Chiff and Fipple Forums

DrPhill wrote:Anything with whistles?

Recorder and ocarina?

A recorder? Oh shine .
How about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4niv522mbtM
0:32 - whistle or recorder?

DrPhill wrote:A recorder? Oh shine .
How about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4niv522mbtM
0:32 - whistle or recorder?

Looks like a whistle to me!

What's that at 2:30? Has a clarinet / single reed mouthpiece, but gets real funky down below!

whistlecollector wrote:
Looks like a whistle to me!

Maybe a Susato?

Whew, I thought it was a whistle.....

I stumbled on these videos and found them fascinating. I 'sort of liked' the music as a sound track, but seeing all these professionals and their varied instruments playing the music really opened my eyes. I think some of them were even enjoying themselves.

whistlecollector wrote:What's that at 2:30? Has a clarinet / single reed mouthpiece, but gets real funky down below!

Look and listen carefully where you see it at approx. 1:25 to 1:30; it's a recorder. The mouthpiece clamps together like the Hopf one I've got, but you can clearly see the window. So it's a modern keyed recorder... looks close enough (if not identical) to the photos of the Arnfred Strathmann system at http://www.recorderhomepage.net/history ... er-design/ to suggest that it's some version of that.

You get a better view of the (almost certainly) Susato at 1:54 to 1:56.

Peter Duggan wrote:

whistlecollector wrote:What's that at 2:30? Has a clarinet / single reed mouthpiece, but gets real funky down below!

Look and listen carefully where you see it at approx. 1:25 to 1:30; it's a recorder. The mouthpiece clamps together like the Hopf one I've got, but you can clearly see the window. So it's a modern keyed recorder... looks close enough (if not identical) to the photos of the Arnfred Strathmann system at http://www.recorderhomepage.net/history ... er-design/ to suggest that it's some version of that.

Well, we live and we learn!

Keywork looks pretty dense on it, too, but I guess that's where the recorder has got to go if it wants to keep up with the other modernised / adulterated woodwinds.

That one's basically got saxophone keywork. But note the opening statement on the excellent page I linked to:

'There have been a number of attempts to re-design the recorder and extend its capabilities for use in a contemporary context. However, even virtuosi have, for the most part, preferred instruments designed after historical (ie pre-classical) models.'

Which accords with my own perception that you can only go so far and still have a recorder (that feels like a recorder). I like some of the modern developments for modern purposes, but still prefer to play an instrument that fingers mostly the traditional way on open holes.

Peter Duggan wrote:That one's basically got saxophone keywork. But note the opening statement on the excellent page I linked to:

'There have been a number of attempts to re-design the recorder and extend its capabilities for use in a contemporary context. However, even virtuosi have, for the most part, preferred instruments designed after historical (ie pre-classical) models.'

Which accords with my own perception that you can only go so far and still have a recorder (that feels like a recorder). I like some of the modern developments for modern purposes, but still prefer to play an instrument that fingers mostly the traditional way on open holes.

Certainly the whole period instrument movement --- the keyless recorder is right on the forefront there! But there are more modern musics that the recorder's unique voice could be applied to that benefit from its 200 year overdue overhaul!

And that page is indeed a delight to read! (In similar vein is http://www.oldflutes.com, but obviously for transverse flutes!) I have Innovations #5 & #8 and it's always interesting to read about such things.

Peter Duggan wrote: 'There have been a number of attempts to re-design the recorder and extend its capabilities...even virtuosi have, for the most part, preferred instruments designed after historical (ie pre-classical) models.'

...you can only go so far and still have a recorder that feels like a recorder...that fingers mostly the traditional way on open holes.

Interesting to hear that what exists in the bagpipe and whistle worlds also exists in the recorder world.

Around 1900 the Highland pipe maker Starck introduced a fully keyed Highland pipe chanter, an "attempt to re-design and extend its capabilities" giving it an octave and and half chromatic range. But "even virtuosi preferred instruments designed after historical models" and the keyed chanter never caught on, and remains a mere historical curiousity.

All the time on these boards people ask about changing the Irish whistle to make it finger more like a recorder or more like a Boehm flute/Saxophone/clarinet and your quote above, regarding recorders, applies exactly.

I was talking to a bassoonist who was attracted to the Highland pipes due to their retaining their original keyless nature. He took some pride in the fact that the bassoon, alone among orchestral woodwinds, has resisted being Boehm-ised.

He told me that on a visit to Germany he played a prototype Boehm system bassoon. He said it was horrible.

Who needs levers and keys and extra holes? Who is locked into a genre?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD82Mhaf5nY

whistlecollector wrote:Certainly the whole period instrument movement --- the keyless recorder is right on the forefront there! But there are more modern musics that the recorder's unique voice could be applied to that benefit from its 200 year overdue overhaul!

pancelticpiper wrote:All the time on these boards people ask about changing the Irish whistle to make it finger more like a recorder or more like a Boehm flute/Saxophone/clarinet and your quote above, regarding recorders, applies exactly.

In Woodwind Instruments and their History (1957), Anthony Baines wrote, 'Should the treble recorder prove too soft for a modern festival orchestra, then let somebody remodel it to be louder, as has been done with every other woodwind instrument in the course of the last one hundred and fifty years.' (I recall someone else later stating that this was to fundamentally misunderstand the instrument and/or revival, but can't currently locate the reference.) But we also have Edgar Hunt in The Recorder and its Music (1962) describing a keyed instrument by Louis Stien that he (Hunt) felt 'was a thoroughly professional instrument, but not a recorder.' He goes on to say, 'The recorder, which lends itself to cross-fingered semitones, does not need semitone keys; so M. Stien was right to invent an entirely new kind of fipple flute.'

So where do I stand? I'm all for cylindrical/enlarged bores, adjustable voicing (NB I never adjust the voicing on my Hopf), bell or echo keys, extended range, extended keyed foots etc., but see no need for (indeed perhaps only loss in) full key systems where the recorder is uniquely, fluently chromatic among keyless woodwinds... perhaps rivalled only by baroque flute in that respect where some chromatic notes on baroque flute are far more coloured by changing timbre. More projection and range is great, but at some point even down that line you lose 'the recorder's unique voice' and create something new instead. Something like Adriana Breukink's Eagle Recorder strikes me as about as far as you can take it as a 'recorder', but have to qualify that by admitting I've not actually tried one.

Chifmunk wrote:

Mr.Gumby wrote:Doesn't the praisewhistlers site cater for that?

There isn't much there of use it seems. The link to their 'message boards' doesn't work.

Today PWA is up and running again.

Peter Duggan wrote:....
In Woodwind Instruments and their History (1957), Anthony Baines wrote, 'Should the treble recorder prove too soft for a modern festival orchestra, then let somebody remodel it to be louder, as has been done with every other woodwind instrument in the course of the last one hundred and fifty years.' ....

That was before tiny microphones existed... If it's just a question of loudness, microphones should be the answer - Philip Bolton had equipped his recorders with microphones inside the bore for some time (but forgot to take out a patent) and now Mollenhauer have taken up the idea in the Elody. Which is a nice electro-acoustic instrument, but not for me...

On the other hand, I've heard good things aboutthe new Eagle Ganassi - hopefully I'll get a chance to try one someday. And Mollenhauer's Dream recorders are also reputed to be louder than more baroque models, but I've never found one I really liked.

For now I consider keys on alto and smaller recorders mostly superfluous (except for extending the range), but I have a tenor with bent neck and additional keys and I love it for its ease and comfort of playing. Despite once thinking that the interesting thing about a recorder was its "simplicity" of construction and relatively low price tag. But tenor is such a wonderful range and my hands are too small for comfortably playing keyless instruments of that size. (Does anybody make low whistles with keys? I'd expect them to be about the same size as a tenor recorder - true or false?)

Kade1301 wrote: (Does anybody make low whistles with keys? I'd expect them to be about the same size as a tenor recorder - true or false?)

Yes.
Jubilee Music Instruments & Crafts,
Daniel Bingamon, Maker of Tin Whistles, Folk Music Instruments, Electronics and Crafts.
Kings Mills, Ohio 45034
http://www.tinwhistles.us/jubilee/index ... page&id=33

http://www.tinwhistles.us/jubilee/pagesmith/36