting next to me!