Yamaha Wind Instruments

The Yamaha YRS-23 is a student level recorder. It’s been a little while since I picked up the recorder, but every so often I’ll mess around with it. In grade school everyone had the learn the recorder and we were given a YRS-23 to use, so everyone in the school had one of these. It’s a really basic recorder, definitely designed for students and learning purposes. It’s made out of plastic rather than wood, giving it a slightly different type of sound than you’d hear on a wood recorder. It’s definitely a bright sounding instrument, as most recorders are, but the YRS-23 is especially bright. I’m definitely not a recorder connoisseur, as I’ve only played a handful of them in my day, but the YRS-23 seems to be the easiest one to play that I’ve tried. It comes in a little pouch as well, making it easy for students to bring home and back to school without it getting dirty or breaking. I don’t know that the Yamaha YRS-23 is suitable for anyone other than a student trying to learn the recorder, but I would think that it’s probably not. These are very cheap instruments, making it easy enough for a whole classroom to get one. The recorder is the type of instrument in general that is good to get kids started with, but it doesn’t seem to have too much musical worth in a modern context. Yamaha is the world’s largest musical instrument manufacturer, so they can make it possible to offer these instruments to schools at a very low rate. I doubt that too many of you are young kids, but perhaps if you’re a music teacher you’d want to check this out to see if it would be useful in a school setting. This instrument is definitely a good stepping stone for kids interested in music to get started with…

The Yamaha Melodica is a unique instrument, and is the only one of its kind that I have experience with it. Yamaha seems as good and experienced as any company when it comes to keyboarded instruments, as they are the largest manufacturer in the world, and got their start making pianos and organs. I'm not sure if there are more than the one model of the Yamaha Melodica that I have used, but it would make sense that there are a few different versions of the instrument. While I'm primarily and singer and guitar player, I do play some keys as well, so I was able to navigate myself through this melodica pretty well for using it for the first time. However, I imagine to truly get good at the instrument it will take some time, as it can be difficult to match your mouth and your fingers at times. I should also mention that this is the first and only melodica that I've ever played, so I really don't have anything to compare it to. Having said this, I was overall very happy with the sound that I got from it for a recording project of my own music. I was mostly just experimenting with the instrument to see what I could do with it, but ended up liking what I did with it a great deal and kept it on the song. The Yamaha Melodica seems to have a pretty strong build and as long as you don't play around with it, it should be an instrument that lasts you for a long while. Like I said, I don't have anything that I can really compare it to, but I like to think that I have a pretty good ear, and the sound that I got from the instrument for my recording was definitely pleasurable. If you're looking for an melodia to get started with, or just to experiment with, I'd definitely recommend this one.