Virtual recorder

What is a recorder?

The recorder is a woodwind instrument — a duct flute, with seven finger holes on the front and a thumb hole on the back. Your breath runs through a narrow channel in the beak and splits against a sharp edge, which makes the sound; covering holes lowers the note. The soprano (descant) recorder is the one most schools start with, and it is the one modelled here. (Looking for a voice or audio recorder? This page is the musical instrument.)

How to play

Tap Play with my breath and allow the microphone. Tomus spends about five seconds learning your room: a moment of quiet, one note it plays itself, and one steady blow. Then cover holes and blow — gently, as into a real recorder. The note is set by the holes you cover; your breath sets how loud and how bright it is. Change fingers without stopping your breath and the notes slur into each other. For a repeated note, take a new breath or say “tu” — the tonguing every recorder player learns first.

The beak (mouthpiece) is drawn at the bottom of the screen, where a phone’s microphone is: hold the phone like the recorder and blow across its bottom edge. Flip turns the drawing the way printed charts show it, beak at the top.

The holes

The left thumb covers the hole on the back, drawn beside the first finger hole. The left hand’s first three fingers cover the three holes nearest the beak, the right hand’s four fingers the four below. The lowest two holes are double: a finger in the middle closes both, a finger on one closes only that one — the half-hole that gives C♯, D♯ and G♯. For notes from E6 up, the thumb is pinched half open: touch the small ½ pad instead of the thumb hole.

Any combination of holes makes some sound, as on a real recorder — but only standard fingerings play a clean note. Anything else squeaks out something flat and quiet near the closest note, shows a “?” instead of a note name, and never counts in a challenge: the holes to fix pulse until the fingering is right.

On a phone held upright the mouthpiece is drawn at the bottom, by the microphone; on a wider screen the recorder lies on its side with the mouthpiece on the left.

Soprano recorder fingering chart

Baroque (English) fingering for a soprano — also called descant — recorder in C, the recorder most schools use. It sounds an octave higher than written: the lowest note is written C4 (middle C) and sounds C5. The same fingerings work on a tenor recorder, an octave lower. ● covered, ○ open, ◐ half (thumb pinched); for the double holes, ●○ means only one of the pair is covered.

Not in the chart: C♯7, which needs the end of the recorder covered as well, and D♯7. The chart follows the standard baroque fingering tables (checked hole by hole against the American Recorder Society’s soprano chart). Some notes have alternative fingerings; this chart gives the usual one.

Baroque or German? Many cheap school recorders use German fingering, which differs mainly for F (thumb and holes 1–4, the rest open) and F♯. If your F sounds wrong on your own recorder, check which kind it is. This virtual recorder uses baroque fingering, like most method books outside Germany.

Your microphone stays on your device

Breath control measures only how loud the low rumble of your breath is, many times a second, inside your browser. No sound is recorded, stored or sent anywhere, and the microphone turns off when you leave the page or press Microphone off.

Without a microphone

Hold the Blow button on the mouthpiece (higher on it blows harder), or Space on a keyboard. Keyboard and screen-reader users can also Tab to a row of hole buttons under the recorder that stay pressed, build a fingering, then blow. From the keyboard the holes are your own fingers’ keys: A is the thumb, S D F the left hand, J K L ; the right hand, and Q pinches the thumb.

Songs to try

Six challenges in the order school method books teach the notes: your first note (B: the thumb and one finger), B and A, then Hot Cross Buns, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Ode to Joy, Happy Birthday — all public domain. For each next note the move is spelled out (“cover 2 · lift 3”) and the holes to change pulse on the recorder. Hear your take back, and share a link that opens the same song.

The sound

A baroque soprano recorder from the Versilian Community Sample Library, released into the public domain (CC0): thirteen notes, retuned to equal temperament, looped so a note lasts as long as your breath, about 430 KB. They load once the page is ready; until then a synthesised flute plays the same notes.