(Playing a folk song in d minor.)
Hello! And welcome to today’s video where I’m going to introduce the latest addition to my ever-growing collection of recorders, whistles and flutes.
This is an instrument from the Ukraine and it’s called sopilka.
It is a soprano sopilka; they come in different sizes, basically just like your recorders and it’s made of maple wood.
I like the sound. It’s a bit airy and very rich in overtones and it’s a really nice instrument.
There are a few differences to recorders and whistles and I’m going to talk about these differences as I have experienced them so far.
First of all, we have 8 holes on the front of the instrument, so there’s an additional hole here for the little finger of the left hand which we don’t have on the recorder and also not on whistles. On whistles you have 6 holes on the front so your little fingers don’t have anything to do but here, they do.
The next difference is the head. It’s flat. Recorders have the head in the shape of a beak more or less. And on recorders and whistles the labium would be on the front whereas the sopilka has it on the back.
And also on the back we have not one, but two thumb holes. So the sopilka has 10 holes, one for each finger and this makes it possible to play a full chromatic scale on the instrument.
The first few notes sound like this. (Playing a chromatic scale from c to g)
and so on
The good thing is: when I bought this instrument, it came together with a fingering chart which is very, very helpful and I have to look at this chart still quite often.
To play up into the next octave, you overblow, just like you would do with a whistle.
(Playing c and c one octave higher, d and d, e and e.)
It takes a bit of practice. It’s an instrument that looks pretty simple, but, just like the recorder, there’s a lot more to it than you would think at a first glance.
I already said that you can basically play any kind of music with it and I especially like it for folk songs and I’m going to play another folk song for you. It is one of my favourite melodies.
(Playing the German song „Wahre Freundschaft“ – true friendship)
So, this is the sopilka – soprano sopilka. It’s about the same size as a soprano recorder. Just to show you.
This soprano is made of cherrywood and on the back of the instrument, one thumb hole on the recorder and two thumb holes on the sopilka.
Another difference is the bore of the instrument, so the size of the cylindrical hole down here. It’s rather wide compared to the recorder for the sopilka.
But there are recorders with a wide bore as well. For example this soprano recorder here is made by Mollenhauer from the Adri Traumflöte, dream recorder, range. And the bore here is rather wide as well.
But I’m going to talk about the soprano recorders another time.
Today I wanted to show you the sopilka.
Thank you for watching. And, as always, if you either have any questions or if you are an expert sopilka player and you found that something I said isn’t quite right, I would be happy to hear from you. I’m always eager to learn.
You can get those instruments in various shops online. I bought this one from Etsy but I guess there are other possibilities, too. And there are lots of videos out there of people playing really, really nice tunes on the sopilka, so, do a bit of research, if you like and check them out.
Thanks for watching today and see you soon. Bye-bye!