In Defense of the Recorder in Irish Traditional Music

I play recorder at sessions, and this tends to bring one of the following reactions, in order of likelihood:

• *No reaction*
• *Stares*
• "What kind of whistle is that?" (I play on a Canto Mondo recorder by Vincent Bernolin; it looks like a thick whistle instead of the usual recorder aesthetic, so it often piques people's curiosities becaue they don't know what it is.)
• "I've been wanting to learn recorder!" / "I have a recorder!" / "My wife has a recorder!"
• "I've never heard a recorder sound good before."
• "You should switch to a real instrument."
• "You're disrespecting the tradition."
• "Omg, that's so cool, mad respect, recorder is so much harder than whistle!"

I want to focus on the negative ones from the above.

Is recorder disrespecting the tradition? I honestly don't think so, and please hear me out:

• If you set aside the baggage of it being associated with primary-school children and early classical music, a recorder is, fundamentally, a chromatic tin whistle (and a tin whistle is a German recorder with two fewer holes). I mean that: It is literally the same thing with two more holes and slightly different hole sizes. You can even play it with tin whistle fingerings verbatim in the first octave 100% in-tune if your breath-control is good. Even the recorder having a conical bore is native: there are plenty of tin whistles with one, too. There are even plenty of good tin whistles made of plastic or wood. So the whole idea that recorders are anaethemic to ITM is a bit like saying Paddy Richter diatonic is the only acceptable tuning for a harmonica and then banning solo-tuned chromatic, even though they're both single-reed instruments filling the exact same role as a concertina. Bringing a recorder to a session is not at all even remotely like bringing a hurdy-gurdy to one (Yes, someone has made this comparison to me.). ITM is a living tradition; it's not fixed in stone. You have always been able to bring new instruments into it if what you are bringing fits into the soundscape. Recorders absolutely do (if you pick the right recorder).
• Not every recorder looks baroque or sounds like it's made of pearwood. An undecorated resin or ebony recorder with a wide bore will look and sound perfectly in-place at a session. It's just like how you wouldn't bring a Ganassi to play Baroque music; you probably shouldn't bring a nice narrow-bore pearwood recorder to an Irish session. Pick the right recorder for the job; match the timbre to the music. It's the same thing with other instruments: Guitars are more than welcome, but no-one in their right mind would ever bring an electric guitar to a session; it would be disrespectful because the timbre would be wrong.
• The wood flute is an English instrument. Full-stop. Yet nevertheless, in the 1800s it managed to become a core part of ITM. The banjo is an African instrument that became part of Irish music in the 1920s. The bouzouki is a Greek instrument brought into Irish music in 1960s. When I mentioned the recency of the bouzouki to someone who was deriding my recorder, he responded that the bouzouki has been in Irish music since the beginning in the form of the cittern. Like, come on, if we're going to stretch back to different instruments in the same family that dropped out of usage hundreds of years ago, how the heck is that any different than the recorder? If that argument can be used to justify the bouzouki, then it also by definition automatically justifies the recorder. Oh, and another fun (shocking) fact: the low whistle effectively didn't exist in ITM until 1967! More: Recorders are actually closer in design to pre-industrial Irish whistles than penny/tin whistles are, which ironically makes it possible to say that recorders are, in part, more traditional than tin whistles!
• If Joanie Madden can play a friggin' Boehm concert flute (which is objectively deficient for certain elements of ITM, yet she slays with it), then I can absolutely play a recorder (which, again, is literally just a holeier tin whistle).

Regarding the recorder not being a real instrument:

• It absolutely is. People only say this because the only recorder-playing they've ever heard was schoolchildren. How many primary-school kids do you know who can play any instrument other than maybe piano with substantial skill? Precious few.
• I once handed my recorder to a skilled whistle + wood flute player, at his request. He literally couldn't get sound out of it. His breath control was off and he couldn't keep all the holes plugged. For not being a real instrument, it sure was hard for this talented woodwind musician. In the spirit of exchange, I tried his fife, and predictably greatly struggled to get sound out of it (as I have no experience forming embouchure). Maybe don't denigrate other people's instruments when you don't actually know anything about them?
• Some woodwind players (not in ITM) denigrate fipple flutes because they don't require embouchure. My question for them is: can you shred or distort a transverse flute? Yeah, I didn't think so. I can literally play metal on a recorder. Fipples have advantages of their own. They don't so much eliminate a need for skill as they move it elsewhere.

Regarding recorder being inferior or deficient in ITM:

• It is true that it is harder to play recorder than whistle (just in general). It's a chromatic instrument; these are always harder than diatonic ones. That's not a deficiency so much as just a fact to be aware of. It's a reality you sign up for when you choose a chromatic instrument.
• It is true that there are very, very, very few recorders out there with the right timbre or aesthetic for ITM. Vincent Bernolin's Canto Mondo might be about the only one other than maybe Adriana Breukin's Eagle recorders (which are, tragically, no longer made – RIP Adriana...).
• It is true that there is a single cut/tap that you physically can't do on a recorder... but that's because there's that extra hole at the top... meaning there's a cut/tap the whistle can't do but the recorder can. So this isn't actually so much a deficiency as a difference. Accordingly, some tunes are going to work better on whistle and some are going to work better on recorder (a recurring theme that we'll get back to later), depending on the ornamentational demands for each tune. (And, fun fact: every instrument in ITM has ornaments it can and cannot do according to its specific physics.) (Also: Recorder actually gives you an extra ornamentation at the bottom with its pinky hole; the whistle can't tap there.)
• It is true that crans are harder, but it is not true that they are impossible or that they don't sound good; you just have to use more-complex fingerings than on the whistle. If you've never heard a recorder player do them well, that's an issue with that recorder player, not with their recorder.
• It is true that you can't always do vibrato by half-holing one hole down on recorder, but it is not true that you cannot do vibrato at all – again, you just need more-complex fingerings... because, again, it's a chromatic instrument. (You signed up for this by not going diatonic!)
• Classical recorder technique heavily pushes tonguing, but that's not actually a physical requirement of the instrument. If someone is tonguing everything in ITM, it's not a deficiency of the recorder – it's a misapplication of a technique. You can glottal-stop a recorder just like you can a whistle.
• It is true that narrow-bore recorders are quieter than a whistle and can struggle to cut through a session. But this is not an issue with the recorder as an instrument, but with the choice of what recorder a player is using. My wide-bore Canto Mondo puts out 115dBC at the window in the second octave, which is exactly what you'd expect of a whistle.
• The one actually virtually intractable deficiency (though this is a deficiency of supply rather than of the instrument itself) is that there are effectively no C♯ recorders (equivalent to E♭ whistles). There are B recorders (common in Renaissance music), which makes E♭ a little less-annoying to play, but realistically, you're not playing E♭ at speed on a recorder unless you can get a B♭ or a C♯ recorder custom-made. The good news is that, if you are a recorder player, whistle is child's play, so you can just carry an E♭ whistle and play whistle for E♭ tunes.
• Some tunes octave-switch at a more-graceful point on the whistle than on the recorder; others switch more-gracefully on the recorder than on the whistle. If you're particularly savvy, you can switch between the two instruments depending on the tune to maximize per-tune quality. Again, this is another of those "different moreso than deficient" things.

Regarding the recorder having no niche or advantage in ITM over existing instruments:

• The recorder can play several tunes entirely in its first octave (like Lisnagun Jig) that the tin whistle needs two octaves to play. This makes the recorder objectively better at playing those tunes: a woodwind instrument is always at its highest-quality in its first octave. This is likewise true for many tunes that the recorder keeps in the first octave for longer than the whistle, like Kesh (whose A part only goes up for the three jumps).
• The recorder, as a fully chromatic instrument, can play accidentals with an ease and precision that whistles physically cannot match.
• The recorder can play a note lower than the whistle, which some rare tunes require and which allows an extra ornamentation on low-D.
• The recorder can play comfortably in several keys, meaning you only need to carry two or maybe three: a C soprano, an F alto, and a B soprano ("Renaissance" pitch) you can pull out the head of (making it C♯). Fiddle player wanting to play in F? No problem! Someone wanting to sing in C? Easy-peasy!
• The recorder is frequently more-portable than a whistle: I can fit a dissassembled soprano recorder in a cargo pocket on any pair of shorts or pants (I can even fit a disassembled alto if the pocket is large.), while a whistle always sticks out and is quite liable to fall out.
• Recorders are more-in-tune in their second octave than whistles unless a given whistle has a conical bore and careful manufacturing. In theory, this can lead to wolf-toning when playing with whistle players; but on the flip side, when playing with every other instrument, recorder will get along better than tin whistles will.
• Recorders have access to a third octave; tin whistles mostly have just two octaves. That extra range can make the two octaves you actually play in somewhat stabler than on the whistle, and it allows you to play tunes that go crazy-high (like Ashokan Farewell).