Virtual Recorder

Eight holes and a thumbnail

A recorder is a tube with a whistle at one end, and every note is a state of that tube: which of its holes are covered. There are seven on the front for the fingers — three for the left hand, four for the right — and one on the back for the left thumb. No keys, no reed, nothing to assemble but the joints. The drawing on this page has all eight, and three of them do something a key cannot: the thumb hole can be pinched, and the two lowest holes can be half covered.

You can play it two ways. In Notes, tap the note you want and watch the holes close; the strip above the keys shows what the thumb is doing — on, off, or pinched. In Fingers + air, you play the recorder itself: tap the holes on the drawing to cover them, then hold the air button and blow. The note you hear is the one that fingering really plays — including fingerings no chart lists, which sound roughly where a real recorder would put them and are marked as off the chart.

Recorder notes: B, A and G first

Every recorder method starts in the same place. Cover the thumb hole and the top hole and a soprano plays B. Add the next finger for A, and the third for G. Three notes, the left hand only, and enough for a first tune. Then the right hand goes on one finger at a time, E, D, and with everything covered the bottom C. Going up from B, C5 is the thumb and the second finger alone, and D5 is the second finger with the thumb off.

The one natural note missing from that list is F, and it is where recorders come in two kinds — see Baroque and German below. The sharps and flats are forks: leave a hole open and close one or two below it, and the note drops a semitone. B♭ is B with two more fingers down under an open hole; F♯, in Baroque fingering, is G with the right hand’s second and third fingers added.

The pinched thumb

Finger E4 — thumb and five fingers — and blow. Now pinch the thumb: bend it so the nail leaves a sliver of the hole open at the top, and blow again. You get E5, exactly an octave higher. A recorder is open at both ends, so the next note its air column has is the octave, and the crack under the thumbnail is what tips it there. It is the recorder’s register key, and it is a thumbnail. From E5 to the top, every note is played with the thumb pinched.

Between the two registers are three notes with the thumb off the hole altogether — C♯5, D5 and E♭5 — so stepping from E♭5 to E5 crosses the register break: 3 holes change at once, the thumb among them. Try it in Fingers + air. Above A5 the simple pattern stops; the last notes are cross-fingerings, and the C♯6 near the top is the note above it with the bell closed — players stop the end of the recorder against a knee.

Baroque or German fingering?

The switch above the instrument changes the chart, not the sound. On a German recorder, F is one finger more than G — T 123 4--- — so the first scale walks straight down the instrument. On a Baroque recorder, which is also sold as English fingering, that fingering is out of tune and F is a fork: T 123 4-67. The German pattern is easier in the first month and worse afterwards: its F♯ needs three fingers under an open hole, and its sharps and flats are less well in tune. Quality recorders, wooden or plastic, are almost all Baroque.

8 of the 27 notes differ: F4, F♯4, G♯4, E♭5, F5, F♯5, G♯5 and B♭5 on a soprano, B♭4, B4, C♯5, G♯5, B♭5, B5, C♯6 and E♭6 on an alto. To tell which recorder you have, compare the first two holes under the right hand: on a Baroque recorder the upper one is the smaller, on a German recorder it is the bigger. Use the chart for the instrument you own — the wrong chart on the right recorder plays out of tune.

Recorder fingering chart, C4 to D6

Every note of the standard range, for a soprano or tenor (in C) and for an alto (in F) — the same fingering, two note names. In each diagram the first circle is the thumb hole (filled is covered, half filled is pinched), then the left hand’s three holes and the right hand’s four; the last two are double holes, and one of the pair filled is a half-hole. Under each is the same fingering in text: T thumb covered, t pinched, - open, h a half-hole, X the bell closed. The German column is filled in only where it differs.

Soprano, alto and tenor: one set of fingerings

The chips above the drawing pick the size. Every recorder is fingered the same way — both charts say so in as many words — and the sizes come in two kinds: C recorders, whose lowest note is C, and F recorders, a fifth below them. The same grip therefore has two names. Thumb and three fingers is G on a soprano and C on an alto.

The soprano, or descant, is the school recorder; its music is written an octave below where it sounds, and the drawing names both. The alto, or treble, is the one most solo recorder music was written for. The tenor is a soprano an octave down — same note names, a wider stretch for the right hand. The bass is left out: its part is written in bass clef, a second notation for a fourth size.

How to play it

Hold a note to blow it and let go to stop — a recorder sounds only while air goes through it. Slide along the keys without lifting to slur from note to note in one breath; the voice hears that the air never stopped and leaves the tongue out of the next note, which is what a slur is.

In Fingers + air, tap a hole on the drawing to cover it and tap it again to lift the finger. The small ½ beside the thumb hole pinches it, and the ½ under each double hole half covers it; tap the ½ again to go back to covered. bell closes the end of the recorder. Then hold Hold to blow. Change fingers while you blow and the note moves without a new attack. Turn on Keep blowing to leave the air on while you finger — the easiest way to explore with one hand or a mouse. The caption under the drawing names every fingering as you make it, and says when it is the chart’s, an alternate, or one no chart lists.

On a computer keyboard, in Notes, the letters run up a semitone at a time from Q, the bottom note. In Fingers + air the keyboard becomes two hands: F, D and S are the left hand’s three holes, V the thumb and C the pinched thumb; J, K, L and ; the right hand’s four, with O and P above the last two for their half-holes; B closes the bell, and Space is the air. Hold V, F, D and S and press Space: that is G. Swap V for C and it becomes the G an octave above.

Songs to play

Press Play a song under the instrument and pick one. A soprano or tenor plays 35 of the 36 public-domain songs here in F and D, 34 in C, 30 in G and 22 in B♭; an alto plays 35 of the 36 public-domain songs here in G and B♭, 34 in F, 30 in C and 24 in D. A tune that runs off one end in one key usually fits in another, which is what the key menu is for. Play plays a song for you and shows each fingering as it sounds, which is the fastest way to learn them. Practice waits on the next note and marks the holes it needs in gold before you play it, and it works in Fingers + air too — cover the gold holes, lift any marked to come up, and blow. Play along closes a ring on each note in time with the music, and Record keeps a take of your playing that you can hear back and save.

What it sounds like, and why

A recorder’s sound is close to pure, with a soft edge of breath and a small click as each note starts. All three come from how it works. The air is split on an edge in the window, and a jet of air is a gentle way to drive a tube — so the overtones are all there, but far quieter than a clarinet’s or a saxophone’s. For the first few hundredths of a second the tube speaks its octave before it settles: the chiff. And the pitch follows the breath, so a note sags a little as the air stops. The voice here is built that way rather than recorded, with the alto and tenor rounder and breathier than the soprano.

What this recorder leaves out

Breath pressure. On a real recorder, blowing harder raises the pitch and softer lowers it, and playing in tune is mostly breath control. A screen has no gesture for that, so every note here is in tune however you play it. The notes above D6. The charts go higher, but up there several notes share a fingering and differ only in the breath. Trill and alternate fingerings beyond the few in the chart, the sopranino and the bass, and historical fingerings are not here either.

More instruments you can play here

The ocarina is the recorder’s nearest relative on this site — another whistle with finger holes, on a vessel instead of a tube, which is why it has no upper octave. The clarinet and the saxophone are fingered on the same kind of drawing, with a key where the recorder has a thumbnail. Got a real recorder that sounds off? The recorder tuner listens through your microphone and explains the head joint, A=442 and why a new recorder reads sharp.

Frequently asked questions