Choice of wood recorder

[ejbpesca]

I am on the trail now from most gracious suggestions on last post.

I have some more specific questions please for a recorder purchase.

What to buy for this application:

Will improvise melodies to accompany guitar chord progression of D C G.
440 tuning of guitar
Want deeper tones than soprano recorder

Does this exist?

[Kypfer]

The easiest option would be a tenor recorder ... it's effectively a low-D instrument and will play in C, D and G comfortably ... assuming your hands will stretch to cover the holes. The fingering will be the same as a descant recorder. Before investing in a wooden instrument, it might be advantageous to aquire/beg/steal/borrow a cheap second-hand plastic recorder to try for size.

[James_Alto]

Wow - that didn't take you long to decide

Sounds like you're looking for an alto or a tenor recorder. A tenor recorder is much more assuredly deeper in tone - it would work very well with the one man music project you descrbed in the previous thread!

As it doesn't matter about reading sheet music - you could play either by ear, but the alto recorder, is pitched in F, like the bass recorder. The tenor recorder is pitched in C, like the descant recorder. If you're playing by ear, I don't know what others think, but I'd prefer to play in the key of C, to make it easier to work out notes/accompaniment.

The tenor recorder is about 25 inches long - just a whisker longer than your original specs request. There are some fantastic deals to be had second-hand. Do check the http://www.aswltd.com/guiderec.htm resource about recorders.

If you're getting one to try out, there's nothing wrong with a second-hand one, apart from germs

I personally don't like second-hand recorders - you don't know who's been chewing and eating away at that fipple. A bass recorder - you can whip out the bocal tube, and drop it in sterilising fluid to soak.

Wooden recorders: generally maple is commoner; it has a lighter sound than pearwood, which is ideal for a recorder. Palissander or boxwood are available, but tend to be very expensive. You could go with any of the larger reputation brands - Kung, Mollenhauer, Moeck, Roessler (now defunct); Schott (now defunct); Adler-Heinrich (now defunct) for a rich deep wooden one, which will cost a bit more. Or for a modern cheaper plastic Aulos.Yamaha. I prefer wood, but it is a real (@£$(@&*@ pain to manage sometimes.

A good tenor recorder shouldn't cost more than $100 second-hand if you do some homework!

Good luck

[ejbpesca]

my tenor is on it's way..Yamaha abs material...to start. Penny whistle next. What key is the descant recorder? Is the penny whistle a certain key too or are they in various voices? Whew..this has been a research project. I have no local store to just shop for one.

Thanx spool much.

[JackCampin]

Effectively, tenor and descant recorders and D whistles (the commonest size) are all in the same key, making G and D the easiest keys. The recorders give you a lot of chromatic notes a lot more easily than the whistle and go a tone lower at the bottom.

For accompanying somebody singing with a guitar I find a Boehm transverse flute a lot easier than either, since it has greater dynamic range and playing in random keys (as when the guitarist capos up) is less bother. You should get a perfectly serviceable student model off EBay for less than $100.

[James_Alto]

The Yamaha is a nice choice. It won't be your last tenor recorder either

The descant and the tenors are in the same key as Jack's pointed out. The descant is an octave higher though, and less deep. It's quite challenging to hear it with a guitar for me, whereas a tenor is just perfect.

With your tenor recorder, all fingers covering the holes, will give you the note 'C'. Using half-holing and cross-finger techniques, you get a chromatic range, so you can play anything within those 2 1/2 octaves chromatically.

A penny whistle - comes in a fixed key (i.e. half-holing is really not that great, and cross-fingering is limited). They come in keys of D, G, F, Eb, Bb, A, C ... in different octave ranges too. That means, if you wanted to play the Tinkers Daughter, a reel in the key of D, you would need a D or a G key pennywhistle. You could do it with a Bb, but it would be really hard for someone as simple-minded about theory as me! I wouldn't recommend it. Equally, you've probably seen the word 'WOAD or WHOAD floating around. Some whistlers have a collection of whistles in lots of different keys.

A Boehm flute - covers it all, so you only need 1 flute. A recorder can cover it all, but with a limited octave range (except 1 particular flute, which offers a 3 octave range). Don't worry about it - the advantage of a keyed penny whistle, is that it is really fast to work. For example - when I see music in the key of Eb minor, my heart sinks. It gets my brain working overtime trying to work out all of those half-notes. The problem is, it's not easy to get a penny whistle in Eb minor. Eb major scales are more popular. But stick with a D (high or low) first, and then expand from there. Hope you enjoy it - the recorder is a more soft and gentle instrument. I think it's ideal for chamber music, or minimal accompaniment, like a guitar.

[killthemessenger]

Effectively, tenor and descant recorders and D whistles (the commonest size) are all in the same key, making G and D the easiest keys.

With all due respect, this is quite misleading. The tenor and descant recorders are both instruments in C, and music in C falls most naturally under the fingers. One reason why this is so is that on most C recorders there is no high C# without closing the bell of the instrument, whereas a full two octave C scale is available with simple fingerings. It is certainly not difficult to play tenor and soprano recorders in D and G (F and Bflat are also easily available), subject to the above limitation. But anyone buying a soprano or tenor recorder specifically to play a repertoire which is mostly in D would find the lack of a high C# a considerable handicap.

The D whistle, on the other hand, is a whistle in (surprise!) D, it's easy to play in G and A, but it becomes quite a bit harder already to play it in other neighbouring keys. It is quite tricky to play in C, for instance, because there's no cross fingering for F natural.

It's not my intention to inject confusion into what must seem like a confusing enough issue to a newcomer to these instruments. But nowhere except on this board have I ever heard that the C recorders (tenor and soprano/descant) are really instruments in D.

Edit - congratulations on getting the Yamaha, it's an excellent instrument, at least the equal of wood tenors costing five or six times as much. Its only downside is that the ABS makes it a bit heavy, but it comes with a thumb rest you can mount with double sided tape, and that helps to handle the weight.

[JackCampin]

The tenor and descant recorders are both instruments in C, and music in C falls most naturally under the fingers.

Not under mine it doesn't and I've been playing it for 40 years.

The low C is usually quite hard to hit, and often weaker than the D above. Tunes in C need the forked F natural which is harder than the F sharp. The mid-range C is crossfingered the same way as on the whistle, so no difference there. And the top C is often quite hard to sound, more so than the B beow or the D above. All of these make C one of the more difficult keys to play musically. A is easier.

One reason why this is so is that on most C recorders there is no high C# without closing the bell of the instrument,

t 1-3 45-7 works most of the time if you need it. The whistle is no different since just about no whistle music uses the high C sharp and it sounds horrible on almost all whistles anyway.

anyone buying a soprano or tenor recorder specifically to play a repertoire which is mostly in D would find the lack of a high C# a considerable handicap.

No they wouldn't. Look through the Irish whistle repertoire and see how rarely it occurs. There is a good reason for that - it's beyond first position on the fiddle, so if you take the tune up there you'll leave most fiddlers behind. In the Scottish trad repertoire I can think of only two tunes that need it (the Cape Breton tune "The Sweetness of Mary" in A and Dave Richardson's reel "Macarthur Road" in E).

I have a repertoire of maybe a few thousand tunes, mostly Scottish, and mostly in the common Scottish keys of D, G and A. I do almost all of them on C or G recorders. I have a D voiceflute but very rarely need it.

Nor is C a common key in traditional music. I can guarantee that if I start a tune in C only one fiddler in 4 will be able to follow me and even they will take several bars to figure out what I'm doing. When I play tunes in C it's nearly always just with a moothie player and 90% of the time I use an F recorder for it.

[killthemessenger]

I had a look at your site, Jack (which is a great resource) and I can see that you're focused on a particular folk repertoire. So it's not surprising that you see things from that one point of view. And from that point of view, you have a number of good points. But the recorder is much more versatile than that, and in its primary repertoire - old and modern music - the tenor is indeed an instrument for playing mainly in C and its neighbouring keys in flats and sharps. As for the difficulties in playing its highest and lowest notes, that's just a matter of practice.

[JackCampin]

Ok, you've convinced me - the tenor recorder is actually a D instrument. Presumably the alto is really in G. This is going to surprise a lot of recorder players.

They need to be surprised. I was talking to John Everingham in the Saunders Recorders shop once and he said he regularly had to disabuse primary school teachers of the idea that C whistles were the nearest equivalent to C descant recorders. Insofar as schoolkids learn any folk tunes on the recorder, they'll generally learn them in the right keys, since that's what most instruction books have - put C whistles in their hands as these schoolteachers were intending to do and they'd have ended up a tone flat from the rest of the known universe. Everingham would always ask "do you really mean it?" when getting a bulk order for C whistles.

I thought of another Scottish tune that needs a high C sharp - Will Hannah's "Oslo Waltz" in A (an elaboration of the Scandinavian "Kristiania Valsen", which is usually in C). Another one that only quite good fiddlers try. Hannah was an accordionist and didn't need to care how tricky it was for anybody else.

[mandora]

A Yamaha tenor is a good choice. The right hand stretch is a problem for some people. I have no problem hitting the high C# with mine.

Michael

[James_Alto]

Ok, you've convinced me - the tenor recorder is actually a D instrument. Presumably the alto is really in G. This is going to surprise a lot of recorder players.

I thought it was, but I don't play tenor! Also, I thought the alto voicing, sounded more like a G....which is how I ended up with the alto flute (which spans from G upwards, albeit chromatic....).

Well, some pitches for recorders are A=415 rather than A=440 or 442. I'm slowly starting to love my Mollenhauer bass F recorder again. It sounds like a bass F.

To the OP - a decent wooden recorder emits a glorious sound! Plastic is great for convenience though.

[killthemessenger]

They need to be surprised. I was talking to John Everingham in the Saunders Recorders shop once and he said he regularly had to disabuse primary school teachers of the idea that C whistles were the nearest equivalent to C descant recorders. Insofar as schoolkids learn any folk tunes on the recorder, they'll generally learn them in the right keys, since that's what most instruction books have - put C whistles in their hands as these schoolteachers were intending to do and they'd have ended up a tone flat from the rest of the known universe. Everingham would always ask "do you really mean it?" when getting a bulk order for C whistles.

Well, not to go on about it, but you're talking about the repertoire, not the instrument, again. If the repertoire is mainly in D, then of course you're better off with a D instrument. That doesn't make every instrument you play it on an instrument in D.

Anyway - thanks for the high C# fingering which I wasn't aware of - it's a good approximation, but not as good as stopping the bell on a high G, which has a fuller sound as well as being in tune. It isn't mentioned in Rowland-Jones' Recorder Technique. Since the tenor is good for playing baroque flute music - and much of the early repertoire for alto is transposed flute music anyway - the C# (or F for alto) does crop up. Which is why the voiceflute is preferable for this repertoire. But you know all that, of course.