The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #147439   Message #3416691
Posted By: Jack Campin
08-Oct-12 - 08:06 PM
Thread Name: learning to play by ear?
Subject: RE: learning to play by ear?
"Relatively chromatic" is a pretty good description of a recorder. You can do a much wider range of keys easily than on a whistle, and in principle you can play in any, but it does get harder in the extreme ones. Ditto a simple system clarinet, 8-key flute or Northumbrian pipes. Or for that matter the lever harp.

On a descant recorder I can play "The Lea Rig" in every key between B major and F major in descending semitone shifts; it's an interesting exercise. I must pull that one out in a session sometime. (I haven't been in the same session as Cathal McConnell for a while, but he has a perverse fondness for that sort of trick and would go for it).