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left handright handthumb · behindT½123456½7½bellleft handright handthumb · behindT½123456½7½bell
C4sounds C5Thumb on

Baroque (English): F is a fork. On the recorder, hole 5 is bigger than hole 4.

SongsGood King Wenceslas
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2 more songs need notes this instrument does not have. Changing the size or key brings some of them into reach.

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The spring carol “Tempus adest floridum”, from Piae Cantiones, 1582. Public domain.

27 notes · C4–D6 written · sounds C5–D7 · 27 notes · The descant: the recorder in every school bag. In C, and it sounds an octave above its written part.

Tap a note, or slide along them to slur from note to note in one breath. On a keyboard the letters on the notes are the ones to press — Q is the bottom note and they climb a semitone at a time.

RecorderFree · printable · plays in your browser

Good King Wenceslas — Recorder Notes

Good King Wenceslas, written out for the recorder as letter notes with the fingering drawn under each one and set up above on the Soprano. Press Play to hear it, Practice to learn it one note at a time — the recorder waits for you — or Play along to keep time with it.

  • Notes53, 8 pitches
  • RangeG4–G5
  • Key hereC major
  • Tempo120 bpm · about 34 s
  • LevelEasy

Can a recorder play Good King Wenceslas?

Yes — every one on this page plays it. The check is made note by note against what each one can actually sound. Where the tune does not fit as the library writes it, another key or octave is tried, and the table says which; where nothing fits, it names the notes that are missing.

  • Soprano✓ Plays as writtenIn C major, G4–G5 · loaded above
  • Alto✓ Plays as writtenIn C major, G5–G6 · load it
  • Tenor✓ Plays as writtenIn C major, G4–G5 · load it

Good King Wenceslas: recorder notes

The large line is the note, and the drawing is its fingering — a filled hole or key is one that is down. A dash holds the note another beat, an underline is half a beat, and a dot beside a note makes it half as long again. Each line is one phrase.

▶ Play it above

Good King Wenceslas — recorder notes (Soprano) · tonalics.com

The 8 notes it uses

Lowest to highest, with how many times each is played. Learn these 8 and you can play the whole tune.

  • GG4×7
  • AA4×7
  • BB4×4
  • CC5×21
  • DD5×6
  • EE5×3
  • FF5×3
  • GG5×2

What to expect on a recorder

  • It runs from G4 to G5, an octave, using 8 different notes. That leaves 7 semitones unused below and 7 above.
  • 85% of its moves are a step or a repeated note. The widest is a fifth, C5 to G5, at note 27.
  • E5, F5 and G5 need the pinched thumb, the half-covered thumb hole that gives the upper octave.

About the tune

The tune is a 13th-century spring carol, “Tempus adest floridum”, printed in the Finnish songbook Piae Cantiones in 1582. In 1853 the English hymn writer John Mason Neale wrote new words for it about the Bohemian duke Wenceslas, and a song about flowers became a song about snow.

The spring carol “Tempus adest floridum”, from Piae Cantiones, 1582. Public domain. The notes follow Douglas D. Anderson, The Hymns and Carols of Christmas (sequence released to the public domain), cross-checked against 2 other transcriptions. More about Good King Wenceslas →

Good King Wenceslas on other instruments

The same melody, in each instrument’s own notation. It is not offered for the guzheng, handpan or ocarina, which do not have the notes.

More songs for the recorder

All 36 recorder songs · Christmas songs for recorder · The online recorder on its own

Playing it on a real recorder?

If it sounds wrong, check the instrument before the notes. The recorder tuner listens through your microphone and names what each note is actually sounding.

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