A Kickstarter Electronic Recorder?

World/Folk Flutes & Winds
1

I have no vested interest in project. It looks interesting and I signed on. Your opinions sought.
Here is the Kickstarter address: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/888369457/the-recorder-reinvented.
It is called a “re.corder”.
The premise is that they take a soprano recorder and electronically modify it to:

  1. Be played as a regular soprano.
  2. Be played (blowed) as a sort of EWI with software emulating various instruments.
  3. Be played as a MIDI controller (not blowed) emulating various instruments.
    To me:
    Pro:
    It uses recorder fingerings and can connect with a computer over Bluetooth.
    The fingerings (they say) can be set to other tuneings.
    The cost will be about $80 shipped.
    Con:
    It is a soprano recorder and thus small, shrill and too small for my hands.
    It is a Kickstarter and my money might be gambled away if this never actually gets to production.
    I always wanted an electronic recorder so this might fit the bill.
    FrankP
2

Even if they could realise this product, do you think there’s a big enough market to bring the costs (components/materials, software dev, hardware dev, testing, marketing, customer support, handling returns of faulty products, etc…) down to 80 dollars?

3

You may want to consider a Kickstarter project that came to fruition with a very good product, in terms of electronic recorders:

https://www.ecorder.io/

This is a much more full featured instrument. Depends what you are after. And don’t forget all the existing EWI’s from Akai and Roland.

4

Do they offer recorder fingering?

5

The WARBL wind controller might fill the bill. Although I’m not entirely sure about recorder fingering vs. whistle or chanter fingering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Azof-JJxLk

https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/new-warbl-midi-wind-controller/99512/1
https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/warbl-arrives/100428/1

6

Thanks all, for your comments. Again, I approach this as a recorder player so the question of how alike the instrument’s fingerings are to standard recorder fingerings is of importance. The second octave and above fingerings on a recorder are based on lower octave harmonics. You don’t just press an octave key, the fingerings are quite different than the first octave and it is those fingerings I have muscle memory for.
Some other instruments mentioned by others and my take:

  1. Ecorder: Saw this on Team Recorder (Sarah Jeffery) website and very impressed. $1750 price is prohibitive.
  2. WARBL: Price $250, OK I guess. But (per fingering chart) uses “German” vs. “English/Baroque” fingering and only has range of a ninth. Standard recorder has octave+ninth and more than that with advanced technique.
  3. Sylpho: Same range/fingering as WARBL and costs 799 Euro.
  4. Various EWIs do not have standard recorder fingerings, at least not out of box.
  5. Vindor ES1. This is an electronic saxophone and costs $199. Only sax fingerings at present but promises clarinet and flute in future.
    FrankP
7

https://warbl.xyz/

Perhaps you misunderstand the capabilities of the WARBL. It can emulate a whistle or soprano recorder, and covers 2 octaves with overblowing.

Fingering chart for soprano recorder is on page 45 of the manual.
https://warbl.xyz/WARBL%20User%20Manual.pdf

8

Re WARBL
I will investigate further and no criticism intended if I misunderstood capabilities. Fingering chart online only showed range of ninth. Overblowing on whistle is much different fingering than recorder fingering for higher octave though. My main point was that I want something that is exactly like a recorder. Maybe a goal never realized.
FrankP

9

As to being a recorder, there’s the Mollenhauer Elody.

https://www.mollenhauer.com/en/catalog/recorders/series-overview/elody#content

The price will, um, impress you. But the fact is, they exist.

Andrew

10

Always dreamed of Elody but like eCorder will wait until I win Lotto. I have a few Mollenhauer recorders and know they are good but mortgage comes first…
FrankP

11

One could presumably have a Low D emulation using the WARBL? Maybe I have to look at it again. (Ok I admit to some frustration at the moment in how tricky the Low D can be for certain passages compared to the soprano. Grr.. )

12

Hi folks, I’m the maker of WARBL–I just saw this discussion and thought I’d chime in. I’m always interested in improving the firmware and fingering charts, so please feel free to let me know if you have suggestions for improving the recorder capabilities. With the newest firmware, which I will release in about a week (or is available now in beta form), the recorder fingering allows a three-octave range by using a combination of overblowing and the back thumb hole. We’ve also added some more cross-fingered accidentals. The changelog here lists all firmware changes: https://github.com/amowry/warbl/blob/master/changelog.md

Thanks for your support!

-Andrew

13

I’d like something like this purely so I could play as much as I like, with headphones in, without disturbing anyone. But also what would be cool would be an e.whistle, with the ability to play in any key right down to low D but be the size of a soprano whistle. I’m sure they’ll get there…

14

If playing through an amp, you can often ‘octave shift’ the digital sound, so likely you can in the software too.

15

The WARBL can do that. It is MIDI and you can set the transpose to whatever you want. The trick might be in finding a sound module that sounds good with the transposition.

The option mentioned of pitch shifting the audio of the sound module is also an option but you have to be careful with that. Simply downshifting audio by an octave rarely works well.

16

Oh I couldn’t be bothered with fannying on with MIDI. For silent practice the sound wouldn’t have to be spot on. Even if it was just a soprano whistle or recorder, that’d do me.