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…)

dodoEntertainment, Home Theater, Multimedia, Music13 Nov, 20082 Comments

There is a children’s story from Russia about a boy called Peter, his grandfather, a cat, a bird, a duck, a wolf and some hunters. The story is special because it is told not just in words but in music, too. Each character is matched to an instrument of the orchestra. Whenever you hear the instrument, you picture the character it represents. Three of the characters are played by reed instruments — the clarinet, the oboe and the bassoon. These are the three main reed instruments in the orchestra. (More…)

dodoBrass, Music Box, Music Equipments, Music Genres, Music Software, Musical Instruments, Woodwinds5 Nov, 20082 Comments

This picture shows a beautiful example of one of the largest of all wind instruments. It is an organ. Just imagine how much air is needed to make all these organ pipes sound!

Of course, people don’t blow into organ pipes. Mechanical gadgets such as bellows and electric motors are used. In the very first organs, made in Ancient Greece and Rome over 2,000 years ago, water was used to force air through the pipes. The first organ was called a hydraulic, from the Greek words for `water’ and ‘pipe’. According to writers of the time, the sound was so powerful it could be heard many miles away and the players had to plug their ears! (More…)

dodoMusic Box, Trumpet, Violin24 Oct, 20083 Comments

Electric organ

The American inventor Laurens Hammond invented the electric organ in the 1930s. The electric organ looks just like an ordinary pipe organ, but doesn’t work unless it’s switched on. When the keys are pressed, electric signals are made. The signals go to a pre-amplifier, where they are made stronger, then to an amplifier and then come out of the loudspeaker as musical notes. It sounds just like the real thing! (More…)

dodoAmplifier, Jazz, Music Box, Piano, Woodwinds21 Oct, 20082 Comments

In the 800s monks invented a way of writing music down. Before that time all music was learned by heart, or it was forgotten as soon as it had been played. Look at this piece of music, which was written in 1420. You can see that it is not that different from modern written music. You might think that the colours and decoration make it more attractive! (More…)

dodoMusic Book, Music Box, Piano, Sheet Music16 Oct, 20082 Comments

Every performer needs a few simple pieces of equipment, if nothing else, to give a successful performance. It is well worth spending a little time beforehand to make sure of a worthwhile result.

The metronome

First make sure you play your music at the right speed. A machine called a metronome tells you what the speed should be. But how fast is fast? (More…)

dodoMusic Box, Music Equipments, Sheet Music16 Oct, 20082 Comments

The Human Voice-How it Works, how it used?

Man’s oldest means of musical expression is the human voice. Many people consider it the most beautiful and sensitive of all musical instruments. This instrument is so personal that it is with you wherever you go, lets you make music whenever you want, can be used to make music without taking music lessons, and identifies you even when you can’t be seen.

Just as no two people look exactly alike, no two voices sound exactly the same. Try calling one of your best friends on the telephone and don’t identify yourself. It won’t take long for him to recognize you by the sound of your voice. Although we all use the same kind of instrument to produce vocal sounds, the instrument is a part of our body and is very special. (More…)

dodoHip Hop Music, Music Box, Music Equipments, Music Software, Musical Instruments12 Oct, 20082 Comments

A similar, but more complicated instrument is the zither. This is a folk instrument from northern Europe that has thirty to forty strings stretched across a flat, hollow sound box. The four top strings are used for playing the melody, while the rest of the strings are plucked and strummed to provide the accompaniment. The right hand plucks and strums, and the left hand stops the melody strings against the frets of a guitarlike fingerboard.

When Johann Strauss composed his famous waltz Tales from the Vienna Woods, he included a charming solo for the zither in the orchestral score. (More…)

dodoFolk Music, Guitar, Jazz, Music Box, Popular Music10 Oct, 20082 Comments

In addition to the notes of the four “open” strings, the players make many other notes by stopping the string with the fingers of their left hands. When a string is pressed against the fingerboard, its length is shortened, and a higher sound is produced. The closer to the sound box the finger is pressed, the higher the note. There is nothing on the fingerboard to tell a player exactly where to place his fingers (that is, unlike a guitar, a violin has no frets); he must listen very carefully and practise hard to learn where the right spots are for each note. (More…)

dodoBrass, Guitar, Jazz, Music Box, Percussion Instruments, Popular Music, Violin, Woodwinds7 Oct, 20082 Comments

Thousands of years ago man discovered that by boring a hole in the side of an animal horn and forcing air through the opening, he could produce sounds that were useful in sending messages short distances. The sound was generated by the player’s either buzzing his lips into the small opening or by blowing across the opening as you would blow across the top of a Coke bottle. The horn then amplified the sound and made it loud enough to be heard some distance away. (More…)

dodoBass Guitar, Brass, Classical Music, Music Box, Musical Instruments, Trumpet3 Oct, 20082 Comments