Vary volume at steady pitch on recorder with breath alone. Is this really possible? Find out!
Channel: robertinventor
Date: 2013-01-24

Some recorder players think it is impossible to do this, to vary the pitch and volume on recorder using the breath alone, because of the long narrow airway which doesn't seem to give any way for the way you breath to influence the pitch of the note.

But as you see in this video it can be done. I am not using the fingers in any way - not finger shading, not holding the fingers above the hole from a distance, nothing like that.

THIS IS AN EXPERIMENT, AND IS NOT HOW THE RECORDER IS NORMALLY TAUGHT

For the conventional way that you are taught to change dynamics on the recorder, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorder#Dynamics

HOW DOES IT WORK, HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO DO WHAT I DO?

All I do is vary the way I blow. It's hard to explain in words what I do.

When I first noticed it maybe ten years ago - I can't remember when exactly - it was just a subtle change, much less than this, maybe just a few cents of pitch change. So if you give it a go you might find it is a much smaller change to start with. Over some years I learnt to do it more and more by listening to what was going on and then through feedback finding ways to vary the pitch more and more. 

I vary the shape of the inside of my mouth - it feels more open for the flatter notes. There is some small change in the throat as well, not sure how to describe it, and a change in the angle of the breath as it enters the airway.

Basically for the flatter note you are trying to create an ultra smooth very uniform breath which goes directly into the tube, maybe a bit like the steadiness you need when threading a needle. For the sharper note you do the opposite, a rougher breath (not dramatically so, and no variation in volume, no tremelo or vibrato) and the breath hits the airway at an angle.

My guess is that the reason it works is because the sharper note has a slightly turbulent airstream with tiny millimeter size eddies (vortices).

Vortices and other forms of turbulence can be reasonably stable, will decay eventually, but I am sure tiny vortices could easily survive the passage all the way through the airway without decaying or getting destroyed. It would be interesting if anyone could actually study this maybe with a transparent mouthpiece and see if that is what is happening, or come up with some other explanation of these observations.

(I'm Robert Walker, inventor of Bounce Metronome and Tune Smithy).