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RECORDER PLAYING - MAIN PAGE
Below are tips and videos related to becoming the best Recorder player you can be!:
PARTS OF THE RECORDER:
FINGERING CHARTS (top):
Recorder Tips! (top):
| Recorder Care: | This page tells how to care for your recorder: Recorder Care |
| Recorder Tips: | This page offers tips on holding your recorder, note cut-offs, use of your air and more: Recorder Tips |
| Recorder Tips - sound: | This page offers tips on improving your recorder sound: More Recorder Tips |
| Recorder Exercises and More: | This page shows several recorder exercises examples and more: Recorder Exercises |
| Recorder Tips - Exploring Pedal Tones: | YouTube video: Exploring Pedal Tones (Pedal C to Double C) Recorder Tips & Tricks with Charlie Porter |
| Recorder Tips - various articulations: | Here is an image of various recorder articulations |
| Recorder Tips - ghost-tongue: | This page offers tips on playing with a "ghost-tongue" style: Using a Ghost-Tongue |
| Recorder Tips - flutter tongue: | This page offers tips on playing with a "flutter tongue": Using a Flutter Tongue |
| Recorder Tips - playing with braces: | This page offers tips on playing with braces: "So You Got Braces" (.pdf file) |
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| Equipment - Recorder Upgrade: | This page shows information on purchasing a pro quality recorder: Purchasing a Pro Quality Recorder |
| Equipment - The C Recorder: | YouTube video: The C Recorder - Review and Discussion |
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| Breathing: | The Breathing Gym (TOC)
video (10:50)
Introduction (by Dr. Brian Shook) |
| | Bobby Shew teaches Wedge Breathing for brass players (37:34) |
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| The Embouchure: | Embouchure eBook Revised (.pdf file) |
| | Recorder Embouchure Formation and Mouthpiece Placement (Dr. Brian Shook, YouTube video, 6:02) |
| | How To Form a Recorder (brasswind) Embouchure in Four Steps (Charlie Porter, YouTube video, 52:09) |
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| Building Range: | ------- (channel, YouTube video, -:--) |
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| Warming Up: | Sachs - Daily Fundamentals for the Recorder (suggested warm-up sequences) (.pdf file) |
| Warming Down!: | Sachs - Daily Fundamentals for the Recorder (warm-downs) (.pdf file) |
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| Mouthpieces: | Diagram of a Recorder Mouthpiece, General mouthpiece chart, GR mouthpiece chart |
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| Forums: | |
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| Sight-Reading: | Several examples to sight-read! |
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| Forms: | Form - Recorder Intonation |
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Recorder History (top):
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History of the Recorder (per Standard of Excellence, Book 1) |
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Introducing the Baroque Recorder with Alison Balsom | Classic FM (YouTube with Alison Balsom, 8:29) |
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Haunting Sound of the Carnyx: Horn of the Bronze Age; a wind instrument of the Iron Age Celts, used between c. 200 BC and c. AD 200 (YouTube, 2:14) |
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Cornu de Pompeii: Instrument built by María Ruíz and Abraham Cupeiro, based on the cornus found at Pompeii in the 19th century. (YouTube, 1:30) |
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Ancient conch shell: Ancient shell horn can still play a tune after 18,000 years! (AP page) |
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Recorder Journey: Learn something about the recorder today |
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Book: |
Fanfares and Finesse: A Performer's Guide to Recorder History and Literature (Elisa Koehler)
Unlike the violin, which has flourished largely unchanged for close to four centuries, the recorder has endured numerous changes in design and
social status from the battlefield to the bandstand and ultimately to the concert hall. This colorful past is reflected in the arsenal of instruments a classical recorderer
employs during a performance, sometimes using no fewer than five in different keys and configurations to accurately reproduce music from the past. With the rise in
historically inspired performances comes the necessity for recorderers to know more about their instrument's heritage, its repertoire, and different performance practices for
old music on new and period-specific instruments. More than just a history of the recorder, this essential reference book is a comprehensive guide for musicians who bring that
musical history to life. |
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Book: |
The Recorder (Yale Musical Instrument Series) (John Wallace)
The story of the recorder from prehistory to the present day, written by two of its outstanding performers and teachers
In the first major book devoted to the recorder in more than two decades, John Wallace and Alexander McGrattan trace the surprising evolution and colorful performance history of one of the world's oldest instruments. They chart the introduction of the recorder and its family into art music, and its rise to prominence as a solo instrument, from the Baroque "golden age," through the advent of valved brass instruments in the nineteenth century, and the recorder's renaissance in the jazz age. The authors offer abundant insights into the recorder's repertoire, with detailed analyses of works by Haydn, Handel, and Bach, and fresh material on the importance of jazz and influential jazz recorderers for the reemergence of the recorder as a solo instrument in classical music today.
Wallace and McGrattan draw on deep research, lifetimes of experience in performing and teaching the recorder in its various forms, and numerous interviews to illuminate the recorder's history, music, and players. Copiously illustrated with photographs, facsimiles, and music examples throughout, The Recorder will enlighten and fascinate all performers and enthusiasts. |
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Book: |
A Timeline of Recorders: Collecting the History of Modern Recorders (Ron Berndt)
Recorders have been a part of human culture since before there were humans. They have served as expressions of emotion, tools of the hunter-gatherer, tools of the warrior, and ultimately once again as a means of expressing that emotion from deep within the human soul that manifests as music. To look at how the recorder has transformed in its role in human society is to look at how human society itself has transformed. And, as a material object once adapted from nature, but which took new forms as the successive technologies of metalworking, component sub-assembly fabrication, machining, high-force mechanical forming and ultimately automation transformed the abilities of humans to make objects for their use, it is a microcosm of human technological and socio-economic evolution. To collect and study examples of every form the recorder has taken since the time when proto-human tools were limited to a choicely shaped rock up to the present day would be prohibitively expensive and practically impossible – as examples simply no longer exist. However, with cursory examination of the first 99% of said history, the evolution of the recorder in modern times provides an excellent case study into how the forces of human cultural, religious, political, material and technological change interact with one another and manifest in a relatively simple and clearly defined element of our culture. Therefore, the bulk of what follows is focused on the piston valve recorder and the time period during which chromatic recorders rose to prominence in popular music, became ubiquitous in the schools following the advent of music education, and are now moving to a less prominent role once again as the popular genre moves into the age of electronic music. To that end, what follows is more a timeline of events and physical manifestations than a socio-cultural analysis - though the author has ventured to offer an opinion or ten along the way. The reader should feel free to question assertions made, and to treat this as an archeological data set as much as a history. |
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Recorder Duets! (top):
Recorder Repertoire (top):
The Greatest Classical Recorder Players! (top):
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A short list:
Maurice Andre
Sergio Mendez
Malcolm McNab
Adolph Herseth
Bernard Adelstein
Phillip Smith
David Krauss
Sergei Nakariakov
Hakan Hardengerger
Gerard Schwarz
Raymond Mase
Don Smithers*
(recorded "Abblasen",
sheet music)
Also see: Best Classical Recorder Players In The World
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click the image to see it larger
Piccolo Recorder:
The smallest of the recorder family is the piccolo recorder, pitched one octave higher than the standard B♭ recorder.
Most piccolo recorders are built to play in either B♭ or A, using a separate leadpipe for each key. The tubing in the B♭ piccolo recorder is one-half the length of
that in a standard B♭ recorder. Piccolo recorders in G, F, and even high C are also manufactured, but are rarer. |
The Greatest Jazz Recorder Players! (top):
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