How The Instrument Is Played
The recorder is held outwards from the player's lips (rather than to the side, like the "transverse" flute). The player's breath is compressed into a linear airstream by a channel cut into the wooden "block" or fipple (A), in the mouthpiece of the instrument, so as to travel along this channeled duct (B) called the "windway". Exiting from the windway, the breath is directed against a hard edge (C), called the "labium" or "ramp", which causes the column of air within the resonator tube to oscillate at the desired frequency, determined by the bore length or open tone hole used. The length of the air column (and the pitch of the note produced) is modified by finger holes in the front and thumb hole at the back of the instrument.
Read more about this topic: Recorder
Famous quotes containing the words instrument and/or played:
“English audiences of working people are like an instrument that responds to the player. Thought ripples up and down them, and if in some heart the speaker strikes a dissonance there is a swift answer. Always the voice speaks from gallery or pit, the terrible voice which detaches itself in every English crowd, full of caustic wit, full of irony or, maybe, approval.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)
“At first,
our bodies were as one.
Then
you were unloving,
but I still played the wretched favorite.
Now
you’re the master
and we’re the wife.
What’s next?
This is the fruit I reap
from my diamond-hard life.”
—Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.)