Today I'm giving my first impressions of the Toot
and Dood from Nuvo instruments to see if they can help me become a better composer.
Nuvo calls these a bridge between the recorder and band instruments and they're intended for
elementary school kids who want to go on to learn the flute or clarinet.
Now you may have noticed I'm not an elementary school kid and I'm also not
really interested in becoming a professional woodwind player. So why am I doing this?
Well I play guitar, piano, drums, basically rhythm section instruments, but I don't play any winds,
and so I've always felt a little disconnected when writing for those instruments.
So when I heard about these I wondered,
could using them help me get more familiar and comfortable with wind instruments
without having to go to the trouble of purchasing and learning the real thing?
By the way this video is not sponsored by Nuvo.
I haven't talked to anyone at the company. I probably should have.
Anyway, let's start with the Toot.
All right I don't have a lot of unboxing video
experience so I'm just going to dive in right here, take it out.
Nice. All right it comes in this case.
And there it is.
Now according to their website it's just ready to
play right out of the box and the Toot is their flute instrument.
I purchased black because I thought it would feel a little less like a toy,
although by weight and by the plastic it feels like a toy.
It comes with two different mouthpieces.
It has this one that you can put your lips over kind of like a recorder and then you
advance to this next one that is a little more like a flute where you actually blow on it.
So you're supposed to start with this one. My first ever flute so I'll try it that way.
OK. All right.
OK this is actually already going pretty badly.
All right so let's see what else is in the box.
There's this little
starter book with a finger chart and some instructions. So I believe that's a C.
And a D would be with this.
Huh. "Toot is ready to play straight from the case, look at the pictures below."
This is a lot harder than I thought it was gonna be,
kind of just expected I'ld pull this out and just, like, start playing tunes not gonna lie.
Yikes.
I will say I have a lot more respect for woodwind players already, this is pretty
tough and I was expecting these almost toy like instruments to be pretty easy to play.
But so far they're actually not that easy.
Let's give the Dood a try, which is the clarinet, and see if I have any more luck there.
Alright so here we go with the Dood, also comes with the case.
You can see it's a little bit bigger than the Toot.
Case is nice, that'll be easy to store on a shelf somewhere.
All right here it is, it's like a little tiny toy clarinet.
So it comes with this little mouthpiece cover, you do have to pop that off.
Be careful not to lose it, and then the reed is detachable.
Oh maybe there is another reed in the box. There is.
So there's a number one reed and then there's a one and a half.
I believe you're supposed to start with the number one.
You pull this mechanism back, slide the reed in, close it back up.
Let's see, and then there's an adjustable thumb holder there depending on the size of your hands.
I'm not sure if they ever intend this for an adult but I'll try about there I guess.
All right let's see what happens.
No your sound is not broken, I'm not making any sound.
Yikes.
O.h man. "Your Dood is ready to play straight from the case," according to the manual.
I wonder what I'm doing wrong.
This video is turning out very differently than I was expecting it to.
So the tone doesn't really sound like a flute, doesn't really sound like a recorder.
It's somewhere in between, you know it's not something I think
i'd probably ever record with but it's pleasant enough to play it.
And I'm sure i've cut a lot out but now I'm about
45 minutes in to doing this and I'm finally starting to actually get some notes out of it.
So this is the kind of thing I was hoping this would help me with,
is like phrasing and articulation.
So here I have this quarter eighth eighth half note rhythm.
And now I can experiment a little bit, like do I want that all slurred or articulated?
This is a micro example, but as I'm writing parts the idea is maybe I could grab this off my shelf
and kind of fiddle around and be like "okay what is the exact phrase I'm going for?
How much breath does it take?"
All right so I've been playing around for a bit more than an hour.
I feel like I'm finally able to get a semi-decent tone,
you know a lot of the fingerings obviously I have to learn and there's still a lot with intonation.
Like my b-flat is definitely pretty wonky.
There's a lot of work to do, but I think it's worth it.
I really feel like kind of my initial hypothesis was right, that
this really can help me get better at woodwind instruments, just with phrasing and breathing.
I think already I'm realizing I can get a lot more
out of the instrument for longer even with my untrained lungs than maybe I appreciate.
So an expert woodwind player can probably play pretty long
phrases without needing quite as many breaths as I maybe always think they do.
I'm gonna play around a little more with the Dood now that I can get a decent tone out of
the Toot. :et's see if I can get a decent tone out of the Dood, but I'm feeling pretty good.
All right the Dood takes a lot more breath to get a tone.
I kind of gave up on the Dood.
I wasn't able to get any tone out of it,
I spent more time on the Toot and actually started to be able to play it and now coming back to this.
I can at least get a tone out of it.
You know I'm gonna have to re-learn the fingerings for this one again.
I wouldn't use it for a recording session but it sounds kind of like a clarinet,
more than a recorder right? It sounds closer to a clarinet than a recorder. Pretty good.
I, again, I like the black that I picked just so it doesn't quite look like a little toy.
Some of those are like white with fluorescent colors.
If that's your thing that's fine.
It's a lot more difficult to play, this takes a lot more air.
My lungs may be too weak but I'll practice. I'll work on it.
So there we go, we've got the Toot and the Dood from Nuvo instruments.
They're kind of like halfway between recorders and real band instruments.
My hope is that if I keep playing with these and practicing, keep them on my shelf,
then eventually I'll get a better understanding of phrasing and articulation and breathing.
Clarinet I found to be a bit harder.
The flute was more easy to get to after a little bit of practice,
so you know if you're looking for one that's probably the one that's a little easier.
But they're both pretty cool.
They're, you know, pretty lightweight plastic. Sturdy enough.I
don't feel like they're gonna break or anything.
I'm pretty excited to play with these.
I guess I will update you guys in a couple months, in a year, who knows how long it will take.
I'm not gonna spend like an hour a day practicing these, but
I will work a little bit on it and I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks for watching I will see you in the next one!