Top Six Recorder Myths
I love my job, but I have to admit that there are certain hazards that come with being a recorder professional.
There’s that brief flash of disbelief when I divulge my career. There are the perennial requests to appraise your second-cousin’s aunt’s ex-husband’s ancient basement recorder stash. And don’t get me started on the endless stream of recorder memes (yes, I promise I have seen that one).
Then there are the myths. Recorder myths are multitudinous and hardy. They spring eternal, like hope or that one plant I haven’t quite managed to kill. There are so many recorder myths, in fact, that it is extremely difficult to choose my top six!
But I’ll try. Because myth-busting is fun!
#1. The recorder is easy
Every myth starts with a grain of truth, and there is definitely one here. The beginning stages of learning to play the recorder ARE significantly easier than the beginning stages of learning to play other instruments, in that it’s a relatively quick road to being able to string notes together to produce melodies. You can be rattling off your favorite holiday tune in the same amount of time it might take your trumpet-learning friend to produce, say, a noise.
I actually think this is one of the great virtues of the recorder. Along with the recorder’s unbeatable price, its initial ease makes music accessible for many people who would otherwise not have the time or resources to learn an instrument well enough to enjoy making music on their own or with others. And anything that increases access to music is a win in my book!
But alas, the initial ease of the recorder is like a will-o-the-wisp, luring you into the swamp. Because producing a beautiful, warm, lively, musical, in-tune, well-articulated melody on the recorder, one that truly serves the music, is NOT easy, as anyone who spends enough time with the instrument will eventually discover!
#2. The recorder has no embouchure
If this were true, I wouldn’t have spent hundreds of lesson hours working on getting students to adapt their mouth positions. (Especially players of other winds and brass. Habit dies hard.) Just because an embouchure is comparatively relaxed doesn’t mean it doesn't matter what you do with your lips.
#3. You can’t tune a recorder
I think this myth came about because playing a recorder in tune, much less multiple recorders in tune, is really, really, really difficult, requiring an excellent ear, a large arsenal of sound manipulation techniques, a knowledge of temperaments, and much focused practice. It’s a lot easier to just say the instrument can’t be tuned and move on.
But just because something is extremely difficult to achieve in full doesn’t mean it’s not worth moving toward. We can ALL get better at tuning. I’m still working on it
#4. It’s all about instrument quality!
There’s a grain of truth here, too. The quality of your instrument does have some impact on how you sound. But you know what has far, far more impact? Your level of skill. I recommend investing your time accordingly!
#5. You can’t do dynamics on the recorder
Again, there’s some truth here. You can’t do dynamics in the traditional way, by substantially raising and lowering breath pressure (and if you try this, you’ll quickly find out why!). But can we make energetic shapes in our music, increasing and decreasing our intensity to convey our musical ideas? Absolutely. We can also marshal alternative fingerings, mouth positions, and a variety of other techniques to help us play softer or louder as the occasion demands.
#6. I have mastered the recorder!
Wow! Good for you! I haven’t yet, and I’ve been working on it for over thirty years.
The truth is, we don’t know what we don’t know. And in my experience, those who have decided they’ve learned everything there is to learn about the recorder– or really about any topic– tend to be among the people who know the least.
At the very least, they’re missing out on the delight of learning!