The Venova: Game Changer for Elementary School Students

When videos for the new Yamaha Venova™ began appearing on YouTube™ in Japan, the first thing I thought was, “Can I take this instrument and teach little kids to play?”

I am a clarinet and saxophone teacher/performer, youth orchestra director and long-time K-12 ensemble music educator, and one of the greatest challenges that I face is that I often get students in the K-3 grade range who are interested in playing clarinet or saxophone but are far too small to hold and play the standard-sized instruments. I experimented with some of the different scaled-down plastic children’s instruments available on the market but was always disappointed with the complexity and tone quality.

The Venova has finally reached general availability in the United States, and I was delighted to recently see it in my local music store. The Venova is billed as a “casual wind instrument” and its role in the music marketplace as being akin to the ukulele, which lots of folks find more accessible and portable than the guitar. I think this is a spot-on characterization.

I now own two Venovas and spent some time learning to play them and experimenting with clarinet and saxophone techniques. While I found the included soprano saxophone mouthpiece — essentially the stock Yamaha 4C model — effective to use, I wasn’t quite as happy with the response of the synthetic reed provided with it. Since then I have used a Legere Signature Soprano Saxophone reed in strength 3.0 and believe that this is the exact “sweet spot” for a player with an established embouchure. With a beginner, I would try the 2.0 and 2.5 strength versions.

The size, weight, and general simplicity make the Venova much easier to work with for a K-3 student. My 5-year-old son tried it out and was able to achieve a characteristic sound on the very first try. The low cost of the instrument — around $100 — also makes it much more accessible. Anyone who has tried a $100 clarinet or a $200 saxophone knows that those barely qualify as real instruments, yet the Venova is a fully chromatic instrument with a very impressive, complex tone quality that belies its size and appearance.

Most importantly, compared to a recorder, the Venova’s soprano saxophone mouthpiece, reed and ligature allow a young child to develop the appropriate musculature for a future clarinet or saxophone embouchure. The setup lends control to the tone and voicing on the instrument that a recorder simply does not have, and the smaller size of the mouthpiece is more appropriate for younger children with smaller mouths for which a standard clarinet or alto saxophone mouthpiece are far too large to deal with.

As music director of a youth orchestra, I have the privilege of working with 150+ talented young musicians every season. More recently, through the efforts of my wife, Chika, and our friend and colleague, Jenny Visick, we have launched a string program that offers instrumental instruction to violin and viola players as young as 3 and 4 years old. We are now looking at introductory woodwind classes using the Venova, and plan to launch a K-3 beginning woodwinds course shortly. I will soon be writing/arranging custom arrangements for Venova solo and ensembles in preparation for our class launch.