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Rev 4 - Split - 5

Woodwind instruments like flutes, clarinets and saxophones share similar fingerings, allowing musicians to play multiple instruments. Flutes and saxophones use fingerings similar to recorders in C, while clarinets use fingerings like recorders in F. This commonality of fingerings facilitates woodwind doubling. Recorders come in various sizes categorized as recorders in C or F, referring to their key notes rather than being transposing instruments. The most common sizes are soprano, tenor, bass and contrabass. Recorders have a limited volume range and are best suited to chamber groups.

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22 views1 page

Rev 4 - Split - 5

Woodwind instruments like flutes, clarinets and saxophones share similar fingerings, allowing musicians to play multiple instruments. Flutes and saxophones use fingerings similar to recorders in C, while clarinets use fingerings like recorders in F. This commonality of fingerings facilitates woodwind doubling. Recorders come in various sizes categorized as recorders in C or F, referring to their key notes rather than being transposing instruments. The most common sizes are soprano, tenor, bass and contrabass. Recorders have a limited volume range and are best suited to chamber groups.

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Tom Hart
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Woodwinds

A note on woodwind instruments:

Many amateur and professional musicians double on several woodwind instruments, with so
called 'reed doublers' often expected to utilise the full range of flutes, clarinets and
saxophones. This is made possible due to the similarity in fingerings between the instruments.
Flute and saxophone fingerings are very similar, close to those of the recorders in C (as
explained later). Clarinets have fingerings similar to the recorders in F. The clarinets have a
slight complication, owing to the fact that they overblow at the twelfth rather than the octave.
This makes them beneficial for conversion to Bohlen-Pierce instruments (reference). This
commonality among woodwind fingerings better facilitates woodwind doubling.

Reedless
The Recorder Family
Recorders (or recorder flutes) are familiar to most children of the so called ‘millennial’
generation, as they were popularly taught in British schools until the late 1990s. They are
manufactured in a variety of sizes, which can be categorized into two main groups, recorders
in C and recorders in F. However, neither of these are transposing instruments, but refer to the
key notes of the instruments. All recorders in C have the same fingering. This is the same for
the recorders in F, transposed up a fourth, but read at concert pitch. Recorder sizes are
summarised in Table 1, in descending order of pitch.

Table 1 - A summary of recorder sizes. The most common consort sizes are highlighted in bold.

RECORDERS IN C RECORDERS IN F CLEF


Garklein Treble 15va
Descant/Soprano Sopranino Treble 8va
Tenor Treble/Alto Treble
Great Bass Bass Bass 8va
Contrabass Sub-Great Bass Bass
Sub-Contrabass Bass 8vb
Smaller recorders, at pitches above the bass, are straight vertical. Recorders at pitches lower
than the tenor have a crook for easier holding, and often have a mechanism at the foot-joint for
reaching the very lowest note (C/F). For this reason, the notes C#/F# are sometimes impossible
to play in the lowest register. This feature was often commonplace on tenor recorders, but
modern tenors are more likely to have a full fingering mechanism.

Recorders have a limited volume range, and often cannot play at any volume other than their
fullest without going out of tune. For this reason, they are best suited to chamber groups with
limited other instruments. There is a vast catalogue of music for recorders from the baroque era
and earlier. More recently, modern compositions have been commissioned for the recorder.

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