Sorry we left you out for a while recorder players! Please post away.

I`m just starting to play the descant recorder and was wondering if anyone had tips on how to make the music sound smoother, especially when you get to the higher notes, it seems like there is room for a lot of squealing! Thanks

hiya! I`ve been playing recorder for 7 years now.. and to asnwer your question, you have to practice and find out how hard to blow for each note. The higher notes, especially pinch notes require you to blow harder, or else they`ll go flat. For lower notes like low E (descant), they sound best when you blow more softly.

You must also be careful with your tongueing. Beginners are usually told to say "doo doo doo" or "tee tee tee" into the recorder, but for smoothness, you should move your tongue further back in your mouth and tongue more gently. I played the recorder part in "Adiemus" by Karl Jenkins, and this illustrates the smoothness very well. (it IS a recorder, by the way)

Good luck!

Thank you very much for you helpful hints!

Could u please post a simple but nice tune for begginner recorder players to practice on?

Sorry, don`t know any begginer pieces. I watched that really good recorder player, in Melbourne (forgotten her name) play the piece `breathless` - a german composer wrote it and you had to play seven different recorders, sometimes two at a time, both in your mouth! it was pages and pages long and she had to have four music stands to hold the music up, it was quite a site!

That`s so cool, but how can u play 2 at once? The prob with recorder is that no one else thinks I`m playing music it sounds like noise to every one ex`pt me. That`s not a good sign

Argh! I really want to hear a performance of "breathless"!! I`ve found the composer: "Eggert". And it says its for 3 recorders, S,A,A. I envy you so much! But... how do you play 2 recorders at once? if you put 2 in your mouth.. you still need 2 hands for each recorder.. right? So, if you put 1 hand on each, you`re limited to about 6 notes only for each instrument. *puzzled*

Funny, but I think you need more than one player.

yeah,
i would guess that there are more than one player, unless that person wasn`t really playing at all.

and...... i think if you just went out and bought a beginner`s recorder book you could get beginner`s music. have a nice summer

~Corinne