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 ...

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?

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 ...

400 years ago, the recorder was so popular that people were writing concertos for it. Now, we associate it with primary school music lessons. We’re here to explain why... Long before the recorder was ...

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 ...