In other news, I have re-picked up the recorder once again. I have quite a few members of the recorder family, and they have been part of my ``casual'' music making back from when I was still studying out in UIUC. I have been following Sarah Jeffery/Team Recorder on YouTube recently, and her recent video on composing for the recorder made me re-look into this family of instruments once again.
The thing about the recorder is that it has a similar timbre as that of the traverso flute, of which I have been playing it lots during this sabbatical, though its dynamics control are a little more limiting than that of the traverso because the only controllable component of the source signal is the air-speed, as compared to additional direction of attack as used in the edge-blown flutes. This means that low notes often cannot be played loudly, and high notes really don't sound when attempting to play softly. However, because of the removal of this additional control surface, the timbre of the recorder tends to be much purer than that of the concert flute---in fact, in A History of Performing Pitch: The Story of ``A'' by Bruce Haynes such fipple flutes are mentioned as pitch reference tools to tune other instruments by.
Dynamics aside, another interesting thing about the recorder is that its correct fingering patterns rely less on re-using fingering patterns through overblowing the harmonics. Part of the reason is as noted before---without the ability to control the embouchure, the change in the angle of attack that is necessary to fine-tune the specific resonance of a harmonic standing wave is greatly reduced. Because of that, we find that the recorder uses the infamous half-thumbing [of the left hand] as a type of register hole in order to force the second harmonic (and higher) to appear to play the higher notes---we see a similar concept in the clarinet and saxophone as well with their left-hand thumb keys.
The interplay of fingers on the left hand in the first upper register of the first harmonic allows instrument middle B, C, C♯, and D to play accurately and flawlessly. Combining that with the right hand yields the cleanest D♯ across simple flute systems with no additional D♯ key by far. Using the notation described here, a summary of the fingering patterns for what I said can be seen here:
| Instrument Note | Fingering Pattern |
|---|---|
| B1 | T 1--|---- |
| C2 | T -2-|---- |
| C♯2 | 12-|---- |
| D2 | -2-|---- |
| D♯2 | -23|456- |
The other fun thing that I learnt about the recorder is the fingering patterns for second octave instrument G to third octave instrument D. The fingering patterns are... interestingly unintuitive, unless one has tried something weird/similar on simple system flutes (which includes the dizi as well). Summarising the relevant fingering patterns:
| Instrument Note | Fingering Pattern |
|---|---|
| G2 | t 123|---- |
| G♯2 | t 12-|4--- |
| A2 | t 12-|---- |
| B♭2 | t 12-|456- |
| B2 | t 12-|45-- |
| C3 | t 1--|45-- |
| C♯3 | t 1-3|4-6- X |
| D3 | t 1-3|4-6- |
The unintuitive part is using the right hand holes to ``shade'' the left hand to force nodes in the standing wave, causing the resultant resonant frequency to go higher. In a way, this technique has been used before in achieving the fourth-harmonic notes on (say) the dizi---like the high instrument E (12-|45- using a similar notation for the recorder as above, or 65-|32- using more traditional dizi fingering pattern notation).
Then of course there's the weird detail about ``baroque'' or old fingering versus the German fingering. All the recorders that I have in my possession (except for my 27-year-old Mikatone C-Soprano Model 200 (in C5), ABS resin---the one I used waaaaaay back in primary school) are using the ``baroque'' fingering. The key difference is stated in the linked Wikipedia article section: a much smaller hole 4 compared to that of hole 5 as counted from the main column from airway to end excluding the thumb hole. I can't play a German fingering system properly---the chromatic notes just sound off. I remember that it was a little off-putting back in the early days of my recorder playing, but having since gotten used to forked fingerings and shading on the traverso, all these are more natural for me now for the recorder.
So much fun!
On a side note, I just want to point out that the tenor recorder basically sounds in the same ambitus as the concert flute, the bass recorder in F (or the basset recorder) is closer to that of the 倍大 C dizi. Incidentally, the Garklein recorder is an octave higher than the G 梆笛, or equivalently, the upper two-thirds of the range of the piccolo, not counting the applicability of third octave extended range alternate fingering patterns. Recalling also that the high notes of a recorder cannot be played softly... it's terrible.
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While on a high from all these revelations about the recorder, I have also taken the opportunity to update my experimental instrument-range visualiser. New features include coloured banding of the rows for following the playable ranges easier, and writing down the span of consecutively orthodox playable notes in octaves wherever there is space.
That last feature... it killed me. So here's the thing: one octave is defined as the interval determined by a doubling of the reference frequency, so C4 to C5 is one octave. That's why a ``2-octave interval'' is also known as a ``fifteenth'', since we first climb the eight notes from C4 to C5, then another seven notes from D5 to C6. But these counts of notes are messy because they aren't of equal length---thanks to the major/minor intervals, the seven notes/intervals that comprise the octave aren't equally divided, a no-go for chromaticism.
So we go back to 12-tone equal temperament then. Now from C4 to C5 as an octave comprises 13 notes. Naturally, ``2-octaves'' is now 25 notes, since we climb 13 notes from C4 to C5, then 12 notes from C♯5 to C6. Basically thanks to the definition of what counts as an octave, the simple trick of divide by 12 doesn't really work. I just shrugged and start with the divide by 12 trick, and for the remaining, decide how much out of 13 it is to see how many fractions of an octave we have left. I think it is good enough.
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Phew, that's a long one. I think I'm done nerding out on music-related things for now. Till the next update.
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