Can you imagine the sound of lots of brass instruments all playing together? Think of a band of musicians turning the corner and marching down your street! They are playing trombones, trumpets and horns, not to mention cornets and tubas, as well as drums and crashing cymbals. You would probably see the trombone players first. They often lead a parade, so that there is plenty of space for their long slides to move in and out.

Special instruments

Brass bands have several of their own special brass instruments, which you wouldn’t normally see in an orchestral brass section. One of these is the cornet. (More…)

dodoBrass, Drums, Trumpet5 Nov, 20082 Comments

Folk music is music of the common people. Created by someone who has a story to tell rather than composed by a trained musician, it is simple and easy to understand. Folk songs have easy, singable melodies, use simple harmonies, and (unless the song tells a sad story) have rhythms that are fun for dancing. The instruments of folk music are the instruments people happened to have around at the time. Sometimes inventive people built their own instruments if no others were available. (More…)

dodoDrums, Electric Guitar, Folk Music, Guitar, String Instruments, Violin10 Oct, 20082 Comments

Although the key mechanism on modern woodwind instruments looks very complicated to a beginner, all the keys, rings, rods, and springs actually make the fingering much easier; ten fingers can now do the work of twenty. If a student practises hard, he will soon be playing much faster than even a professional could play 250 years ago.

Since the time of the pipes of Pan in ancient Greece, hundreds of woodwind instruments have come and gone. (More…)

dodoDrums, Jazz, Saxophone, Woodwinds1 Oct, 20082 Comments

The timpani are different because they can be tuned to a definite pitch. The timpani shell looks like a very large bowl made of copper. The head is stretched across the top of the bowl. The player is able to tune the timpani by pushing on a foot pedal attached to a tuning mechanism inside the drum. Since each timpani can only be tuned to four or five different pitches, the instruments are used in sets. As many as five drums of various sizes may be played by one drummer (timpanist). (More…)

dodoDrums, Jazz, Percussion Instruments27 Sep, 20082 Comments

One of the most fascinating families of instruments is found in the very last row of the orchestra—the percussion section. Any instrument whose sound is made by striking or used only for special sound effects, or is not a member of one of the other instrument families is naturally assigned to the percussion section. Since it contains instruments of many different shapes, sizes, and sounds, the percussion section has been given the nickname “kitchen of the orchestra“. (More…)

dodoDrums, Musical Instruments, Percussion Instruments, Popular Music27 Sep, 20085 Comments

Repertoire

According to Berlioz the flute ‘is an instrument well-nigh devoid of expression, but which may be introduced anywhere and everywhere, on account of its facility in executing groups of rapid notes, and in sustaining high sounds useful in the orchestra for adding fullness to the upper harmonies.’ This is a fair description of the way the flute is generally written for in orchestral works, but there are many exceptions. The sounds of the middle and upper registers combine well with any ensemble and add lustre. The lower register lacks penetration but has a soft and seductive quality. ‘These low sounds‘, wrote Berlioz in his Treatise on Instrumentation, `are seldom, or else ill, employed by the majority of composers.’ All the great orchestrators have however always known how to write for the low register. (More…)

dodoAmplifier, Bose, Drums, Folk Music, Headphones, Microphone, Music Box, Music Equipments, Sony, Yamaha31 Aug, 20083 Comments

The bass drum stands vertically, the rim of the shallow wooden shell facing the audience. This was originally known as the Turkish drum. Sometimes it has two heads, sometimes only one, the former model producing somewhat greater clarity. It is beaten with upward — or downward — glancing blows with a soft stick, and sometimes brushed simultaneously on the other side with a switch of sorts. (More…)

dodoBehringer, Denon, Drums, Guitar, Sony, Violin, Yamaha14 Aug, 20085 Comments

The staves for the percussion instruments are massed in the middle of the score. Who plays what depends on manpower, availability and ability.

The glockenspiel and celesta are both metallophones, the first having a resemblance to a small xylophone and the second to a small piano.

`Glockenspiel‘ means ‘bell-play’ in German. The glockenspiel used in marching bands is a set of steel bars set in a lyre-shaped frame. Mozart specified an instrumento d’ acciaio (steel instrument) for the part of Papageno’s magic bells in Die Zauberflote; this may have been a set of small tuned bells played from a keyboard like a modern celesta. These bells were also used by carillon players for practice. (More…)

dodoDrums, Electric Guitar, Multimedia, Music Box, Music Equipments, Percussion Instruments, Piano, Yamaha14 Aug, 20083 Comments

Before Bach, trumpeters were classified as principals and clarino players, the former playing in the lower register with its widely-stepped harmonics, the latter in the high register where the harmonics lie close together. Shanks and crooks were already used as early as 1600 and by the end of the 18th century there were crooks for every key. These altered the timbre of the instrument, and there was some degree of energy loss as the vibrating air column negotiated the loops. Then came the valves, introducing more loops, and someone writing at the time of their application, towards the end of the 19th century, described them as ‘a failure as they obscure the upper harmonics, the main source of characteristic tone’. (More…)

dodoBass Guitar, Brass, Drums, Guitar, Jazz, Musical Instruments, Popular Music, Trumpet14 Aug, 20083 Comments

In England Purcell is believed to have been the first to use the kettle drums, in The Fairy Queen (1687). From this time and a good while afterwards the timpani were tuned in fifths. The limitation of their use in the orchestra was caused by limitations of tuning; only when these were overcome could more interesting music be composed for them.

The problems facing drum makers were manifold, even though the instrument consists of no more than a skin stretched over a bowl. The shape and dimensions of the bowl or shell in relation to the drum head are important, as is the choice and preparation of the skin. (More…)

dodoDrums, Piano, Violin9 Aug, 20085 Comments