Tonette

[rllink]

I read music. I learned how to read music in fourth grade because that was the pre band year and we all were issued a tonette in music class, a kind of recorder, and we learned to play it. The following year, fifth grade, most of us started in band. I took up the trumpet and lasted two years before I persuaded my parents to let me give it up. This Christmas I got a vintage tonette as a present. It comes from about the same era as far as I can tell and is the same red color. It even has the original box and the little music book that came with it. I haven't been playing it a lot, just messing with it a little. It is surprising though how much of it comes back after more than sixty years.

Anyone else play the tonette in school? I have to say that I'm glad I learned to read music. When people say they can't read music I want to say, come on, it isn't that hard, it's fourth grade level.

[Kerbie]

Yeah, I remember the tonette and learned how to play it years ago. We actually used recorders in the fourth grade, but the school system had used tonettes in the past and there were still some floating around. My dad was an elementary school principal, so he brought one home for me to play.

I remember it having a pretty shrill sound; the recorders had a much nicer tone. Both of them served their purpose. They introduced kids to music and taught us all how to read. By then, I could already read music, but it was nice to have a music teacher helping. I still find reading music easy and I was glad I learned how to do it at an early age.

I don't have the tonette, but I still have wooden recorders that I enjoy very much... a soprano and an alto. Very nice instruments to play.

I don't know of any tonette groups, but here is the Woodpeckers Recorder Quartet playing Vivaldi and having a little fun while they do it.

[rllink]

That was fun. I'm probably not going to spend a lot of time I could spend getting better on the guitar to try and play the tonette, but who knows, I might get bored enough someday. I just talked about playing the tonette so much that someone got it for me. I think is a put up or shut up present.

[Steve DeRosa]

Still have an original Tonette - the ones where you could drill out a hole in the left-hand pinky rest to allow certain chromatic fingerings, and no Flutophone-style bell - tucked away somewhere, and I used my 1960's issue Conn Song Flute (the good ones made from heavy Tenite plastic like the early Tonettes - the ones from the '70s on are flimsy) regularly when I was teaching elementary music...

[Wade Hampton]

We had Flutophones at my school. I never learned to play it.


whm

[tbeltrans]

Though I never got a Tonette, I remember a man who came into our class demonstrating it and trying to sell them. The Principal apparently thought there was something shady about the whole thing and nobody was allowed to buy one. I didn't understand why she let the guy come in and make his presentation if she already knew we wouldn't be allowed to buy. But, then, I was just a kid - what did I know?

The one thing I remember was thinking during the guy's presentation, why didn't he have a real job like my dad, who worked in an office doing research at Lockheed.

Odd, the things we remember.

I had to play violin in the school orchestra in the 5th grade, the one year I went to public school. I learned to read music and developed my ear since there aren't any frets or markings to guide one's fingers. I agree with the earlier poster about reading music. It really isn't difficult and the advantage is that it opens yet another avenue of music. On the guitar, it is quite easy since it is all treble clef (unless you approach it as Johnny Smith did according to where the guitar's note range really lies). Playing from fakebooks (lead sheets) is even easier since there, it is just the melody line and chords written above that to be interpreted by the player on the fly.

Tony