Tuning a Suzuki Andes recorder melodica.
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Has anyone experience with the tuning of the Suzuki Andes 25F? That is a sort of melodica, not with reeds but with pipes. It sounds like a soprano recorder. Is it possible to tune every individual pipe? And how? I am very curious.
Hi Gerard,
I’m thinking of buying a Suzuki Andes 25F panflute with piano keyboard.
I have watched some YouTube videos, and it sounds great. I think an amateur can pick it up and play it after a few minutes.
No need to train embouchure for years or to train those lip muscles.
No difficult study of a Böhm flute key system, just follow the piano layout.I have read there are just some minor intonation issues in the (very) high notes because the pipes are so short in a pan flute.
Having a 3 row CBA accordina, I also started dreaming of a 3 row CBA layout Suzuki Andes panflute…
If a piano keyboard can be attached to a panflute , so can a 3 row button keyboard.One could also image to experiment with different mouthpieces in a Suzuki Andes 25F (the actual, and then experiment with wood recorder mouthpieces, or clarinet or saxophone mouth pieces with 1 wooden reed, and try the different sound effects)
Why not creating clarinet or saxophone 25 “pipes” in a row with a piano keyboard attached to it?
After all, I read in Curt Sachs book “Handbuch der Musikinstrumente” that in 1860 must have existed a “Klavierkontrafagott”, a low register fagotto with a 2 octaves piano keyboard.
In the middle ages, portable organs or portatives have existed with little organ pipes, a “piano” keyboard and a bellows actioned by the left hand.The Suzuki Andes 25 F can also be used to play “portative organ” tunes
Here’s a video with a beautiful portative organ
A bellows makes the instrument less dynamic than a mouth piece, but bellowing can help if breathing is too hard.
Melodicas or Suzuki Andes could also be made with bellows, but we would call them harmoniflutes or … accordions/concertinas.The charm of melodicas and mouth harps is in their small volume, and the reeds being so close to the mouth.
I just received mine and it has severe intonation problems. The pitch changes pretty easily depending on how hard you blow.
I love those portative organs too Daren.
Do you have one?
They are a bit beyond my means for now.Joe, I recently got a Andes 25 too.
One thing to think about is it’s not really functioning like a recorder as it’s often described.
It’s actually more like the Andean pan flute, the zampona I think it’s called?
It’s sound generation is similar to blowing across the top of a bottle.
Blowing harder doesn’t really create more volume.Gerard, as far as tuning, it looks like the end of the tubes are stopped with a plastic stopper held in place with a drop of hot glue.
It looks like it would be a simple matter to break the bead of glue and work the stopper either in or out to adjust the tuning?
However I haven’t tried this yet myself.
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