Recorder
A recorder is a musical instrument about a foot long. You play it by blowing through a whistle-like mouthpiece known as a fipple, and putting your fingers on holes to prevent air from coming out.
Baroque and Renaissance music written "for flute" would have been played on a recorder. The modern "flute"âmade of silver, held sideways, and played by blowing across itâ was not developed until the 1800s.
A recorder is an example of a reedless woodwind.
Recorders are used in music education, because it is easy for beginners to play recognizable tunes on them. The use of recorders in education was popularized in the United States in the 1950s by the Trapp Family Singers, the family depicted in The Sound of Music. "Song flutes," "flutophones," and "tonettes" are really just slightly modified recorders.
The familiar small recorder is actually only one member of the recorder family, the soprano recorder. Increasingly larger and lower-pitched members of the family include the alto, tenor, and bass recorders.
