How to Play the Recorder

How to Play the Recorder

Hi, if you’re here, it’s because you want to learn to play the recorder.

Knowing how to play the recorder is essential to know how to play the recorder notes.

We are going to give a series of explanations and also we are going to accompany them with some didactic pictures.


The sound in the recorder is generated by blowing and the different notes are obtained by covering or uncovering the different holes it has.

The posture must be with the back straight to be able to push well the air, shoulders and elbows should be relaxed.

It is not necessary to make force with the fingers when covering, simply to cover softly but to do it in all the orifice.

Ideally, start with the easy flute notes. Try to mark three notes to become familiar with this woodwind instrument.
For example, a good start would be for the notes B, A, G.

Recorder Holes


We must learn to use the fingers correctly to have good recorder technique, pay attention to this picture of how many holes does a recorder have and and where you have to put your fingers.

Look at the 6 and 7 holes that they are forked. This is to make it easier to get the altered notes.

So the answer to the question how many holes a recorder has.
It is seven and adding the hole of the thumb, a total of 8.

how many holes does a recorder have

 

As you can see, we have two free fingers, the little finger of the left hand and the thumb of the right hand.

How to learn to play the recorder should not be a difficult job if we first place these fingers correctly.

The first three holes are covered with our first three fingers of the left hand, index, middle and ring fingers, (1, 2, 3 ).

The thumb of the left hand covers the back hole behind the first front hole. This is called the thumb hole.(0)

The next hand, the right hand, places all the fingers except the thumb, in order until the little finger. ( 4, 5, 6, 7 )

Now we will have to go covering or uncovering to obtain the notes that we will explain in each page well detailed.

We hope that with these indications you find correctly learned the placement of the fingers in the flute.

You want to skip this lesson and run to the next one from How to play the Titanic recorder.


Honestly, I don’t recommend it if you don’t have experience, the best thing is to learn how to get a good sound with all the recorder notes.

How to blow

Blowing is very important in the process of learning to play recorder.

Keep in mind that the recorder is not an instrument with a large cavity so if you blow too hard it will block and you will get an unwanted effect.

The blow on the recorder should be soft, placing the lips around the hole or mouthpiece and should never bite or use the teeth.

Keep the tongue behind the upper teeth and blow as when you say the syllable “tu” or “du”.

Be careful to cover the holes well if you don’t get unwanted whistles or squeaks.

Don’t be discouraged, at first they are very common because it is necessary to control well the response of the air and to cover the cavities well.

It is important not to blow too much air because the recorder collapses and unwanted sounds are produced, the recorder is a simple instrument for that reason.

That’s why we don’t need to push a lot of air.

How to play the recorder for beginners


Learning recorder shouldn’t be a difficult task if you start with the easiest notes to get.

The easy notes in recorder are those that are in a comfortable register of the instrument and in addition few fingers are used to obtain them.

Now we will list the steps for playing the flute in this tutorial:

Attention to these steps of learn how to play the recorder for beginners !

Hold the flute with your left hand covering these holes:

  • index in the first hole
  • Thumb in speaker hole
  • Blow softly and you will get the note B

b on the ecorder

Easy isn’t it ? Now let’s go for the A note.

Hold the flute with your left hand covering these holes:

  • index covers the first hole
  • Half covers the second hole
  • Thumb covers the spokesperson hole
  • Blow softly and you will get the LA note, do exercises to dominate this note in this section.

fingerings a note on recorder

Let’s go to the last note, if you get these three notes you can play your first song in flute !

Learning recorder has never been so easy!

Hold the recorder with your left hand covering these holes:

  • index finger covers the first hole
  • middle finger covers the second hole
  • ring finger covers the third hole
  • thumb covers the spokesperson hole
  • Blow softly and you will get the note G, do exercises to dominate the note G.

how to play g on recorder

You did it!

Learning recorder has never been so easy, has it?

And now we have prepared ourselves to play our first recorder songs, at the moment only with these three notes.

But…now that you know how to blow and place your fingers, why don’t you try to play some scales with this Recorder notes chart ?