I purchase sopranos that give a hobbyist half a chance to play in tune. My favs to date are pictured below: Eppelsheim soprillo, Yanagisawa Elimona sopranino, and the Yanagisawa S992 soprano. I also have a Yanagisawa SC992 (curvy) that I just because the audience really likes it; the curvy has sax appeal!

I am working on a soprano solo for Holst’s Venus and I have a high C to side-key F interval that is killing me. It is to be played in a smooth oboe-esque way with a slight classical vibrato. Smoothing it out is really taking some effort. One of my instructors suggested I just grab the sopranino and transpose. All of a sudden the interval is from a G to a high C and as such is as smooth as butta.

So I bet my instructor (Neil) a dollar that our director Leah would not notice I’d switched instruments. Stay tuned.