Should I buy it?
As we head into the holiday season, you may be thinking: Now is the perfect time to buy a recorder!
OK, full confession: I am always thinking this. My budget only sometimes agrees.
But let’s say your budget cooperates. You’ve done your research and identified the style, make and model of recorder you’d like to own. You’ve surrendered your credit card number.
And thus it is that, one happy morning, a package arrives! You open it eagerly. There it is: a beautiful new (or used) recorder, sent to you on approval.
Now you have to decide: Should you buy it?
Sometimes, this decision is easy. You need a sopranino for a concert next month. Your old alto cracked.
But sometimes, it’s agonizing. How do you know you’re buying the right instrument? What about all the other instruments out there you could be buying instead?? How on earth can you make a commitment without full knowledge of the options??? (Let me just interject here how grateful I am that there is no Tinder for recorders.)
The good news is that I am here to help! As a longtime agonizer AND a longtime purchaser of recorders, I have developed five key questions you can ask yourself to frame your decision and choose with confidence. To wit:
1) How much agonizing is it worth?
The amount of time you spend making a purchase decision should be proportional to what that instrument will cost you. I’m not talking about its dollar amount; I’m talking about what it will cost you, specifically. A $35 dollar plastic recorder could be a big investment for some and forgettable for others.
You’ll also want to think about cost in terms of your time. Some instruments have a steeper learning curve, requiring that you invest more hours of your life to be able to play them well. High investment purchases require more thought.
2) Are there deal breakers?
Some instruments might be excellent in many ways, but they possess key flaws that will render them, for your purposes, useless. The key phrase here is for your purposes. If you only want to play solo, a spectacular instrument that plays ten cents flat won’t phase you. If you want to pair that instrument with a keyboard, however, that’s a deal breaker
I do need to differentiate here between deal breakers and technical constraints. If the high F isn’t coming easily and you’ve not yet built confidence in the upper register, the problem might not be the instrument. If your technical stills are still in the early stages of development, you might want to seek out a second opinion from someone with more experience.
3) Is it The One?
I’m not going to tell you that true, instant recorder love doesn’t exist, because I have actually fallen in deep and lasting love with a recorder. But this has happened ONE TIME and I have tried literally hundreds of recorders. Do NOT wait for The One. But on the off-chance The One happens to come along, buy it!
4) Will it open up new doors?
If you don’t own a C bass, purchasing a C bass is going to enable you to tackle new repertoire in new ways. Same with a Ganassi-style instrument, or an instrument at a different pitch than you currently own. If your current priority is unlocking a musical door, the value of having a key, any key, increases.
5) How much work are you willing to do?
No instrument is perfect. Some notes will be easier to make beautiful, some will be harder. Some will be flat, some sharp, and accommodations will need to be made. The question to ask yourself is: How much work am I willing to do? As with any relationship, you will always have to do some work. But you shouldn’t feel as if the work completely overwhelms the joy.
Happy hunting!