![]() Have you seen a guitarist, violinist or harpist lightly touching the string they are sounding and heard a high sound of different tone colour? When they do this they are playing harmonics. These additional openings are not functioning as "note holes", they are promoting the formation of a harmonic as opposed to fundamental mode of air vibration.Ĭast your aural and visual memory around. For B you start over yet again, still with the thumb hole partly open, but with the third hole open as well. Fully open which is passable for E is no good at all for A. As one goes higher the opening becomes critical. To help the sound to come, the thumb hole must be at least partly opened. When you move higher up the recorder's tube there comes a point where you must start over again (D# on the descant). The lowest notes are, in technical terms, "fundamental" (a good word), the lowest sound that the resonance of the air in the tube can produce. ![]() The troublesome ones are not natural to the instrument. There is time to go up later.It helps if you understand why some notes do not come easily. My recommendation is to GO DOWN after B, A, G. Those notes, and more, are learned in the intermediate volume, Beyond the Nine-Note Recorder Method.įinally, instruction is expanded to include high C and D in Parts 8 and 9 of the Nine-Note Recorder Method, when students are competent enough to handle the instrument with less physical contact. Beginners should only learn the easiest notes to experience success B flat and low C are two very difficult notes, causing frustration. Those methods which use F natural must also teach B flat (and you thought F natural was tricky!) and low C (which makes producing low D look easy and is quite a stretch for little hands). Completely avoiding F natural, only F sharp is presented in The Nine-Note Recorder Method. Going down to E and D keeps more contact with the instrument, whereas high C and D have very little contact with the instrument causing a loss of control.Īfter thoroughly learning these 5 notes by playing many pentatonic songs, students have developed familiarity with the recorder, more dexterity, and more confidence. Students must be taught to aim their air stream low and to blow softly, as over-blowing will produce the tone an octave higher. The fingering is easy simply add the 3rd finger. By introducing low E as the next note, right-handed students more accepting of the correct hand placement. Right-handed youngsters resist playing recorder with the left hand on the top because they want to use their dominant hand. This involves the right hand very early in the course. In The Nine-Note Recorder Method, low E is presented next. Other instructors believe that the logical choice after B, A, G is to go down. Another big drawback is that students who continue with recorder must re-learn in the Baroque fingering system to play in an ensemble. However, German recorders are not in tune. Some instructors choose German-fingered recorders rather than Baroque recorders to avoid the challenging F fingering. On soprano recorder, F is tricky to finger: forked (fingers 1, 3 and 4) for F natural or bunny-ears, or long horns, (fingers 2 and 3) for F sharp. Those who think going up to high C and D should be taught next have their reasons. But the debate rages over whether the next notes learned should be higher or lower. There is no question that recorder instruction begins with B, A, and G.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |