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

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

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

Starting with a design that is nearly four hundred years old, the violin maker selects just the right pieces of wood from his storeroom. Each part of the instrument will be made from a special kind of wood, and he chooses pieces of spruce, maple, pine, ebony, or Pernambuco wood with which to work.

For the next three or four months the instrument maker will carve, shape, and fit these pieces of wood together like a puzzle. As he finishes each of the nearly seventy different parts, it will be fitted in the proper place. Some parts will be glued, others will be held in the proper position by being fitted just right, (More…)

dodoString Instruments, Violin7 Oct, 20082 Comments

All the instruments of the flute family are very similar. Their sound is produced by a vibrating air column, they are all fingered the same way, and they are made from metal. Although it is a small family and the instruments can’t play very loudly, the flute family has an important place in both our musical heritage and the music of today.

Instruments of the clarinet family are perhaps the most versatile and useful of the woodwinds. Descendants of a family of seventeenth-century instruments called shawms, shalmeys, or chalumeaux, their sounds are produced by blowing air across a single reed. (More…)

dodoJazz, Popular Music, Saxophone, Violin, Woodwinds1 Oct, 20082 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 part for the tuba is written on the bass clef, under the stave carrying the part for the trombone. The tuba is not a transposing instrument, but should the part for the bass tuba go very low the sign 8va is used, obviating ledger lines and indicating that the music is to sound an octave lower than written. (More…)

dodoBrass, Classical Music, Electric Guitar, Guitar, Music Box, Music Equipments, Musical Instruments, Trumpet, Violin11 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

Whatever the shape and size of those earlier pianos, the makers always strove for elegance. The cabinets of the small squares, supported on elegantly turned legs, became collectors’ pieces of furniture, and many an action was ripped out in order to convert the silent shell into something more useful such as a cocktail cabinet or dressing table. Woods were carefully chosen for their grain and craftsmen indulged in filigree fretwork for the music rack on either side of which glowed merry brass candlesticks. Some grands were decorated with brass inlay and one piano at least was made entirely of brass. Hand-pleated silk of superior quality concealed the sound board and strings of the uprights. All this contributed to making pianos desirable adornments of the home, a pleasure to look at as well as to hear. Mass production spoiled all that and all pianos began to sound alike and to look alike — hence the necessity for writing the name on the instrument as well as in the concert or recital programme. (More…)

dodoBrass, Guitar, Percussion Instruments, Piano, Violin26 Jul, 20085 Comments