Somewhere Duet

[rrayner]

Hi Jane,

Well, I am truly staggered -- and embarrassed. My formal training was on Tenor Saxophone (Flute and Clarinet) with an orientation toward the Piano keyboard. I am a self-taught Recorder player. My wife Cynthia had bought a Soprano Recorder over 30 years ago and never learned to play it. As she is now married to a musician, she asked me to teach her to read music and play her Soprano. So, we learned the baroque fingerings for it, and after a while, she bought me an Alto Recorder. I never even looked at the fingering chart that came with the Alto. After reading your post, I frantically dug out the fingering chart that came with my Alto, and I found, exactly as you are describing, the lowest written note for baroque fingering on an Alto is the F in the bottom space of the staff. In my ignorance, I treated the Alto just like any of the other modern concert instruments, i.e., Saxophones, Clarinets, Trumpets, English and French Horns, and transposed it, and as you say, used the Soprano fingerings for it.

So, for the embarrassment part -- I've posted about 100 songs and exercises in this forum that technically and classically have Alto Recorder parts that are not written correctly. My assumption is that probably most, if not all, of this forum's reader are not actually playing an Alto Recorder and are simply transposing the Alto part for whatever instrument(s) they are playing.

Thank you very much for enlightening me in this regard. I have to say I personally prefer using the Soprano fingerings on the Alto, and not having to deal with all of those ledger lines above the staff. I will continue to post songs and exercises in the same manner, as I want to be consistent with all that I have posted before. It seems the way you treat the Alto Recorder over there should have been the way I treated it over here.

Well, this should explain all the confusion you and your daughter had to deal with. My apologies to you and to all followers of this forum who actually play Alto Recorders.

Ralph Rayner