Behind the scenes with the Score Lines videos

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One of the questions I’m asked most about the consort videos I’ve been making for the last two years is, “How do you make them?”, closely followed by, “It must take you hours!”

There was a time during the first Covid lockdown that professional musicians everywhere seemed to be creating multitrack videos, often as a way to remind people we were still out there, even if we couldn’t play to a live audience any more. I didn’t jump on the bandwagon immediately as I was enjoying the opportunity to have some genuine down time at last. I soon became aware how much the people with whom I normally work (amateur musicians like yourself) were missing being able to play in ensembles. I too was missing my musical interactions with others and it struck me that maybe there was scope for me to create some resources to help others.

Recording in action

First steps

While I’ll happily admit I’m a bit of a geek, I don’t have any real experience of video - stills photography is much more my cup of tea. I didn’t want to spend hours editing and grading video content from a proper camera so I did some research about simple ways to make a multitrack video. I quickly hit upon an app called Acapella which can be downloaded to your smartphone. I found some helpful videos on YouTube by flautist Gina Luciani explaining how it works, so I downloaded the trial version and had a play. Incidentally, if you fancy trying this yourself, I believe the iOS version (intended for iPhones) is more fully featured than the Android version. Of course, there may be alternatives out there which work better on Android too.

Shortly before the pandemic I’d bought myself a pair of good quality wireless earbuds, to listen to music on the move, so I figured I’d use them to record my videos. Imagine my disappointment when I tried Acapella and none of the tracks quite knitted together - I was ready to throw the whole kit through the window! Consulting friends who are more technically minded than I me, I discovered there is a slight delay in the way sound plays through a Bluetooth wireless device - sufficient to cause my problems. Instead I went back to my old wired earphones and things worked much better.

One of my first projects was a recording of Holborne’s The Fairie Round - a classic of the Renaissance consort repertoire, with lots of fun cross rhythms. This worked moderately well and I shared the result (which you can see below) with friends on social media. This made me think perhaps there might be some mileage in exploring further…

Next step - figuring out what might be helpful to others

By this stage (May 2020) there were other musicians already creating play along videos for recorder players. Looking at these more closely, they all comprised just the music, with little or no indication of the speed or help to get started. I know from long experience that many players find the gestures of a conductor helpful so I pondered if it might be possible to include this in any resources I produced.

I decided to start with something simple - a trio of Bach Chorales. I’ll explain the process I now use to record in a moment, but for these I began by playing the music and then added a conducting track. In between each chorale I offered a few words of advice to camera about tempo and how you might tackle them. I then popped them on some of the recorder groups on Facebook, along with the music, and asked if anyone might find them useful. The response was very positive - much to my relief. The finished product was pretty rough and ready, but I could see there might be a demand for such offerings if I could come up with some more.

My next project was a Chaconne from The Gordion Knot Untied by Purcell - a piece I’ve conducted with many groups over the years. For this I began the pattern I’ve maintained ever since, with a recording of the music, plus a separate ‘Hints and Tips’ video. I figured the chat between movements would quickly become irritating for anyone who played along with any piece regularly, so it made sense to separate them. Whether everyone watches both videos is something I can’t track, but I know many people find my thoughts helpful and I do my best to offer some useful advice with each consort.

Gradual additions to the technology

When I began recording my videos I started with the Acapella app on my phone, mounted on the tripod I use for my photography, along with the pair of basic wired earphones which came with my iPhone. Since then I’ve made a few additions to my kit, with a Rode VideoMicro microphone (plus an adapter which allows me to connect the mic and a pair of earphones to my phone). This addition offers much better quality sound. It can also be adjusted to cope with a greater dynamic and tonal range. The recorder may not be an especially loud instrument, but its pure tone (especially the higher members of the family) means it's easy to overload the microphone. I now know to have the sound level adjusted to about one third of the maximum to avoid any painful high notes.

A close up of my phone setup, with microphone, adapter and cables. You don’t need anything other than a basic pair of wired earphones to get started if you fancy trying this yourself!

Another addition was a Rotolight NEO 2 video light which I bought second hand. I record my videos in from of our dining room window (much to the amusement of our postman as he passes the window), which provides good illumination from one side, while the left side of my face faces the darker end of the room. Using the video light provides fill light to lift the shadows and means I can record on dull winter days without it looking too gloomy.

My Rotolight NEO on a simple light stand to add illumincation

Figuring out the process

Learning how to get the best from the Acapella app has been a process of trial and error. Gina Luciani’s videos got me started, but from there I just had to jump in and play to get the results I desired. It’s taken lots of experimentation to find out what works best for me, the acoustic of the place I record and the sound of the recorder. Here’s a brief explanation of my process in case you fancy having a go yourself…

Setting up the Acapella app.

Once you’ve chosen your piece you need to select a layout and Acapella offers an impressive range of options. I general use a square layout for the multitrack videos, while for my Hints and Tips videos I go for a portrait format frame. As you can see here there are many options, but for my purposes I always pick a large frame for the conducting track (so you can see my gestures better) and smaller windows for the instrumental parts.

The next step is to pick the length of video. The trial version of Acapella limits you to 30 seconds (long enough to get a taste of whether you might wish to pursue this further) but the paid version (around £42 for access to all the bells and whistles for a year but you can pay monthly if you want to give it a try before committing) can accommodate videos of up to ten minutes - plenty long enough for my purposes. You can set a specific length of time (if you know exactly how long your piece of music is) but I tend to choose ten minutes and then stop the recording when I’ve finished playing.

Next you need to set up the metronome. No matter how rhythmic we think we are, it’s almost impossible to adhere to a perfectly consistent beat unaided. The ability to set a metronome pulse (which plays through my earphones as I record) is invaluable, although there are times when I curse it. More about that later…

The app offers you a choice of time signatures and metronome speeds from 60 to 180. On the rare occasions I need something slower (say 50) I’ll just set a speed of 100 and use it as a subdivided beat. When I’m recording the hints and tips videos I simply turn off the ‘play tempo’ option as I don’t need a pulse to distract me when I’m talking to the camera!

The final set up screen relates to the microphone. This is relevant whether you’re using the microphone built into your earphones or an external mic like mine. Even with a relatively soft instrument like the recorder, setting the microphone level to maximum will result in all sorts of distortion - as you may have heard in some of my early efforts. As you can see from this screenshot, I set mine at no more than one third, although I might increase this a little if I’m recording a piece solely on low recorders. To determine the right level, I just play a range of pitches into the microphone and watch the green on screen meter to check they don’t exceed what the microphone can cope with.

The settings lower down the screen relate to the monitor. This is the sound that plays through your earphones - both the live sound that you’re recording and the tracks you’ve already recorded. This is important so you can hear the tuning between the various voices.

Now it’s time to record!

With all the set up done, the fun bit begins. I tend to start with the bass line and work upwards, but it’s worth trying different approaches - you may find it easier to begin with the descant and work downwards. I’ll talk a little more about the challenges and how I deal with them later.

Acapella gives a countdown on screen to tell you when the microphone becomes live. Then it’s simply a case of playing in time with the metronome beat that’s audible through the earphones. If you find metronomes challenging, my top tip here is never to tap your foot at the same time - you’ll always follow your foot as it’s part of you! When you’ve finished, the app asks if you want to have another go, or if you’re happy. Pressing continue offers you a chance to listen to what you’ve just recorded. If you like what you hear, selecting the green tick triggers the app to render the track you’ve laid down, saving it and the allowing you to record the next one. From there it’s a case of rinse and repeat until you’ve recorded all the voices.

Tweaking the sound settings

The final step is to adjust the sound of the various tracks before you save your finished video. There’s a huge array of options, but I keep it pretty simple. My dining room has a relatively hard acoustic, so I add some reverb to soften the edges and a little hint of echo. A carpeted room would absorb the sound even more so might need a little more assistance to add a little bloom to the end result. The engineer who recorded my CD described this as adding ‘fairy dust’ - that magic quality which turns the dry acoustic of one’s living room into something more flattering! I’ve experimented with using even more reverb but in my experience that just feels too extravagant.

Export and share with your audience

Finally, it’s time to export the completed video and share it with the world! Once you’ve named the video you save it to your Acapella account (I tend to save mine as private files rather than public) and then you have an option to save it in other ways too. I export a copy to my iPhone photos, but you can also share it by email, WhatsApp or on social media from here. One of the options is to select Full HD output (the best quality Acapella offers) or 720P. While it would be wonderful to go for the quality of HD, I generally opt for 720P as the file sizes are much smaller for my subscribers to download them later.

To play or conduct first?

So far I’ve talked about the technical process of recording my videos, but I’ve faced practical decisions along the way too. The first of these is whether to record the conducting or playing tracks first. With a metronome to keep me in time one could argue that the playing could come first. However, doing this presents problems if there’s a tempo change in the music. Because of this I tend to lay down the conducting track first. I spend a few seconds showing my intended speed before giving a bar for nothing and working my way through the piece, conducting at the speed of the metronome best in my ear. If there’s a rallentando at the end I then have to ignore the click of the metronome and indicate the degree of slow down I’m after. This takes a good degree of willpower, but I’ve become quite good at listening selectively when I need to!

Of course one of the most challenging aspects of beginning with the conducting track is the fact that I’m doing so in complete silence. Normally I would respond to the players I’m working with, but here I have to know the score well and give the gestures I would expect to offer to a group of live musicians. From time to time our postman will walk past the window as I’m doing this and I’m sure he must think I’m doing some obscure form of tai chi!

A matter of intonation

The other big challenge when recording multitrack videos is that of intonation. Playing with other musicians in real time is always a game of give and take. You listen to each other and make micro adjustments to the pitch of notes, to make the tuning sweet and true. With multitrack recording this isn’t possible. Once the first track is laid down it’s an immovable object which doesn’t respond to later inputs. This is one of the reasons I begin with the bass line as I can then layer up the other parts on top to fit with it.

So how does one make sure the harmonies are true? This is where it helps to know a little about the way chords work. You may have heard conductors and teachers talking about adjusting the individual notes in chords to obtain pure intonation. This usually entails making the 5th (the G in a C major chord, for instance) quite bright, while the 3rd will need to be altered depending on whether you’re playing a major or minor chord.

A major third (E in our C major chord) will sound sweetest when played a touch flatter, while a minor third (E flat in a chord of C minor) will want to be fractionally sharper. Next time you play with friends try experimenting with this by playing a major chord and varying the pitch of the third - a little higher, a little lower. A really bright major third gives the chord a sour, grating quality. In contrast, lowering the third a little (you can adjust your breath pressure or shade a finger over one of the holes) will make the end result much sweeter and the third almost seems to melt into the chord.

This is the very process I go through as I record each video. For this reason I always record from the score if I can, as it enables me to identify the position of each note within the harmony and adjust its pitch accordingly. This takes a fair degree of mental gymnastics, but experience of conducting from scores and playing basso continuo from figured bass has taught me many of the patterns to expect. Of course, months of making these videos has also helped me learn the foibles of my recorders intimately. I now know where to ‘place’ certain notes using breath pressure or minor adjustments to fingerings to hit the mark. There are inevitably places where I don’t get things right for every single note but I’ve never claimed to achieve recorder consort perfection!

Getting it right first time

When we listen to professionally made recordings we naturally assume the performances we’re hearing are absolutely perfect. The reality is that most recordings (except perhaps ones made in live concerts) require some editing to remove small glitches and errors. In a post last December I talked about the way we expect perfection of ourselves – an expectation which is simply unachievable.

Professional musicians aim for perfection but we’re as human as you and that’s why we have recording engineers who can record snippets to patch into the finished performance to create the illusion of perfection. Sadly I don’t have a tame recording engineer to hand, or the skills to do this myself, and the Acapella app doesn’t offer this option in any case. This means I have to get as close to perfection as I can and accept that every video I produce will inevitably contain some imperfections.

As I record each track I am continually analysing any errors I make, deciding whether they’re absolutely unforgiveable (in which case I stop and begin again) or whether they’re small enough to be overlooked. When I was at music college my recorder teacher would admonish me for being ‘too neat and tidy’. He was looking for more spontaneity and freedom in my performances. I like to think I’ve loosened up over the years, but that tendency towards tidiness has proved to be a boon when recording videos! That said, there are inevitably times when I make stupid errors and have to record a track multiple times. If you imagine you’re the only person who slips into the wrong fingerings or makes daft errors don’t give yourself too hard a time – I do it too. I recall one contrabass part which I recorded five or six times because my brain insisted on sending me into great bass fingering!

I know from experience of recording CDs that if something doesn’t come good in the first couple of takes it will often get worse before it gets better. Think of those old TV programmes showing outtakes of famous actors fluffing their lines. They’re funny because generally they make ever more mistakes with each further attempt, so take 17 is usually much worse than take 2! Musicians are no different. Sometimes you just have to walk away, go and have a cuppa, and try again later. The same goes for my Hints and Tips videos where I sometimes find myself incapable of stringing together a coherent sentence. Fortunately, I don’t save the outtakes, so you’ll never get to enjoy my ineptitude!

Now you can have a go!

So there you have a glimpse behind the scenes of my consort videos. If you fancy having a go yourself I would encourage you to go ahead and try. You don’t need expensive equipment – a smartphone and the wired earphones that were supplied with it are enough to get you started. Yes, it can be frustrating when you make daft mistakes, but that’s all part of the learning process. Even if you never share the results with anyone else, I can guarantee you’ll achieve a greater understanding of your musical strengths and weaknesses and it’s fun too. I know some of you have already tried this and I was delighted to see some of my own videos being used as a starting point for further collaboration by my subscribers. I’d love to hear how you get on if you choose to jump in and have a go – do leave a comment below or drop me an email to tell me about your experiences or with any quesitons.

Trills without the terror

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Do you panic when you see a trill sign in your music? Does the thought of all those fast notes send you into a frenzy? If so, you’re not alone! It’s amazing that something so small and so frequent in the music we play can cause so much worry, but I’m here today to help you overcome your fears. With a little thought, time and practice your trills can become a thing of elegant beauty rather than sheer terror.

What is a trill?

Fundamentally a trill is an ornament – a decorative addition to the music. At its most basic level, a trill is a rapid oscillation between the printed note and a pitch one step higher. It’s important to take the key signature into account, so you play your trills within the key of the music you’re playing. Therefore, in a piece with no key signature if your printed note is an A, you will alternate between that and a B. On the other hand, if your music has a key signature of one flat your upper note will be a B flat.

For the purposes of this blog post I’m going to focus on Baroque trills, as this is the type of repertoire where you’re most likely to encounter them. There are subtle differences to the way you play trills in earlier and later music – for instance whether you begin on the upper or lower note – but if you start with a sound understanding of the Baroque variety you’ll be in a good position to explore these later.

Let’s start by taking a look at the practicalities of trills – the hows, whys and whens. Then I’ll help you build up your skills so your trills can sound effortlessly elegant.

What is the purpose of a Baroque trill?

I said earlier that a trill is an ornament. This suggests it has a purely decorative function – like a porcelain figurine sitting on a shelf. In some music this is true, but Baroque trills have a more specific purpose – to create a sense of tension and release. In order to understand this we first need to know where to begin our trills.

You already know that a trill is made up of two pitches – the one notated in your music and the note immediately above. Which should you start on? Put simply, it’s almost always the upper note. So when playing the following phrase (from Telemann’s Sonata in F) you would begin the trill in bar 4 on a D and then alternate swiftly between that and the notated C sharp.

But why do we begin trills on the upper note?

This is where the concept of tension and release comes into play. Take a look at the same passage again, shown this time with the accompaniment.

If you study the chord beneath the trill in bar 4 you’ll see a chord which includes an E and a C sharp. By playing the upper note of the trill (a D) against this you create a discord or clash in the harmony. This creates a sense of tension, which then dissipates when the trill resolves downwards to the C sharp. This is the purpose of a Baroque trill. No doubt you’ll have heard teachers and conductors nagging to begin trills on the upper note – now you know why. It’s not because we’re trying to make life harder for you, but instead to create that magic combination of tension and release.

Where should I play a trill?

If you’ve played a reasonable amount of Baroque music you’ll have encountered places where your teacher or conductor tells you to insert a trill, even though it’s not marked in the music. Why is this? Is the composer being lazy in his or her notation?

Not at all! We’re spoilt with modern notation – composers today generally give very clear information about the way they’d like the music to be played. It’s not unusual to have very detailed articulation marks (slurs, staccato, accents and the like), dynamics and even the odd trill printed into our music. With early music (generally prior to around 1750) composers left these creative decisions in the hands of the performer. Because players were familiar with the style of the period they knew what was expected of them so there was simply no need to mark every last little detail in. This requires a lot of decision making on our part – a topic I talked about in an earlier blog post which you can find here.

When it comes to trills, the most common place for them is at a cadence point. A cadence occurs at the end of a phrase, usually accompanied by a particular combination of chords. Whether you have a knowledge of harmony or not, these chord progressions are so much a familiar part of the music that you’ll probably have an instinctive sense that you’re reaching the end of a musical sentence. At these points a trill will often be added to the penultimate note of the phrase, emphasising this point. For instance, listen to Dan Laurin’s performance of the opening movement of Handel’s Sonata in C. Note the way his trills occur just before the end of phrases. These are points where there is a moment of repose, before the music moves onwards. Think of it like the time you would take at punctuation points if you were reading a piece of prose aloud to an audience.

Sometimes these cadential trills will be notated in the music – perhaps by the composer, or as additions from the editor. There will be lots of other places where a trill might be appropriate though, so don’t be afraid to try putting them in. If you feel you’re approaching the end of a musical sentence pop in a trill and see if it works. What’s the worst that can happen? You might find it fits perfectly and, if not, you can try somewhere else next time. No one will suffer an injury from an incorrectly placed trill!

Which notes should I articulate?

With potentially lots of notes to play you may be daunted by the thought of getting your tongue around them. Fear not! Baroque trills are always slurred so you should tongue the first (upper) note and then your tongue doesn’t need to make contact with your hard palate again until the note immediately after the trill. It’s very easy to slither onto this final note in an uncontrolled way. This may be because you find it hard to coordinate your tongue with this single note. If this is the case, instead focus on the underlying rhythm beneath the trill. Let’s look at an extended extract of the Telemann again:

Take a look at the rhythm of the trill in bar 7 - a dotted crotchet followed by a quaver. You wouldn’t think twice about tonguing those two notes cleanly without the presence of the trill. Instead of worrying about how you’re going to coordinate your tongue stroke with that quaver, focus your articulation on the underlying rhythm as though the trill wasn’t there at all. Once your trill finger patterns have a little more control you’ll find they match up very easily. I’ll talk a little more about creating shapely trills in a moment.

Selecting your trill fingerings

This is an occasion when Occam’s Razor should come into play – a centuries old principle which decrees that the simplest answer is usually the right one. In other words, if you can play your trill by using the standard fingering for both notes, you should do exactly that! There will of course be some combinations of notes where this isn’t possible – for instance the trill which appears in bar 6 of the example above (the equivalent trill would be C to B on a descant or tenor recorder). Here it isn’t practical to shift cleanly and swiftly between the two standard fingerings so an alternative has to be used.

A very thorough chart, showing trill fingerings for all sizes of recorder, can be found on the Dolmetsch website here. You could perhaps print out a copy and keep it near your music stand or in your recorder case for reference.

Feeling overwhelmed at the number of possible trill fingerings? Don’t be!

Recorder music tends to be written in a fairly limited number of keys. This means the number of trill fingerings you’ll need on a regular basis is relatively small. If you’re just starting out with trills, get to know a couple to start with and use them whenever they occur in your music. Once you’re comfortable finding one or two of these in the heat of the moment, choose another one and add that to your repertoire. There’s really no need to bamboozle yourself with all of them at once – instead add new trill fingerings gradually and they’ll stick in your muscle memory more easily.

Making your trills shapely

It’s all very well knowing the theory of playing trills but the next step is making them feel like an integrated part of the music. Johann Joachim Quantz offers his thoughts on this subject in his 1752 book, On Playing the Flute:

“Shakes [trills] add great lustre to one’s playing, and, like appoggiaturas, are quite indispensable. If an instrumentalist or singer were to possess all the skill required by good taste in performance, and yet could not strike good shakes, this total art would be incomplete.”

If trills set you into a state of panic it’s easy to forget about ‘good taste’, instead throwing your fingers at them and ending up in a frantic mess. Take a moment to remember what I said earlier about the purpose of a Baroque trill. In music of this period trills are an expressive device, as much an a decorative one. Therefore you’ll achieve a more stylish result if you focus more on the shape of the trill and less on the sheer speed required.

Remember, the upper note of the trill is the moment where you create a discord – that moment of tension. This note is an appoggiatura - the Italian word for a leaning note. Sometimes the composer or editor will print this appoggiatura in the music (see bar 1 of the Telemann example above) but even if they don’t, you still need to play it. The longer you can spend on this appoggiatura, the more expressive the result. Not only that, but by lengthening the upper note you reduce the time remaining and therefore the number of wiggles you need to fit in. The result – a more expressive trill that sounds more musical and is easier too. I call that a win! Listen to these two snippets of me playing a short section from the Handel C major Sonata – the first with fast trills which have a short upper note, the second with longer, more expressive appoggiaturas. Do you agree that the second feels more stylish and expressive?

Speed isn’t everything

My harpsichord teacher, Maria Boxall, often used to remind me that trills don’t need to be like wallpaper. Imagine of a roll of wall paper – the printed pattern repeats at the same interval throughout its length. This is the wall paper equivalent of a fast, whizzy trill. Now imagine instead a roll of paper where the repetition of the pattern alters along its length. At the top of the roll the patterns are distanced from each other and their repetition increases in frequency as you move down the length of paper. This is a great image to have in mind as you begin a longer trill. You don’t need to jump in feet first, at full speed. Instead, start the oscillation slowly and gradually wind it up. See how much more shapely this makes it feel? I’ll give you some exercises to practise this later.

Again, Quantz has some good advice on this subject:

“All shakes do not have to be struck with the same speed; in this matter you must be governed by the place in which you are playing, as well as by the piece to be performed. …. In melancholy pieces the shake must be struck more slowly, in gay ones, more quickly.”

As Quantz suggests, you should always consider the mood and character of the piece you’re playing. A fast, energetic movement may demand swift, snappy trills, whereas in a slow movement a more leisurely approach might feel more appropriate. Again, here are two snippets from Handel’s C major Sonata – one a sonorous Larghetto, the second an energetic Allegro – notice how I tailor the character of the trills to match the mood of the music.

How do I finish a trill?

Now you have a better understanding about the way trills begin we need to consider how to finish them. Quantz offers this advice:

“The ending of each shake [trill] consists of two little notes which follow the notes of the shake, and are added to it at the same speed. They are called the termination. This termination is sometimes written out with separate notes. If, however, only a plain note is found, both the appoggiatura and termination are implied, since without them the shake would be neither complete not sufficiently brilliant.”

However, later he does later add:

“I would like to note in addition that if shakes are indicated above several quick notes, the appoggiatura and termination are not always possible because of the lack of time.”

So it would seem it’s case of “You should always play trills the way I specifiy, except on occasions when it’s not practical” - a wonderfully pragmatic approach!

Another option for finishing trills is to use an anticipation note - a brief anticipation of the note you finally land upon. In the first movement of Telemann’s Recorder Sonata in C we see him writing these anticipation notes into the music after the trills (notated here with a + sign rather than tr).

It’s worth practising these different endings for trills so you can call upon whichever is most appropriate in the heat of the moment. In Gudrun Heyen’s Advanced Recorder Technique, Volume 1, she offers these patterns as the basis for practising anticipation notes or turns at the end of trills. The three patterns are shown for a trill on a C, but you could replicate the pattern and practise is on any note to acquire the muscle memory for any key.

Developing your trill technique

One of the things people worry about most with trills is the sheer speed. As we’ve learnt, trills don’t always need to be super-speedy, but there will be occasions when you need some velocity. For those moments it’s important to hone your finger movements and practise them so you can call upon that speed when necessary.

Let’s begin with this simple exercise:

Begin with a steady tempo - maybe crotchet = 72. As you play, focus on the quality of your finger movements. You should keep your fingers as relaxed as possible, using as little effort to seal the finger holes as is absolutely necessary. Make your finger movements small too – don’t lift your fingers more than about a centimetre above the holes. Remember – the further you lift your fingers, the longer they will take to come back down again. You may find it helpful to play these exercises in front of a mirror so you can see your fingers from a different perspective.

Now focus on the evenness of your notes. Close your eyes and really listen. Taking away the visual element makes you listen more carefully. Remember, lifting a finger takes just a fraction more effort than lowering it as you are working against gravity.

Now do the same exercise on different notes, working up from the bottom of your recorder. Some fingers will move more easily than others – third fingers are often recalcitrant and moving your thumb quickly may prove troublesome too. This is because the joints in our thumbs work in a different way to those in our fingers because they have a greater range of all round movement. Once you can do this exercise on every note at this slow tempo, gradually increase the speed of your metronome to make your fingers move faster.

Spend a few minutes on these patterns each time you practise and you’ll soon find you gain speed and flexibility.

Now for some rubato…

OK, so you’ve got your fingers moving more quickly. Now we need to introduce the flexibility needed to create a shapely Baroque trill. Here we use rubato. This Italian word means robbed time – literally you’re stealing time from some notes and adding it to others to create a feeling of flexibility and spontaneity.

Now take the exercise we did just now, oscillating between two notes, but instead of precise, mathematical changes in tempo go for a gradual increase of speed. Begin really slowly and gradually move your finger faster until you reach your terminal velocity. Again, with some finger combinations you may find you get stuck, as a finger momentarily stalls. Keep trying, but be careful to maintain the feeling of relaxation in your digits. Tension is your greatest enemy when it comes to developing speed. While you’re at it, try the same exercise with trills which gradually reduce in speed, and finally trills which increase and decrease in velocity. If you can get to a point where you can do this with every finger you are in a great place to apply it to the music you’re playing.

Other trilling conundrums

One of the things I found hardest when I began playing trills was keeping an awareness of the pulse while playing a trill which felt organic rather than metronomic. Sadly I don’t recall how I overcame this stumbling block, but using a metronome will certainly help. Having an audible beat to play against will help you keep track of the number of beats you’re trilling for and in time you’ll be able to maintain this sense of pulse in your head against even the most flexible and shapely of trills.

Keeping your upper notes on the beat

Because we perceive trills as requiring masses of speed, it’s easy to panic about fitting everything in. Somewhere in our subconscious, a small voice tells us that if we begin the trill earlier it’ll give us more time to get all those whizzy notes in. You can’t deny the logic, but sadly it just doesn’t work! The end result is a trill which may begin on the upper note but it often comes so early that by the time the chord with which it’s intended to clash (thus creating the desired feeling of tension) comes along, the upper note is but a distant memory!

Remember my advice earlier about spending more time on the appoggiatura and less on the wiggling notes. This may help, as the appoggiatura then becomes a more significant note in its own right. In fast pieces though this will often not be enough to cure your impatience to get trilling. To conquer this problem a good practice strategy is to play your piece of music, inserting only the appoggiaturas and leaving out all the wiggly notes. Really focus on getting them firmly on the beat. Then once you’re happy, add back in some twiddles, while maintaining the appoggiatura on the beat. Even after you’ve done this you may slip back into bad habits, so never be afraid to go back and repeat the exercise periodically.

Learn from others

To finish off, the most important piece of advice I can give you is to listen to lots of Baroque music. YouTube is a fantastic resource and there are lots of wonderful performances to be found by amazing recorder players. Do a search for names such as Dan Laurin, Erik Bosgraaf, Pamela Thorby, Frans Brüggen, Saskia Coolen or your favourite recorder professional and you’ll find no end of sonatas and concertos which contain a myriad of trills for you to enjoy and inwardly digest.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Barsanti Sonata in C major:

Handel Sonata in D minor:

Mancini Sonata in A minor

Remember too that you don’t even need to restrict yourself to recorder music. The same principles apply to Baroque music played on any instrument so you’ll never be short of listening material. Really focus on how and where they play trills and gradually you’ll begin to understand where you could add them into your own performances.

If you have your own trill tips, perhaps shared with you by your own teacher, do share them in the comments below so we can all learn from each other.

Further reading

If you’d like to explore the topic of trills further I can recommend some books which you may find useful:

Johann Joachim Quantz - On Playing the Flute (1752) - Faber & Faber

A classic book, intended as a guide for flautists, but relevant to anyone who plays Baroque music. Available in paperback and eBook formats.

Gudrun Heyens - Advanced Recorder Technique, Volume 1 - Schott

A fantastic resource, packed with practical advice and exercises. Volume 1 is devoted to fingers and tongue, while volume 2 covers breathing and sound. Originally written in German and translated to English by Peter Bowman.

Walter van Hauwe - The Modern Recorder Player, Volume 2 - Schott

This three part series is a classic reference and practice book for the recorder. Volume 2 contains masses of exercises for honing your trills.

Sounding pipes – musical explorations

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What do you listen to most when you’re travelling? When I’m on the road I’m an avid listener of podcasts, but when I begin to flag music becomes my preferred choice. There’s nothing quite like singing along loudly to a piece of music to wake you up and make the miles pass more quickly!

On recent journeys I’ve taken to putting the choice of music in the hands of Apple Music (other music providers are available!), telling the app on my phone to pick the music for me. I’ve always enjoyed a very varied listening diet – one day it’ll be Bach, followed maybe by a Brahms Symphony, some Byrd polyphony or popular music by the Beatles or Robbie Williams. The app on my phone has been learning from this and when I put it in charge it offers me an equally eclectic mix. This has proved to be a wonderful ground for discovering fresh music.

I’ve made some amazing discoveries during these listening sessions and it struck me you might be interested in some of the gems I’ve come across. The result is a new series of occasional blog posts called Sounding Pipes, where I’ll share some of the (mostly) recorder related recordings I’ve encountered and enjoyed. Of course, those long journeys in the car are only the beginning. Sometimes I’ll seek out a piece of music again once I’m home, taking me down unforeseen paths to other fascinating repertoire, or reminding me of works I’d forgotten about.

I hope you enjoy these listening suggestions and that perhaps they lead you to new discoveries of your own. All of this week’s pieces are available on YouTube to watch or listen to, but wherever possible I’ll also include details of the albums they come from so you can explore further if you wish.

Happy listening!

J.S.Bach – Ebarme dich, mein Gott from the St. Matthew Passion

Lucie Horsch – Baroque Journey (Decca 2019)

This is where the inspiration for this series originated, as this piece popped up on my playlist, performed by Dutch recorder player Lucie Horsch. I first encountered this heart breakingly beautiful aria when I performed in a St. Matthew Passion on the Isle of Wight many years ago. I clearly recall the exquisite combination of solo violin and countertenor voice and it remains my absolute favourite from the most famous of Bach’s Passions. Purists may not approve of the way Lucie Horsch swaps the vocal line for a recorder, but it’s hard not to forgive this change when she plays it so beautifully.

Following the breadcrumbs laid by Lucie, I returned to Bach’s original scoring and made a second, even more amazing discovery. Searching on YouTube, I happened upon the Netherlands Baroque Society’s project, All of Bach. This project aims to perform and record the entirety of Bach’s compositional output, making it all available to watch free of charge – an astonishing prospect in every way! Among the pieces already recorded is a performance of the St. Matthew Passion from 2015. The whole Passion is available online, but the performance of Ebarme dich, mein Gott, featuring violinist Shunske Sato and singer Tim Mead is, to my mind, even more glorious than Lucie’s one. While there are no recorders in the original, I decided to share this with you too as I hope you’ll love it as much as I do!

Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger – Pavan No.2 on Seven Notes

B-Five Recorder Consort & Sofie Vanden Eynde (lute) – The Soule of Heaven (Coviello Classics COV92108)

I have to credit my Dad for pointing me in the direction of this particular recording. He heard this Pavan by Ferrabosco on the radio recently and asked if I knew it. While I was certainly familiar with Ferrabosco I didn’t know this particular Pavan and what a find it is! The B-Five Recorder Consort play it on a wonderful set of low Renaissance recorders and the lush tones are so enchanting. The addition of lute (played by Sofie Vanden Eynde) enhances the texture, balancing the richness of the recorder tone. Needless to say I’ve downloaded the whole album and it’ll be a welcome soothing influence after a busy day!

Sour Cream performing a selection of music for three recorders

Frans Brüggen, Kees Boeke & Walter van Hauwe

I discovered this video while rummaging on YouTube for recorder trio music. My eye was caught by the inclusion of Upon Ut Re Mi Fa by John Baldwine, but this 36 minute programme contains an eclectic mix. When this was recorded in 1981 at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, the centre had been open for just three years, designed by the then largely unknown architect Norman Foster. The building is home to an enormous art collection, spanning some 5000 years of human activity, and the music reflects this variety.

Sour Cream was formed by Frans Brüggen, Kees Boeke & Walter van Hauwe with the intention of commissioning and performing avant garde music recorder music, but their repertoire expanded way beyond that. Rather than being a straight performance to camera, the trio’s music is accompanied by an eclectic cinematic approach, using green screen techniques and even a surreal Monty Pythonesque section where they interact with the works of art and then fall asleep. I can’t but feel they had great fun making this! The music may not all be to your taste, but there’s bound to be something you’ll love. The final Bach Allegro (the Preludio from his Violin Partita in E minor) is an absolute tour de force of technique and precision.

If this quirky compilation intrigues you I suggest you explore Sour Cream’s iconic album The Passion of Reason (recorded in 1993/4 & rereleased by Glossa records 2013) which includes an equally varied repertoire from five centuries.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in hearing the original violin version of the Bach Preludio which ends this selection, I can recommend this performance by Viktoria Mullova. If you fancy the ultimate workout, Frans Brüggen also made his own transcription of the Preludio for solo recorder which is published by Moeck, along with a selection of other movements from the Violin Partitas. If you choose to try it for yourself be prepared to do lots of scale and breathing practice!

 

Telemann Concerto in E minor for recorder and flute

Frans Brüggen (recorder), Frans Vester (flute) & Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra

When I was at music college I regularly used to visit Leadenhall Market in the city of London to browse the CDs at Farringdon Records (a wonderful shop which sadly no longer exists). It was on one such visit that I discovered this recording and it became a firm favourite. The playing style may not be as ‘authentic’ as some (played on modern instruments rather than Baroque copies) but I was blown away by the sheer energy of the performance. To this day the vivacity of the final movement of the concerto is simply irresistible

If this recording appeals to you as much as it did to my youthful self I recommend exploring the whole album which features four other concertos and overtures by Telemann.

 

New Zealand Traditional - Wellerman

Ralf Bienioschek - recorders, guitar, percussion, melodica

And now, as they say, for something completely different! Early in 2021 a new craze emerged on TikTok and other social media sites, spurred by Scottish singer Nathan Evans’ performances of sea shanties. Perhaps the best known of these is Soon May the Wellerman Come, and it wasn’t long before the recorder world had its own version. One of my subscribers, pointed me to this performance by Ralf Bienioschek and it’s absolutely infectious in its drive and energy. He’s recorded several other multitrack videos of equally unlikely repertoire for recorder (Billy Eilish’s Bad Guy for instance) and there are links to these on Ralf’s website. A big thank you to Jean for leading me here and many apologies if this results in a persistent earworm!

If this whets your appetite to play Wellerman for yourself Ralf has published the sheet music for his arrangement here.

So there you have my first Sounding Pipes playlist - I hope you found something new and enjoyable within. If you have favourite recordings you’d like to share with us all please do leave a comment below - I hope this may offer an opportunity for us all to explore and listen further!

 

 

Pitch Perfect - the journey to musical consensus

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Pitch can be a nebulous concept, even in music, where you might imagine it would need the strongest of foundations. Today we take it for granted that the A an oboist plays for an orchestra to tune up is a definitive, fixed pitch, but it wasn’t always so. And where does that leave us as recorder players, when we habitually play music from many centuries? Today I’m going to talk about the concept of pitch and how it relates to your musical work in a practical way.

A brief history of pitch

Let’s begin with the basics – how pitch is measured. With an oscilloscope it’s easy to see that sound (musical or otherwise) is made up of different shaped waves. The shape of the sound waves from a recorder are fairly smooth and simple, thanks to our instrument’s pure tone. In comparison, an instrument like the clarinet produces a much more jagged shape when played into an oscilloscope. The speed of these waves is measured in Hertz (Hz), with the number referring to the number of times the waves occur per second. As pitch rises, the number of vibrations per second increases. For instance, the lowest note played by a contrabassoon (a B flat three octaves and one note below middle C) sounds at just 29Hz, while the A given by an orchestral oboist is 440Hz. When it comes to defining the pitch of any instrument it’s the frequency of the A above middle C (the one the oboist gives) which is used – for instance A440 has been the standard pitch for many decades.

Standardisation of pitch

While we’re used to the idea of a universal pitch today, this is a relatively recent concept. Centuries ago, when musicians didn’t travel very far, the ‘standard’ pitch in any village or town tended to be that played by the church organ. Such instruments cannot be easily retuned, so any other musician just had to conform to whatever pitch it was tuned to!

Six months after the death of King Henry VIII an inventory was made of his possessions, revealing that he owned no fewer than 76 recorders. He was reputedly an able musician but even Henry VIII couldn’t play more than one recorder at a time. But having a set of instruments made at the same pitch meant he could play with musicians who lived elsewhere. There was no guarantee the instruments of a musician living even just a few miles from the Royal palace would be at the same pitch, so having a set of matching recorders would solve this problem.

As musicians travelled more, the need for a standardised pitch became more urgent, although it took several centuries before pitch became consistent around the globe. I always compare this process to the introduction of railway time. In the 18th century each town would set its time according to the local sundial - this meant that time varied according to the location within the country. With the advent of long distance travel it became necessary to standardise time, so railway timetables could be devised and run accurately. Musical pitch had to ultimately follow a similar process so musicians from different places could play together at the same pitch.

Geographical variations

In 1711 the tuning fork was invented by trumpeter John Shore. Many historic tuning forks still remain today and these pieces of metal give us a fascinating glimpse into geographical variations of pitch.

In 1880 Alexander Ellis wrote an essay about the history of musical pitch for the Society of Arts in London. In it he talks about dozens of tuning forks from all over the world, from one made by Shore in 1715 pitched at A419.9  to another owned by Steinway and Sons in New York from 1879 which reached the dizzying heights of A457.2. Added to this there were different trends in pitch within individual countries - for instance the fashion in Rome was for a lower pitch, while musicians in Venice preferred a higher pitch. If you’re interested in the historic tuning forks still in existence today I can recommend this article.

Pitch inflation

One thing is clear from this data – the overall trajectory for pitch was an upwards one. In the Baroque period pitch was often limited by string instruments because gut strings on violins, violas and cellos could only be tensioned so far before they snapped. More modern technologies (metal strings on violins and metal frames on pianos for instance) allowed greater tension and therefore higher pitches. Of course, singers were rarely in favour of this trend as the rise in pitch made their high notes harder to sing!

The problem of pitch inflation wasn’t a new one though. It’s now known that pitch was somewhat higher in the Renaissance (as high as A466). In his publication, Syntagma musicum Michael Praetorius reported at the start of the 17th century that pitch levels had become so high that singers were experiencing severe throat strain and lutenists and viol players were complaining of snapped strings.

By the time we reach the Baroque period, pitch had dropped again, tending to be in the region of A420, rising to the 430s and higher during the 19th century.

Finding a ‘standard’ pitch

It wasn’t until the 19th century that a concerted effort was made to bring some consistency in pitch. In 1859 the French government passed a law setting pitch at A435 and this became a popular standard beyond France too. It was confirmed as a standard throughout Italy, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Prussia, Saxony, Sweden and Württemberg during a conference in Vienna in 1885. However, it was not until the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, that it was adopted even more widely. It’s curious that a treaty intended to formally mark the end of World War I should cover the subject of musical pitch, but, sure enough, Section 2, Article 282 lists the agreement from Vienna in 1885 as one of the items binding Germany and the Allied Powers.

Of course this wasn’t the end of the matter… By 1926 A440 has been informally adopted by the music industry and the subject was once again discussed at a conference under the auspices of the International Standards Association (held at the BBC’s Broadcasting House) in 1939. Finally, in 1955, A440 was confirmed by the International Organisation for Standardisation as an official standard (known to this day as ISO 16), with further confirmation in 1973 and 2017.

Pitch standards today

You thought you’d heard the last of pitch inflation, hadn’t you? Well, think again!

Today many symphony orchestras play at a slightly higher pitch – A 442. This fractionally higher pitch adds a little more brightness to the sound, although I suspect many audience members would find it difficult to hear the exact difference in pitch if asked to compare notes. Ultimately of course, the overall pitch of an orchestra still depends on the A given by the oboist.

Where does this leave us as recorder players?

For orchestral musicians the concept of playing at significantly different pitches is an alien one – A440 (or 442) is a one size fits all pitch. But as recorder players we regularly explore repertoire from a vast array of musical periods. Does this mean we need recorders at different pitches? Yes…. and no!

Pitch standards for early music

With the advent of the Early Music revival in the 1960s there was a greater emphasis on playing music in a historically informed way; getting as close as possible to what composers might have expected to hear in their lifetime. With massed produced instruments there needed to be an agreed pitch so a number of different pitches became the norm:

  • A415 – so called ‘Baroque pitch’. This is the pitch at which most professional Baroque ensembles play today. This particular pitch is a convenient one as it’s a whole semitone below A440, about which I’ll talk more in a moment.

  • A392 – French pitch. There was a fashion in France for a pitch which was lower still in the 18th century, so sometimes performers of this music will adopt this pitch – about a tone lower than A440.

  • A430 – Classical pitch – used in historically informed performances to play repertoire from the period associated with Mozart and Beethoven – albeit not a common habitat for recorder players.

  • A466 – Renaissance pitch - sometimes offered by makers of consorts of Renaissance recorders to reflect the higher pitch used during that period.

Of course, most recorder players stick with A440. After all, if you have an international standard it makes sense to use it as that allows you to play was lots of different people. More recorders (like orchestral instruments) are being made to a standard of A442 today. Fortunately this isn’t too big a problem as the difference of 2Hz is small. Those with A442 instruments can easily pull out their recorder’s headjoint a little to play in tune with those at A440.

A415 - a pitch of convenience

I mentioned earlier that A415 was a pitch chosen largely because it’s a semitone lower than concert pitch. This is handy because it allows for the use of instruments capable of playing at more than one pitch. Harpsichords are often made with a built in transposing mechanism, where a block is pulled out at one end of the keys. This allows the entire keyboard mechanism to be slid up or down so the plectra connect one string higher or lower. This conveniently shifts the pitch up or down a semitone, although this only works when the instrument is tuned to equal temperament, where all the semitones are equal in size. This isn’t the case for other historical tuning temperaments, but that’s a subject to be explored another day! Recorders can also be made to play at more than one pitch, by the use of a corps de rechange. More about this useful device shortly…

Why try Baroque pitch?

If you’ve never explored recorders at Baroque pitch (A415) you may be wondering what the practical difference is. The simple answer, as we’ve already learnt, is a semitone. I’ve heard it argued that you could achieve the same effect by just transposing the music a semitone lower – assuming this didn’t result in notes which then extend below the bottom note of your instrument. On a theoretical basis this is correct, but in practice you wouldn’t achieve the same tonal effect.

To play the Handel Sonata shown below a semitone lower would give you a key signature of four sharps – a much less comfortable proposition than Handel’s F major. So many sharps (plus additional ones as the music modulates into other keys) result in lots of cross or forked fingerings on the recorder. Because of the way the instrument works these are intrinsically less stable in tone – for instance, compare low G and G sharp on your treble recorder. Tuning also becomes more of a challenge and the result will sound rather different. Aside from any tonal differences, there’s also the simple fact that the finger patterns for such extreme keys are simply harder to play, especially at speed. A recorder made to play at A415 is a much better solution!

Here are the first few bars of Handel’s Sonata in F and a recording of me playing them on my A440 treble.

The music sounds perfectly lovely, but now take a listen to the same snippet played at A415. What do you notice?

Can you hear how much creamier and sonorous things become at A415? The timbre of the sound is affected as well as the pitch and it’s amazing the difference just a semitone can make.

With larger instruments the difference is even more apparent. It’s common practice to ‘borrow’ Baroque flute music and play it on the treble recorder a minor third higher, but it’s even more delectable played at Baroque pitch on a voice flute (a tenor in D), as you can hear here.

It's not just classically trained musicians who understand this fact. Jimi Hendrix made use of this contrast in some of his music, choosing to play certain songs with his instruments tuned a semitone lower. As well as making the higher notes easier to reach for singers, guitars have a deeper, heavier sound when tuned this way because their strings are under less tension. Have a listen to Little Wing – one of the songs he chose to play at a lower pitch.

Taking the plunge into Baroque pitch

Once upon a time if you wanted to try playing at A415 that meant buying an expensive new recorder – usually a treble to begin with. In the grand scheme of things relatively few recorders are made at Baroque pitch so historically they were only made in wood. Likewise, only serious students tend to want to make this leap so almost all low pitch instruments fall into the upper end of the price range.

Another option is to buy a recorder with a corps de rechange. This is an instrument with two middle joints – one shorter for playing at A440, and a second longer one for A415. If you regularly find yourself swapping between pitches (maybe you play in both low pitch and concert pitch ensembles) this can be a budget friendly route. I bought such a recorder many years ago when I invested in my voice flute (the one you heard earlier in the Telemann Fantasia), with an additional centre joint to give me the option of an A440 tenor recorder. This was a useful compromise and allowed me to get two recorders for only slightly more than the price of one.

Baroque pitch on a budget

Happily the recorder market has moved on, and cheaper options exist for those who think they’d like to play at A415. Zen-on now offer a plastic A415 treble recorder, based upon their excellent A440 Bressan model. At the current price of £125 it’s a pricey plastic recorder (although comparable to the cost of a plastic tenor or bass) but it would make a good stepping stone to a wooden instrument. I’ve recently tried one of these instruments and very much enjoyed the experience. It has a lovely, warm tone, which is even throughout its range and the tuning is excellent. Overall it’s a great budget choice and would make an excellent practice instrument for when your wooden recorders need a rest.

Another option are the resin recorders made by French recorder maker Vincent Bernolin. These are designed as copies of original instruments by Thomas Stanesby and feature the refined voicing you’d expect from a handmade wooden recorder. They currently cost €395 for a descant and €495 for a treble, available at both A415 and 440. I haven’t been able to try one yet but Sarah Jeffery was impressed with the quality and tone when she reviewed them on her Team Recorder YouTube channel. You can watch her review here:

When I first considered buying an A415 recorder the wooden instruments available all tended to be high end, expensive models. That’s still mostly true today, but Mollenhauer have expanded their Denner Line series of recorders to include an A415 treble recorder in pearwood, which is currently sold for around £375. Pear is a softwood, so may not have the ultimate quality or longevity of hardwoods such as boxwood, palisander or grenadilla. But if you prefer the sound and response of a wooden instrument it’s definitely worth considering if you’re on a budget. A boxwood model is also available for around £200 more.

Not ready to make the leap yet?

Playing at Baroque pitch won’t be for everyone. It may be that all your recorder playing friends only have A440 instruments and you feel you won’t get good use out of such an investment. Of course, there’s nothing to stop you playing solo repertoire at A415 on your own, but I appreciate one of the joys of recorder playing is being able to make music with others.

Even if you feel this isn’t for you I would encourage you to at least try an A415 instrument if you have the opportunity. Maybe you attend a recorder course where a retailer comes along with instruments to try? Or perhaps you live within reach of the Early Music Shop, or a similar shop? If you have the opportunity, do go along and have a tootle on a low pitch instrument – I guarantee you’ll experience that ‘wow’ moment as you realise what a difference that semitone makes!

If nothing else, I hope this exploration of pitch has opened your eyes to possibilities beyond concert pitch and perhaps given you a few interesting facts you can amaze your friends with. If you already have a Baroque pitch recorder why not leave a comment below and share what led you to take the leap – it may help others who are sitting on the fence.

To finish I’ll leave you with a pair of recordings so you can appreciate the different soundworlds of modern and Baroque pitch. I’ve chosen Handel’s wonderful Sonata in C, played by Michala Petri (A440) and Erik Bosgraaf (A415). They’re very different interpretations, recorded nearly three decades apart, but a fascinating contrast - I’d love to hear which you enjoy most and why.

The Technique Zone - creating a truly beautiful tone

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“Spare the breath and spoil the tone”
— Walter Bergmann

Walter Bergmann’s pithy aphorisms about recorder playing result from years spent working with amateur recorder players; observing their habits. While some may sound a little facetious, they all contain at least a nugget of truth. Today’s blog is inspired by the golden rule quoted above - one I often repeat to the musicians I work with. Let’s explore the reasons why…

Which element of technique do you pay most attention to when playing? I bet there are many occasions when you get tied up with fast fingerwork, or moments when you feel you’re wrestling with some sort of tongue twister. But what happens to your tone while this battle is going on? Almost certainly it suffers as you struggle to multitask. In this second chapter of The Technique Zone my mission is to help you understand how to work on your sound - hopefully to the point where you develop good habits which will hold, no matter how fast the notes are

Setting good foundations

In part one of The Technique Zone I talked about the importance of good posture when playing. Hopefully you’ve been thinking about this in recent weeks but if you’d like a refresher you can find that blog post here.

The next step is to get you breathing efficiently. Breath is as vital for a good recorder tone as it is for life itself, so it’s worth taking a moment to consider exactly how our lungs work. Breathing is such an instinctive act - our bodies just get on with it and it’s often only when things go wrong that we become aware of it. 

Understanding the way we breathe

The most important tool for breathing is your diaphragm - a parachute shaped muscle which sits beneath your lungs, separating them from your digestive system. Like your heart, it does its job without conscious direction from your brain. This is vital or there’s a danger we’d forget to breathe if something more exciting distracted us! 

So what does your diaphragm actually do? Fundamentally, it pulls downwards, expanding your lungs and creating a vacuum in them. This vacuum pulls air in from the atmosphere via your windpipe, filling your lungs and providing oxygen to your brain - breathing in. When it’s time to exhale your diaphragm relaxes, pushing the waste products (carbon dioxide) and any unused breathe out of your lungs. All this happens between 12 and 20 times a minute at rest without us even thinking! There are other muscles in your rib cage (your intercostal muscles) which hep this process, but for the purposes of recorder playing it’s the diaphragm that’s the main focus of our attention. If you want to learn more about how your lungs work I can recommend this article from the British Lung Foundation which explains the complete process of breathing very clearly.

Learn to breathe efficiently

If you’re going to make the best possible tone with your recorder there’s one thing you need lots of - breath! We take our breathing for granted 99% of the time and it’s something we only really consider when under stress - perhaps when running for the bus or working out at the gym. At these moments our bodies need more oxygen so our breathing mechanism instinctively works harder, using the spare lung capacity which goes unused most of the time. 

If you’re to play with a beautiful tone you need to learn to utilise this spare capacity at will, really filling your lungs so allow for long, controlled musical phrases. The first step is to learn to inhale in a relaxed, open manner, really filling your lungs with air. 

The starting point is to be as relaxed as possible, especially around your abdomen. Take a few deep breaths in and as you do so imagine the air travelling right to the bottom of your lungs. To do this your stomach muscles need to be relaxed and soft - don’t try to hold your stomach muscles in to look thinner while you’re doing this. Allow your stomach and the soft tissue in your sides and back to expand as you inhale and your diaphragm pulls downwards, compressing the contents of your abdomen. When you exhale, do so in a completely relaxed way - just let the air go with no attempt to control its flow. 

It’s no bad idea to spend a minute or two doing this before you play each day so the feeling of really filling your lungs becomes natural and instinctive. This is of course the way you breathe when you’re asleep and you’re completely relaxed.


How to take active control of your diaphragm 

If the diaphragm is an involuntary muscle how can we control it to help our recorder playing? Although you can’t directly feel your diaphragm, it is possible to give it a helping hand by using your stomach muscles. We’ll begin by using these muscles in an extreme way and the gradually take control over the exhalation of breath.

Take a deep, open relaxed breath and this time strongly squeeze your tummy muscles to push the air out of your lungs really quickly. Imagine blowing out lots of candles on a birthday cake, trying to make sure none of them are left flickering. When you do this, the pressure from your stomach muscles pushes on the diaphragm, squeezing the air out of your lungs.

As you get used to this, gradually reduce the strength of contraction in your stomach muscles so you still exhale quickly but in a more controlled manner. This is still too violent for recorder  playing, but it’s part of the process of taking control of your breathing.

Finally, instead of tensing up your stomach muscles strongly, make it a gradual squeeze, noting how you can vary the speed of the air leaving your mouth with these abdominal muscles. This is where you want to be for playing the recorder. You’re now controlling the flow of air using these powerful muscles rather than creating tension in your chest, shoulders and neck. In the following video clip I demonstrate this technique.

Do you look happy as you play?

Even if recorder playing is an absolute joy for you (and why wouldn’t it be?!), you should always aim to look sulky and a little depressed! When you smile you engage lots of small muscles around your face and throat, creating tension - try smiling right now and note the way your face muscles tense up. 

Now take a breath and sigh heavily, consciously relaxing your lips, cheeks and throat.  This is the feeling you want while playing the recorder as any tension in your windway will have an adverse effect on your tone. Try yawning too, and notice how this opens up and relaxes your throat. 

Unlike all other wind instruments, there is no embouchure required for the recorder - the act of forming your lips around or against a mouthpiece. Instead you should aim to keep your lips and throat as relaxed as possible - no real effort is needed to seal the lips around the beak of the instrument. If you don’t believe me, try actively tensing up your face and throat and notice the effect this constriction has on your tone! 

Putting these new skills into practice

Now you know how to breath well, let’s grab a recorder and use these new skills to play.

Pick a recorder (perhaps a treble or tenor for starters) and try some of the exercises in the following video. Take some time to explore the extremes of your sound - from really weedy to overblown and violent. Don’t worry about disturbing your neighbours! 

Play notes in different parts of the instrument’s range and notice the way they demand different levels of breath. Low notes need gentle breath or they split easily - for these note you need to squeeze your stomach muscles very gently. 

In contrast, your breath needs to be moving faster for the highest notes - a firmer squeeze from those abdominal muscles. Thinking about these differences in terms of speed of air rather than being loud or quiet can be really helpful. To get a better sense of this, blow gently on your hand (slow moving breath) and notice how the air is warm, as it has time to pick up heat from your body before it leaves your mouth. Now engage your stomach muscles more firmly to move the breath quickly. As it touches your hand the breath now feels cold. This is because the air has less contact time with your blood vessels and doesn’t pick up body heat. You may find it helpful to think of low notes as requiring warm air, while high notes demand cooler air. 

How to develop your tone through practice

As with any new skill, it’s best to practise some simple exercises at first, so you’re able to give them your full attention. In time these techniques become habitual and you’ll need to think about them less while working on other things. Here are a few simple exercises to develop your tone.

  1. Long notes. Ok, long notes aren’t the most exciting thing to practise, but they do give you lots time to think! Spend a few minutes at the start of each practice session playing long notes in different parts of the recorder’s range. With each one, aim to find the ideal speed of air to make a full, beautiful tone - slower air for the low notes, faster air for the high ones. Really listen to your sound (close your eyes - you’ll notice more!) and take care to keep the pitch of each note the same from beginning to end - don’t let them sag as you lungs begin to empty. As you feel you’re running out of breath, engage those stomach muscles a little more and you may be surprised at the untapped reserves of air remaining in your lungs.

  2. Slow scales. Pick a really simple scale (no more than one sharp or flat) and play it really slowly - perhaps four steady beats on each note. As you rise up through the scale, you’ll need to gradually increase the speed of your breath to make the optimum sound. When you run out of breath, stop to breathe in deeply and restart on the same note you just finished. As you do this, listen carefully to see if your tone improves when you restart. If it does, that’s because you’d stopped blowing as efficiently as your lungs emptied. Instead, try to ensure the tone matches so you can be sure you’re always making the best possible sound.

Five or ten minutes spent every day on these two simple exercises will have a dramatic effect on your tone - as long as you really think about what you’re doing and listen critically to what your hear. 

The techniques I’ve covered here won’t make you a whizzy, virtuosic recorder player, but you’ll definitely sound better. Fast fingers and nippy tonguing can come later, but if there’s one thing I’m always imploring of musicians I work with it’s to play with a genuinely beautiful tone.

When Walter Bergmann said, “Spare the breath and spoil the tone” he was absolutely right. Blowing inefficiently will create a weedy, undernourished tone which doesn’t make good use of the your instrument’s design. If you want just one thing to focus on every time you play, you simply can’t go wrong by concentrating on breathing and blowing more efficiently. I often say to groups I work with that few things in recorder playing can’t be improved by using more air and I suspect I’ll be saying that until I retire! 

Now it’s your turn to do some homework…

If my words here have inspired you to work on your tone here’s a simple task for you. Pick a simple melody to learn, then record yourself playing it. If you own a smartphone the built in voice memo app will do the job just fine. If you’re not sure what tune to choose, why not try this one by Jacob Van Eyck:

Next, spend a few minutes each day working on the exercises I talked about earlier - deep breathing and controlled blowing, long notes and slow scales. Ten minutes will be enough to make a difference. Maybe think of it as the recorder playing equivalent of cleaning your teeth - one off those short tasks you carry out without fail every day!

In six weeks time, record yourself again playing the same tune and compare the two. I’m sure you’ll notice a difference and by this stage the techniques you’re using will be more habitual, freeing you up to concentrate on other aspects of your playing.

Do leave a comment below if you’re planning to try this (there’s nothing like promising something in public to make you feel more accountable!) and I’d love it if you could report back in a few weeks and let us know how you’re getting on. Why not join me in my mission to make the recorder soundworld a more beautiful place!