Recorder Myths BUSTED | Team Recorder

hello everybody i'm sarah and i'm a recorder player yes time to film this video again oh got it in check oh my god oh my god oh my god blah blah time to film this video again i filmed it last week but my microphone wasn't plugged in so there was no sound okay recorder myths i asked you on instagram what are the recorder myths and assumptions you hear all the time i'm here to quash them and or say that's actually correct let's go number one i hear all the time the recorder is not a real instrument i mean they feel pretty real to me what people mean is the recorder is not a real professional instrument worthy of being on a public stage and worthy of respect those people just don't know the true power and majestic beauty of our instrument that's okay that's what team recorder and all of my professional recording playing colleagues are here for uh yeah well let's get on with the rest of the video because i think the same things are going to keep coming back the recorder is a child's instrument what many people think of when they think of the recorder are these plastic instruments mine is taped up with duct tape i think when i make bagpipes but actually there are very many professional recorder players all over the world in history the recorder enjoyed a really high status it was played by kings and in palaces and at the course it was extremely respected king henry viii he blinded loved a recorder i think where this assumption comes from is that because you can buy a plastic recorder for not very much money they were often used in schools then you get a lot of kids who start the recorder give up quite quickly and have this association with it that it's a terrible thing imagine if you give every single child in every school a violin or a valve trombone you would have the same thing with those instruments because they're all so hard there are people like me and many others that go through study the recorder at a high level and make it into our jobs so yes myth busted i hope the recorder is not an orchestral instrument when people say this they're probably referring to the big classical romantic symphony orchestra 19th century yeah there are no recorders there that is true it doesn't mean that recorders haven't played in an orchestral or a large ensemble context in the baroque times 17th 18th century the recorder was a fixture of the orchestra also in opera in contemporary music you often get recorders in large mixed ensembles now that we're getting a bit more used to unusual instrument combinations and of course there are loads of concertos written for the recorder that is where there is a record of soloists playing in front of an orchestra so i actually did a whole video on recorder and orchestra yes myth you cannot play chromatic notes [Applause] that is not true you'd be surprised how many professional woodwind players i've had ask me can i play chromatics because we have no keys we can play micro tones quarter tones the notes between the chromatics the recorder is easy to learn okay with the recorder it is easy to physically make a sound you just blow you don't need an ombre shore or a reed the umber short is created for you right here but that is actually where the easiness stops the instrument is extremely responsive to your breath pressure your articulation and you have very complex finger combinations all of this combined makes it a very challenging instrument to play we also played recorders in different keys but we don't have the music transposed for us like a clarinet or a saxophone we learn a whole new set of fingerings for every size of recorder also playing in different styles that again have their own fingerings their own way of playing because the instrument is so flexible it is easy to make it sound bad but that's what i love about the recorder that its flexibility is its danger but also it's beauty you cannot tune a recorder very different ways to alter the pitch tune your instrument if you blow more unless it goes up and down if you make your instrument longer it gets lower if your instrument is warmer it gets higher if it's colder it gets lower and you can also lower the pit by shading fingers so this combination of temperature breath pressure tiny movements with your fingers and maybe pulling the instrument out all serve to alter the tuning i'm going to throw something else in there as well an instrument like a piano is tuned in equal temperament where every semitone is the same distance apart recorders are not always tuned like that there are many other tuning systems where the notes are slightly different distances apart to give different effects in the music go into that another time some recorders are tuned in mean tone where the thirds are pure but the fifths are different we also often play in pure tuning where we try and make every chord we play perfect but because it's a different context your g at the beginning of the piece might be a different g to your g in the middle of the piece so tuning on a recorder is a constant dance of breath pressure and finger work and listening and reacting in the moment conclusion tuning is a big subject it's very difficult but it's one we work hard on can you tune a recorder oh yes recorders only play early music this was something i heard a lot from people doubting my decision when i was going to study music at conservatoire they were like oh don't you know it's only early music first up there's nothing wrong with that but there have been more pieces composed for the recorder since the 1960s than in all the centuries before and because you can make so many cool different special effects with the recorder composers love the instrument and we love composers so that's good why are recorders so cheap okay you might be able to get a piece of plastic like this for 10 bucks or even two bucks is it going to be a great instrument a good handmade recorder takes many years of experience and then many many days in the workshop to produce every single one so for example a handmade alto can set you back two or three thousand if it's a very rare maker like a fred morgan that could run to maybe six thousand a very large subcontrabass recorder could be fifteen thousand you can ruin a recorder by oiling the block now in a recorder surprise is only half a recorder in the recorder the block here is this piece of wood that guides the airstream to the right place to produce a beautiful sound um every so often you have to treat your recorder with oil to make sure the wood stays in good condition it was always drummed into me if you get any oil on the block whatsoever your recorder is ruined forever i have lived in fear of getting oil on the block now there are two schools of oiling thought one school of thought indeed oils all of the recorder except for the win-way and the block the other school of oiling use a very heavy linseed oil and they actually submerge the entire recorder block included in the oil for a week i have always gone for the more cautious school of avoiding oiling the block so i can't actually say if it will ruin your recorder or not myth fact or fiction i don't know myth you can't play jazz on the recorder um okay so i can't play jazz on the recorder because i'm not a jazz musician but there are professional jazz musicians out there a while back i interviewed tarly rubinstein who is killing her on the new york jazz scene and there are many others recorders can't play jazz here's a good one you have to keep all of your instruments played in at all times when you first get your instrument you have to play it in to let the wood settle and this i don't know if this is scientifically accurate but to kind of coat the inside with your saliva i don't think you have to keep all of your instruments played in all the time on a schedule especially if you've got loads of recorders you'll drive yourself mad trying to play them all every day if you have a new recorder take a few weeks to build up how long you're playing on it to prevent it getting tired out in the beginning if you put a recorder away and it's been in the draw for some months or even years just spend maybe a week playing it back in again um you can feel a bit if it starts to get stuck or muffled too quickly maybe you need to dial it back a bit but i would say don't worry fact or fiction if you can play one recorder you can play them all the theory is the same there will be slight differences in the size and fingerings in the way you use your airstream if you compare my renaissance instrument with a baroque one the wind way has a very different width this means a different way of blowing so in theory if you can play one recorder you can play them all but there are a lot of little different things that you have to know and that we get used to but that's why our brains are so big and the last one the recorder should be used as a first step instrument before you move on to something real the recorder is just as difficult as any other instrument it has just as much potential and repertoire as any other instrument is not necessarily easier it's not necessarily cheaper on one hand if you have a person who starts on the recorder discovers a love for music and later goes on with a different instrument that is absolutely fine i'm not going to be upset about that but this idea that you should start on the recorder and then discard it and move on to something better is such a shame because then people don't get to see the true potential of this beautiful instrument i would love for everywhere to have the resources to provide good recorders the education and the training to provide professional recorded teachers so that it could have this amazing recorded culture all over the world um that's not yet the case and to be frank there are more pressing priorities going on on the earth right now but until then i will keep making this content along with my other professional recorder playing colleagues trying to spread a bit of love for music and the joy of music making through the recorder here for free on youtube not sure where this train of thought is going but yes so those were some of the common myths you hear about the recorder and my opinions on them as always you can subscribe to my channel by clicking on my face down here over here is the team recorder patreon where you can choose to support team recorder thank you and up here is a history of the recorder let's learn thanks for watching and have a great day bye

Channel: Sarah Jeffery / Team Recorder

Views: 31,873

Rating: 4.9799776 out of 5

Keywords: myths, myth busting, recorder, blokfluit, blockflöte, flute a bec, flauto dolce, flauta dulce, flauta doce, sarah jeffery, team recorder, mollenhauer, twoset violin

Id: UEqCjJUZfoI

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2020