So I’m home to take Suzy to lunch and noodling with the set of four Aulos recorders that we got last month on a lark. And guess what? For a sax and clarinet player, these are not easy instruments to master.

First of all the fingering is not the same to those of either the sax or clarinet. And they are way to easy to overblow–they really need very little air, which is why they are well suited to youngsters as first instruments.

But once you get past those learning points, then you can start to make progress faster. I recommend just learning a  scale and a song first. That way you can do something interesting and make some progress. I’m working on the bass and tenor recorders while Suzy is working on the soprano and alto instruments. Maybe someday our sax quartet will put down the saxes and play a recorder quartet just for fun. :o)

I also found this link for people missing fingers so that they can still play. And they say, “Specially designed for people with finger disabilities, the 7 sections can be assembled as required and glued into position with the adhesive supplied. By rotating the holes and plugging certain holes the recorder can accommodate fingers that are missing or do not function fully. An entire chromatic scale can be played with only 6 fingers.” Excellent.