Late one evening in 1919, the Dolmetsch family joined a huge crowd of people waiting for a train at Waterloo Station in London. The family was returning home from a concert at which they had performed. Inside one of their bags was an old kind of duct flute called a recorder. (More…)
Nov
13
The clarinet is generally described as being a stopped cylindrical tube, but in fact only roughly two thirds are perfectly cylindrical. Part of the tube leading to the bell is conical, and so is the mouthpiece, which does not hermetically seal the top.
These factors, plus the fact that the surface of the bore of the tube is not perfectly smooth on account of the key holes, all contribute to the complex timbre. Uneven harmonics are present in force in the lower register and diminish in number towards the higher, where even harmonics are present. (More…)
dodo
CD Player, Headphones, Home Theater, Internet Radio, Jazz, Microphone, Music Box, Music Software, Sheet Music, Stage Lighting, Yamaha
25 Aug, 2008
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Aug
25
The saxophone has to be treated as a family of seven instruments of different sizes, each one covering 4 octaves and all seven a compass of 51 octaves. Saxophones look like outsize metal tobacco pipes supported by neck slings, apart from the sopranos which are shorter, parabolic cones. All have a single reed, clarinet-type mouthpiece. Classed as woodwinds, though made of brass, their part is written in a treble clef on a stave beneath the clarinets. (More…)
dodoBrass, Home Theater, Jazz, Multimedia, Music Book, Music Equipments, Music Software, Piano, Popular Music, Saxophone, Sheet Music, Woodwinds25 Aug, 20083 Comments
Aug
25
The bassoon has a compass of 31 octaves. It is written for in a bass or tenor clef on a stave in between the clarinet and the horn.
This large woodwind instrument, usually made of maple, can be identified by the fact that it is held diagonally across the body, supported by a neck sling or sometimes by a floor spike in the butt or bottom of the tubing. The longish, curved crook that carries the double reed is another distinguishing feature. The sound has different characteristics in different registers, but in legato passages in the upper register the sound has been compared to that of the human voice, and therefore has been called vox humana. (More…)
Aug
23
The organ is the earliest known of all mechanically operated musical instruments and not, as is sometimes stated, one of the earliest musical instruments. The first known organ dates from the 3rd century BC. This was a hydraulos, with a clever system of maintaining wind pressure by incorporating a water cistern in the wind reservoir; when the wind pressure sank, the water level rose to maintain it. (More…)
Aug
3
