Was your first experience making music learning to play the recorder in school? Mine was. I think it was for a lot of people. Did you ever wonder why? Well wonder no more! (tl;dw…it was partly because of the Nazis, unfortunately).
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I always though it was simply because whistle instruments are small, cheap, loud enough to be fun, but not loud enough to make your parents kill you (as… let’s say, playing a saxophone or violin would). There are instruments easier to play than whistles, but they are not small nor affordable.
I think they have been replaced by ukes in schools now.
Which makes a lot more sense. Kids can sing at the same time and possibly even enjoy music rather than endure the loud screeching of massed descant recorders.
Some well chosen percussion and maybe a bit of variation in the ukes and you can build into something genuinely fun to do, and fun to hear.
I haven’t watched the video yet (I have a long piece of music on) but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Nazis would find massed ranks of children playing single notes with discipline to be their idea of music.
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Sorry, didn’t put the link up to the virtual ANS:
https://warmplace.ru/soft/ans/
For when you want to soundtrack everyday life like a Tarkovsky movie.
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The TLDW of the video is “britain and germany were trying to standardize music curriculum and they got on the recorder after popularity in germany surged as a folk music instrument. The nazi party thought it was a great idea to have a folk instrument unify the masses and adopted the recorded for the youth section”. Honestly the nazi mention is stretching the story much, as the recorder was already being adopted back in the late 10’s. Like, they used it because it was already popular.
Singing and playing at the same time is quite a hard skill, and using an uke properly needs understanding chords and harmony, so while I understand is a nicer instrument, I also think it will frustrate even more kids 
But being a modal musician, I guess I am a bit biased against chord instruments 
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Suspend all the chords!
Problem solved (and actually something that is done a lot in rock/pop/folk musics anyway).
I don’t think it’s hard to sing and play at the same time. Depending on what you are singing and playing of course but a uke and a simple tune are easier than being barely listenable on a descant recorder.
I find it difficult to sing while playing bass or drums but guitar and piano are trivial (depending on the tune) and a lot of music is written that way. Even relatively complex music like bossa nova is absolutely designed to be sung while playing guitar and just fits in nicely once you have the groove going.
A lot of musicians struggle to sing without their instrument if that’s what they are used to!
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BTW guys question in case some of you can help me on this. I wanted to transcribe a song so I can share it with a colleague and was wondering which sofware you use to engrave scores.
I’ve tried musescore but I’m finding it a bit… unintuitive. Like, I put the notes first and wanted to change the time, and musescore kept adding silences I could not remove to compensate (like, if there was a black and put a half, added half a silence to compensate).
Is there one that is more “freehand”?
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I thought I’d give a little progress report with where I’m at with my projects - I’m basically done except for some details like carving a scroll on the pegbox. I learned a couple of things - like working with bone for the bridge and nut is doable and using a piezo as a pickup for the cello is viable.
Here are some sound samples, not any good but you can hear the instruments:
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They Look super cool! There seems to be some kind of droning sound (i perceive it in the G#2 range, more or less) in the cello recording. Is that “intentional” (ie: a product of accidentally fretting one of the cords without getting full sound) or is electrical interference?
That would be a lack of grounding and unintentional… I did hear it with the side-by-side comparison here. Mostly I’m playing the cello without amplification because I don’t really know what I’m doing yet and I don’t want to annoy the neighbors. I’ll add a wire soon and hopefully it will go away.
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Sounds like 50Hz sneaking through your power supply (assuming you are on the eastern side of the pond).
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I’m on the 50Hz side. I recorded these through a Behringer ucg102 → Raspberry Pi 5 → guitarix with as clean a sound as I could set up - most of the time I’m either not amplified or playing through a Valeton - Rushead Max and that doesn’t have the hum - the guitars have the bridge grounded but I forgot on the cello and the individual strings aren’t connected to each other either so I’m going to have to experiment a bit to see if the steel rod is enough to ground it or if I have to put a piece of metal (or wire) under the bridge pieces. Or, rewire the whole thing - projects are never done.
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Play along with a drone and have done with it!
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The problem is these frequencies are in between notes: 50 hz is in between a G and G# and 60 hz is in between an A# and a B, so they just always sound bad - unless you tune your whole deal sharp or flat around the hum.
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Don’t you know 440hz tuning is evil man?
I don’t want to infect here with what we have to deal with elsewhere but have a look at tuning conspiracy theories if you have the strength/can face your involuntary eye rolling/ haven’t encountered it before…
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Yes I am familiar with that nonsense! 
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well, time to start playng with microtonality and relative tuning then 
My first gurdy was so terrible an affair that was impossible to tune properly, so i had to learn to relative tune everything to the “maximum tension” it supported
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Properly grounded cello:
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