What is it? The sound of primary school music rooms everywhere, forever. Everyone reading this must have played a recorder at some point – probably badly. Who uses it? Think recorders are kids toys?

Many kids take a toot on a recorder in school music class. Now Hiroshi Yokoyama from the Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan and his colleagues are revealing how the popular wind instrument ...

Remember the recorder? It's that small plastic instrument — looks kind of like a flute or clarinet — that's often the first instrument children learn to play in school. Or, at least, they used to. But ...