Many kids take a toot on a recorder in school music class. Now Hiroshi Yokoyama from the Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan and his colleagues are revealing how the popular wind instrument ...

It's a sound that many who grew up in North America may remember from their childhood: a chorus of tinny-sounding plastic recorders playing songs like "Hot Cross Buns" in a slow, pained manner. That's ...

What is it? The sound of primary school music rooms everywhere, forever. Everyone reading this must have played a recorder at some point – probably badly. Who uses it? Think recorders are kids toys?

Remember the recorder? It’s that small plastic instrument — looks kind of like a flute or clarinet — that’s often the first instrument children learn to play in school. Or, at least, they used to. But ...

Remember the recorder? It's that small plastic instrument — looks kind of like a flute or clarinet — that's often the first instrument children learn to play in school. Or, at least, they used to. But ...