Just like the mouth organ, a squeeze box makes music using free reeds. The largest squeeze boxes are the accordion and the melodeon. Musicians usually carry these instruments on a strap around their shoulder to support the weight. Squeeze boxes have three important parts. They are the reeds, the keys or buttons and the bellows. (More…)

dodoMusic Equipments, Musical Instruments, Piano24 Oct, 20082 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

The timbre of the oboe can be identified more easily and quickly than that of any other instrument of the orchestra because during tuning up it can be heard sounding long, steady As to which the whole orchestra, in what seems like a total chaos of sound, tune their strings, pipes and percussion.

Made of grenadilla, rose or’ cocus wood, the oboe has a narrow conical bore terminating in a slight flare or bell. It is held vertically and the double reed, which is mounted in the top, is held in the ‘player’s mouth,. When blown the lips of the double reed start beating; this drives beaten air into the pipe which then becomes alive with sound. The quality of sound or timbre depends to a major degree on the dimensions of the reed, the grain and its density. (More…)

dodoGuitar, Piano31 Aug, 20085 Comments

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

Horn parts are written in treble and bass clefs without key signature, accidentals being written in as they occur. The horn is a transposing instrument and sounds a fifth lower than written in the treble clef but a fourth higher in the bass clef.

In his book on the French horn Morley Pegge described the sound of the instrument as ‘the most refined and poetical voice in the symphony orchestra’. Its emotional range certainly covers the moods from martial to melancholy. (More…)

dodoBrass, Piano23 Aug, 20083 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

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

The part for the timpani, or kettle drums, is written on a stave above that of the first stringed instrument, be it harp, violins, or that other percussion instrument, the piano. The notes to which the two or three drums are to be tuned are named at the beginning of the score, any alterations being indicated as they occur. Each drum has a compass of a fifth. (More…)

dodoDrums, Percussion Instruments, Piano, Trumpet, Violin9 Aug, 20086 Comments

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…)

dodoHome Theater, Music Equipments, Piano, Popular Music3 Aug, 20083 Comments