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The recorder is a beak flute with a narrow flue and a sharp slit. Garklein, soprano, alto and tenor are shown above. Normally recorders have an inversely conical bored tube but instruments with a cylindrical bored tube exist too. The recorder has 8 fingerholes including a hole for the left thumb. Crossfingerings can be used and they are required to play in the overblowing range. The instrument only has a small range to slide the tones. The fingerholes for the two lowest tones are constructed as double-holes since the Renaissance to play the instrument fully cromatic. Some keys were introduced in this aera as well to handle large instruments. Recorders mostly produce a gentle and restrained sound that's sometimes a little bit dull or smoky too. However solo instruments often sounds more powerfully. The scale has a range of about 2-3 octaves whereby it's overblown up to three times. Recorders overblow at first time into the octave, at second time into the twelfth and at third time into the fifteenth. The lowest notes can be overblown into higher ranges on large instruments. This enables to use these instruments as a kind of natural tone flute. Using special blowing techniques enables to play some intentional dirty tones.

Recorder-like instruments belong to the oldest instruments of the world. They are already documented in prehistoric time with artifacts. The recorder is known since the 11. century in Europe in her modern kind (without keys). It is build in imitation of the vocal quartet with soprano, alto, tenor and bass as a whole family since the Renaissance like the most instruments of this aera. Higher and lower sounding instruments are build too. The c/f-pitch has come to stay as among the most renaissance wood-wind instruments:

• Garklein in c: lowest tone = c³
• Sopranino in f: lowest tone = f ²
• Soprano (or descant) in c: lowest tone = c²
• Alto (or treble) in f: lowest tone = f ¹
• Tenor in c: lowest tone = c¹
• Bass in f: lowest tone = f ⁰
• Great bass in c: lowest tone = c⁰
• Contrabass in f: lowest tone = F 
• Subbass in c: lowest tone = C 

All sizes are used to date except the extremely unwieldy subbass recorder. Normally the smaller sizes from garklein to tenor are used as solo instruments too. A typical recorder ensemble encloses soprano, alto, tenor and bass. The sopranino or garklein doubles the soprano part an octave above the soprano and the contrabass doubles the bass part an octave below the bass in larger ensembles. Recorders sounds very well together with double-reed instruments with a cylindrical bored tube (crumhorn, cornamusa, curtall, sordun, rackett, some kinds of bagpipes, e.g. Hümmelchen, Dudey). Recorders are written an octave lower than they sound in difference to most other Renaissance woodwind instruments. They're like a 4′-rank of a keyboard instrument in this point.

Nowadays the term "recorder" is used as a negative term for cheap soprano recorders of inferior quality those are produced in mass production since the second half of the 20. century. These "instruments" normally sound so horrible that you can effectively spoil every humans fun on handmade music.

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© Sönke Kraft, Hannover 2002 last update: 12.11.2005