Unboxing and testing the re.corder! | Team Recorder

hello everybody i'm sarah and i'm a recorder player something exciting today the lovely people at artenoise a startup who make musical instruments have sent me something new to try out very exclusively for this channel it's not actually on the market yet a recorder re-dot corder this is apparently the recorder reinvented an instrument that you can play acoustically digitally or use as a midi controller i want to be completely transparent so you know what you're getting in this video they have sent this to me for free but i'm not being paid to advertise it so i will give my honest opinion all right here we go oh oh there's more i have never seen a foam cleaning stick but i guess this can't stay wet so and we've got a lanyard and some instructions before i read this i just want to look at the instrument here we go i have to say this looks and feels really nice it's very light it's a plastic casing but it's kind of transparent here at the sides which feels high-tech i've read on the website that they based it on the baroque design of a recorder so indeed it's conical even though the holes are quite small we've got the double holes down here uh up here at the top we've got a kind of extra bit i guess this is where the electronics are housed and here we've got some buttons some lights it's flashing i think i've turned it on the website says you can play it acoustically like a regular recorder or you can use it electronically so let's just try shallow ah this ah okay realization dawns look at this little plastic attachment for the labia okay i'm guessing it should play now that's really really smart [Music] hmm it plays like a regular recorder and it's got a surprisingly wide range i can get right up into the high notes i have to play it in a bit of a different way than the recorders i'm used to a bit more of a what i really like is how the articulation responds you can be very percussive with it the tone the pure recorder sound isn't the most beautiful that i've ever heard it's not very refined i feel like i can influence how it sounds less than i would with a baroque recorder but that's to be expected that's not what the purpose of this is the other thing that strikes me is that the seventh hole is in line with the rest rather than being offset which means that i have to bend my hand around a little to get that low so let's test out the electronics i'm going to get this all set up try it out a little bit and report back [Music] i'm back again i've spent a bit of time getting to know the read.corder and the app and i'd love to tell you about what i found got the app here you download the app for free works on iphone ipad i think on android as well it took me a little while to figure out how to set it all up get everything going but i think i'm there now you've got learn play and duo duo is for two recorders which i don't have but there's learn and play i have a little play for you first this is the recorder sound in play you can see all of the different instruments they have and you can use the sounds of any of them i'm going to be a piano clarinet drums that's fun synth bass so the choice of instrument sounds is really nice and apparently you can change the octaves by tapping [Music] oh yeah i had to get used to the fact that these buttons here you can't press them you just touch them so at first i was like is this actually doing anything but you just tap and it works and then if you go into jam session it actually notates what you're playing but it kind of notates it but because i'm not quite sure what tempo i'm in the rhythms are coming out a little bit anyway over here you can add reverb [Music] or echo oh nice fun fun fun fun fun in the settings there are three modes one is breath then one is just with your lip sensor so you don't have to breathe you just put your mouth on the recorder [Music] so that's pretty cool apparently it's for people who can't blow for very long or maybe have a physical disability that means this is helpful great and keyboard this is where you can just literally use the touch sensitive sensors to play [Music] so this is a really big plus i think you can make chords [Music] oh the only thing is because these are double holes it's very easy to hit both at the same time let's talk about latency latency is the map the amount of time between playing the notes and hearing it i'm hearing with the keyboard function so no breath it's very quick [Music] so the latency is a lot less when i'm not breathing so this makes me think that the touch sensors are a lot faster than the breath sensor in the settings there's a lot of different parameters that you can play with sensitivity pressure there's all kinds of movement sensors moving it around at the moment i found this one so when i go up it adds a [Music] fast vibrato oh yeah and of course you can take the little mute out and play with electronic and real sounds i did i did okay the electronic sound down two octaves and turned on the lip sensor and then i can play with those two sounds together [Music] wow it's making me feel really creative already let's try one of the tutorials so you can see how that goes we're doing recorder let's try old macdonald so the idea is that you play along with the notes on the screen with a nice accompaniment and the more you hit the more points you get [Music] [Applause] great job yeah by the way i really like these piano accompaniments oh it occurs to me that you can take out the mute so play like a regular recorder and it will still register your points so you can practice and the computer tells you how well you're doing that's a nice idea as well by the way can we please have a spare one of these in the package with the recorder because i just know i'm gonna lose this immediately it does also ask you to wear the strap while you're playing but i'm living life on the edge like i always do and in the play section you can jam along with different pieces let's try trumpet foreign yes this is one of my favorite pieces let's do it [Music] so i've been through a lot of the really really good things i just like to go through some of the things that i feel do need improvement and this is a good place to start the rhythms notated here are approximate there's quite a few pieces in the app where the rhythms aren't notated properly and if you're learning music that's just not okay it has to be consistent and it has to be accurate i can understand why you would approximate these rhythms i mean this is long short long shot but if they're not actually correct that's just going to be really confusing the next is about the sound itself let's put it back on the recorder sound in my opinion a few things about this can be improved first of all i noticed the response is a little bit late it feels like either the attack is too long or maybe that there's even a little bit of silence before the note starts i really feel the latency and on an instrument like the nylon string guitar it's already improved a lot so this is something in the recorder midi and you also hear that the sound itself drops in pitch as you blow that gives a weird kind of unsettled feeling with the intonation and my last quibble i'm sorry i'm being so specific with this but there's an inbuilt vibrato i don't like that in an ideal world with midi i like to have a straight tone that i can add the vibrato myself so arty noise i'm sorry to be so detailed and negative about the recorder sound specifically but these are all things that can be adjusted and i think they would improve it a lot and then response and latency so when the sound is already going it's really fast um but it takes a second to speak when i blow so again this makes me think that the breath sensor is a little bit slower than the touch sensors i'm sorry i don't know how to fix that but it's my observation would this annoy me if i was note learning in the app probably not would it annoy me as a performer who wants to play in my speed yes and my last thing that i think needs improving are the menus for the midi settings the main part of the app is really understandable the learn section the play section that's brilliant but the kind of back end where you can get into the midi section i have no idea what's going on and this is a person whose experience with electronics i sat here with the manual and i couldn't really figure it out so i think someone who's picking up a midi instrument for the very first time is going to be like what it's set out for a technician basically someone who knows what all these things are and are like ah let's play with the possibilities i think it would help if there are clear options that you can just choose for the people who don't know anything about electronics and then maybe an advanced mode where you can get into the settings and fiddle around with them because then you can actually get into all these creative things rather than thinking help what is a linear midi output aftertouch let's draw some conclusions the re dot corder i love the way it looks and feels the app also looks really nice and professional there's a lot of potential and a lot of creative ideas there i just think it needs finishing off more it feels like it's at the stage where the makers are like well we have all of these possibilities but it still has to be clearly mapped out for the person who's playing it otherwise it's just confusing we didn't talk about the price at the moment these aren't on the market yet but you can sign up to be put on the waiting list for when they come out it was running a kickstarter and i think they were going for 62 euro which frankly for an electronic and acoustic instrument with an app is brilliant i don't know if the price will change but something in this range i think is actually really brilliant and i didn't even say they come in a range of colors i could see this being a really fun and creative way to get into electronics for the first time using midi sounds there's all different effects different things it can do it's a great entry point and the fact that it's an acoustic recorder as well and i can imagine it being used in combination with regular recorder lessons because it feels like a normal recorder you can just pick up pick it up and play it to get students to do something a bit different and a bit creative exciting so if you are curious i'll put the links in the description where you can go to the website you can hear some more examples and you can also sign up for the waiting list if you're interested in buying one when they come on the market thank you so much to arthur noyes for sending me one i'm sorry i'm so picky about the details but i know it's going to be brilliant 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 the channel and here's two more videos thanks for watching and have a great day bye

Channel: Sarah Jeffery / Team Recorder

Views: 70,144

Keywords: re.corder, artinoise, MIDI, recorder, blockflöte, blokfluit, flute a bec, flauto dolce, flauta dulce, flauta doce, electronics, ewi, electronic instrument, MIDI controller, FX, reverb, app, music learning app, music lesson, unboxing, testing, review, sarah jeffery, team recorder

Id: mRz0GYcpmL8

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/halhell98000]

This is a really interesting concept