Recorder Fingering Chart

Eight holes, no keys: how recorder fingerings work

The recorder is the simplest instrument on this site — no keys, no valves, just eight holes: seven down the front and one thumb hole on the back. The left hand goes on top (holes 1, 2 and 3, plus the thumb behind), the right hand below (holes 4, 5, 6 and 7). Covering holes from the top down lengthens the air column and lowers the pitch step by step, which is why the first octave is mostly a ladder: C5 uses every hole, and each note above it lifts roughly one more finger. The exceptions are the notes that make beginners pause — the two fork fingerings, F5 and F♯5, where a finger in the middle lifts while the fingers below it stay down. Forks feel wrong for a day and then feel like nothing.

One honest note about pitch: the soprano recorder's music has traditionally been written an octave below the sound it makes. This site keeps things simple for school players and names every note at the pitch students search for — low C is C5, and the note sounds as C5.

The pinched thumb — the recorder's register key is your thumbnail

The recorder has no octave key, so the left thumb does the job. In the first octave it seals its hole completely. In the second octave it half-holes: slide or roll the thumb so it covers only about half the hole, leaving a tiny crescent open at the top edge. That small vent is what tips the air column into the second register. Too much vent and the note squawks or drops; too little and it stays stubbornly in the first octave. Three notes at the bottom of the second octave — C♯6, D6 and E♭6 — go further and take the thumb off altogether, which is why they feel exposed at first. From E6 upward, every note in this chart is played with the pinched thumb, and the diagrams mark it as a half-filled thumb hole. Practise the pinch by playing E5, then rolling the thumb — not lifting it — until E6 speaks.

Baroque or German? The F tells you

School recorders come in two fingering systems, and they differ at exactly one everyday note. On a Baroque (English) recorder, F is a fork: thumb covered, holes 1, 2, 3 and 4 covered, hole 5 OPEN, holes 6 and 7 covered — written as 0 123 | 4-67 in the old notation. On a German recorder, F is straight down the ladder: thumb + holes 1, 2, 3 and 4 only (0 123 | 4---). The German system makes that one note easier for small hands, but it pays for it with worse tuning on F♯ and several second-octave notes, which is why Baroque has become the standard and why this chart is a Baroque chart. If your recorder is German, the F fingerings above are the only ones in the first two octaves you need to swap (the German F♯, thumb + holes 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7, and a slightly different first-octave A♭ are the other differences the sources list). To find out which system you own: on a Baroque recorder the fourth hole is smaller than the fifth; Yamaha also stamps a small B or G under the thumb hole. The F5 and F6 note pages state both fingerings in full.

Double holes: how the bottom notes get their sharps and flats

Look at the bottom of a school soprano and the last two holes are doubled — two small holes side by side where one finger lands. Cover both and you get the natural note (hole 6 completes D5, hole 7 completes C5). Cover only the lower small hole and you get the semitone below it (E♭5 and C♯5). In the diagrams those notes show hole 6 or 7 half-filled. Some very cheap recorders have single holes at 6 and 7; on those, half-cover the hole with the fingertip to get the same semitones — less precise, but it works, and the note pages for C♯5 and E♭5 explain it.

Alto, tenor and the rest of the family

Everything in this chart is for the soprano (descant) recorder in C — the instrument in US elementary and middle-school classrooms. The recorder family works the same way throughout: the alto (treble) recorder is in F, the tenor is in C an octave below the soprano, and sopranino and bass fill the ends. The hole patterns transfer directly — an alto player fingers the same shapes — but the note names attached to the shapes change with the instrument's key, so alto and tenor players should learn from a chart named for their own instrument rather than transposing this one in their heads.

A sensible way to practise from this chart

Method books start with B5, A5 and G5 for a reason: three fingers, no forks, no double holes, no thumb tricks. Add E5 and D5 next, then the fork F5 slowly and deliberately — say the pattern out loud ("one-two-three-four, skip five, six-seven") until it is automatic. Leave the low C♯ and E♭ until the double holes feel familiar under your fingers, and leave the second octave until your first octave is steady at a gentle breath: the pinched thumb only works on top of calm air. The recorder punishes blowing hard more than any other instrument here — almost every ugly recorder sound is too much air, not a wrong fingering.

Sources

Every fingering in this chart was checked against two independent references: the Woodwind Fingering Guide's basic fingering charts for recorder (first, second and third octave pages, English/Baroque rows) and the NoteAtlas soprano recorder fingering chart. The two sources agree on all 25 main fingerings in this chart. They were cross-checked against Yamaha's official recorder guidance: Yamaha — the maker of the school recorders most students play — defines the Baroque F as the fork fingering used here and the German F as the straight fingering described above, in its recorder fingering-system FAQ. The one alternate published on the note pages (for B6) is the second basic fingering the Woodwind Fingering Guide lists for that note; the extra second fingerings it prints for a few other notes are single-source or trill fingerings, so they are not published here.

Recorder fingering questions