#flutophone

the regular recorder does not count. if it wasn't this red and white piece of plastic then vote no

Today it occurred to me that the set doesn't come with rosin. So I looked it up and apparently the violins they make now are plastic and nonfunctional! I didn't know that till today, so I hadn't asked before buying if the set I ordered was the original wood one that made a sound when played. It shipped yesterday, too late to cancel the order without feeling guilty, so I decided to look up and save some new listings that were definitely the wood ones, just in case the one I got turned out to be plastic. If it was wood, I planned to delete the saves from my lists.

This is how I found a 1996 recital outfit (which looks just like the ones we wore for middle school concerts but was off my radar then because I didn't have a doll) that came with not only a functional wood violin and the stand and books, but also a flute! I ordered that too, because it was a reasonable price and I had been planning to get the recital outfit eventually. I figured I could sell whichever violin set I didn't want and the flute together to recoup my costs for the first violin set.

Only thennnnnn I learned that there also exists an entire doll-sized music store, to include a cello, an orchestral percussion set, and a recorder. Which they are calling a flutophone but it looks just like the recorders we played in third grade. Among others - guitars galore, ukulele sets, drums, keyboards, a piano. You could really make a whole school orchestra in 1/3 scale with everything they've come out with since that first tiny violin.

And now I am reconsidering selling the extra violin and the flute, and thinking about buying a cello, flutophone, and percussion set so I can have a whole dolly orchestra. They'll all need recital outfits, for obvious reasons.

So… yeah, fun fact, they taught us how to play those in one of the grades in Hawaii, we had like seventy of them around the house when I was younger

Elementary school music education! You know, that horrifyingly boring thing that you couldn't wait to be done with! (Other opinions may vary but are wrong.)

The thing about teaching elementary school music is that you need to give every student a musical instrument. And these are young kids, whose three hobbies are forgetting things, accidentally breaking things, and deliberately breaking things. Which means your ideal musical instrument is:

Dirt cheap

Basically indestructible

Easy to replace

Capable of producing musical notes people would want to hear (optional)

And to fill all of these needs, in the mid-1940s John Albert Flutophone created and trademarked the musical instrument that would bear his name.

(No, I will never get tired of saying that every invention was invented by someone with the same last name.)

A flutophone is kind of like a recorder that's been the victim of a ruthless usability study. It has exactly seven small holes for easy fingering (that is not what she said, come on, we have an essay to get through). It is tuned to the key of C, the most inoffensive and basic of all the keys. It does not require any maintenance more complex than occasionally cleaning it in soapy water and assembling it involves inserting the mouthpiece part and making sure it lines up with the holes.

But mostly it is made of plastic and costs four dollars.

(Today's draw really did screw up in all sorts of ways, huh? The shading was a valiant effort and I'm not ashamed of trying my best with a smudge stick, but I'm pretty sure the flared part at the bottom would produce at best something that could be described as "prank music".)