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

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 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

The double-reed family of woodwinds consists of the oboe, English horn, bassoon, and contrabassoon. Each has a double reed made of cane that the player holds between his lips and blows air through, just as you did earlier with the paper drinking straw.

There have been many types of double-reed instruments throughout history. Imported to Europe from the Orient, they have rather strange names such as bombarde, pommer, schryari, krummhorn, and rackett. It was during the seventeenth century that these instruments began taking on the appearance and sound of our modern instruments. (More…)

dodoMusic Equipments, Music Genres, Musical Instruments, Woodwinds1 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

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 earliest woodwind instrument known to man dates back to the pipes of Pan. Pan was the god of the forest, flocks, and shepherds in Greek mythology. He is usually pictured as half man and half goat—head and torso of a man, legs and feet of a goat—and is shown playing a set of pipes.

Shepherds of that time no doubt played instruments like this to keep themselves company while watching over their flocks in the hills of ancient Greece. (More…)

dodoAmplifier, Woodwinds1 Oct, 20082 Comments

The compass of the flute is three octaves from middle C, but a good player can obtain a few notes above this. The piccolo sounds an octave above, but from b.

The flute is the only woodwind instrument held crosswise, parallel to the shoulders. Sometimes it is made of dart wood, sometimes of glittering silver. The sound, which is produced by blowing across the embouchure or blow hole, has a relatively simple and uncoloured quality due to the small number of harmonics present in it. When the breath strikes the sharp edge of the embouchure it enters the tube, sets the column of air in motion and this in its turn agitates the body of the instrument. (More…)

dodoMusic Box, Music Equipments, Woodwinds31 Aug, 20086 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

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…)

dodoHome Theater, Music Box, Music Equipments, Woodwinds23 Aug, 20085 Comments