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importance of musical instruments
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As I settled on the worn wooden bench for my first organ lesson, a mix of emotions rushed through my mind. I looked down at the familiar black and white keys beneath my fingers with relief, but when I glanced up at a second keyboard and a row of switches, I cringed. My teacher flipped the power switch and the organ began to hum. Tentatively, I tested out a simple melody. The blast of sound that came from the pipes behind me caught me off-guard. This was nothing like the piano I knew so well. Yes, the organ features a set of black and white keys and produces beautiful music, but the similarities end there. The piano and pipe organ, two common keyboard instruments, differ greatly in structure, sound, and use.
Simply structured instruments are cost effective and space efficient. Musicians prefer affordable instruments that fit in small performance spaces over extravagant, expensive versions. A simply structured, comprehensible keyboard instrument will best suit the average musician.
The piano, one of the most well-known keyboard instruments, comes in several sizes. Upright pianos range from three to five feet tall, nearly five feet long, and serve as the best option for a home piano. Grand pianos average three feet tall and four to nine feet long. Wealthy, professional musicians and large organizations tend to buy grand pianos. Pianos cost anywhere from $2,000 to $200,000 new, but many buyers turn to used upright pianos for cheaper options.
No matter the size or cost, all pianos contain the same basic elements. The instrument's outer mechanisms do not present great challenges for musicians. Pianists only need an understanding of a single keyboard and up to three foot pedals.
In contrast, the pipe organ is large, expens...
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...duces an impressive sound, it is expensive, impractical, and complex in comparison to the piano. Anyone searching for a keyboard instrument will have more luck in locating both piano music and the piano itself. Most listeners will find the simplicity of piano music more comprehensible than organ music. Pianos and pipe organs may both share black and white keys and the ability to produce simple, beautiful melodies, but the piano better serves its purpose.
Works Cited
Ardley, Neil. A Young Person's Guide to Music. London: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2004. Print.
Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America. Planning Space for Pipe Organs: An Architect's Guide. The Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America, n.d. PDF file.
Bluebook of Pianos. N.p. 2011. Web. 7 Jan. 2012.
Goffe, Toni. XYZ of Musical Instruments. London: Transworld Publishers Limited, 1978. Print.
<td width="50%">Baroque OrchestrasClassical OrchestrasString section and basso continuo central to the orchestra. Other instruments are occasional additions.Standard group of four sections: strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion. Different instruments treated individually.Fairly small; generally 10- 40 players.Larger than baroque; great variation to the numbers of players.Flexible use of timbres, e.g. Timpani and trumpets used generally just for festive music.Standardised sections. Most sections used regularly.Tone colour is distinctly secondary to other musical elements.Greater variety of tone colour and more rapid changes of colour. Timbre is unimportant and therefore a piece written for harpsichord could easily be rearranged for a string section.Each section of the classical orchestra has a special role. And each instrument is used distinctively.Wind instruments mainly used as solo instruments or as part of the basso continuo.The wind section had become a separate unit capable of contrast and distinct colour.The harpsichord generally plays an ostinato under the orchestra. Piano not invented.The piano introduces a third colour-tone to be contrasted with the orchestra
Batrolomeo Cristofori brings the piano into the musical arena around 1709 in Florence, Italy. One of Cristoforis previous instruments, the harpsichord, actually brought about the idea of the piano. Cristofori wanted to develop a more dynamic instrument, because the harpsichord had such a small dynamic range. His answer to that problem was the ‘gravicembali col piano e forte,’ which meant harpsichord with soft and loud. This long name was shortened to pianoforte, and then eventually forte was dropped, and now these modern instruments are known as pianos. As the keeper of instruments in Prince Ferdinand’s court in Florence, Cristofori reinvented the harpsichord into the piano. The actual date that he created the piano is unknown, but
Since the first person heard the wind whistle through the trees or the sea in a seashell humans have been drawn to sound. Being the oppressive and ingenious species that we are we felt the need to capture these sounds and any others that we could to keep for our own. Eventually people like Pythagoras and gods such as Apollo found that by stretching materials and picking/plucking them that they would produce sounds and that the tighter you stretched these strings the higher the sound would go. These were the early beginnings of the pianoforte.
Being “something of an experiment” (Brown, 2007, 465), Gade explores the versatility of the piano as both an accompanying and a solo instrument, as in a symphony versus a concerto. This is echoed in Berlioz’s sentiments that “the piano can be seen in two ways: as an orchestral instrument, or as a complete little orchestra in itself” (Shepherd, 2008, 9).
The piano is the most commonly known and most used. The saxophone has the ability to produce a unique sound. The clarinet has a reed connected to the mouthpiece, which the player blows through to create music. The trumpet is another a popular instrument. The trombone is descended from the trumpet that’s with played in bass clef or treble clef. With the larger size the double bass, the player usually has to stand up. The drums include the bass drum, snare drum, and cymbals. Last but not least, it’s good to have a vocalist because songs will sound
Playing the piano delights and make one happy. The activity can provide that deep sense of satisfaction, pleasure and fulfillment.
What can appear to gleam and reflect such beauty and craftsmanship yet can be handled by a three year old. It’s sound so pure by a touch of a finger has been in existence for well over a hundred years and is the foundation for creating music. It’s black and white keys produce sounds when played correctly that can bring tears to one’s eyes, touch your heart and soul, bring hope, or even joy and laughter to an event. All of this power… lies in the piano. The piano from its creation to this very second had transformed the world of music no matter what class, talent, and ability.
When it comes to classic musical instrument, piano is definitely one of the names that pop up in your mind. Indeed, after its first appearance around the year of 1700, piano has never left the stage of high culture and top class performance. Till today, three hundred years have past since it was first invented. Surely, a lot of changes have been made during this long period of evolution, the designers learnt to utilize better materials but the basic inner mechanism have stayed the same. However, the outside appearance of piano did changed a few times throughout the course of time. The first piano borrowed quite a bit of its look and design from the harpsichord because it was invented by Bartolomeo di Francesco Cristofori, an Italian harpsichord maker. (Powers, W. 2008) Namely, a noticeable amount of improvements have been made during the evolution of the instrument base on the demand of the time and arena. In this essay, stringed instruments with keyboard which are in the
...popularized with absolutely no real instruments being played. We live in a world now where the keyboard is the best instrument you could play. Violins, drums, guitars, any instrument you could imagine can now be emulated with a synthesizer and programmed in a computer.
Suddenly in the center a manual (the place where the organist sits) comes out of the floor and rises to create the centerpiece I had been missing. This is a Wurlitzer, which generally means a Theatre organ. These are the rather unconventional organs, as they have to have the ability to imitate multiple styles so they can recreate other music, it’s for entertainment. For instance, here, they allowed you to put in song requests. And the organist played everything from Bach’s Toccata in D Moll (pipe organ, the kind in churches) to Rhapsody in Blue (orchestra) to anything in the Great American Songbook, and other genres. The other types of organs include the Electric organ, the Hammond, the Allen, or the Reed
Music has shaped the lives of people throughout history. Even in its earliest forms, music has included use of instruments. One of the oldest musical instruments known is a variation of the flute; the original flute is thought to date back nearly 67,000 years ago. Tonight we are going to move throughout the eras with a history of instrumental music. This concert will begin with the Renaissance Era and continue through time until we have reached modern instrumental music.
When comparing the piano works of Frederick Chopin and Robert Schumann, it is important to take into account the number of works each wrote in comparison to their other outputs as a composer. Chopin wrote almost exclusively for piano but this was far from the case with Schumann.
Of all the instruments laid out on display, only one caught my attention. I was thirteen at the time, and naturally, my eye was drawn to the shiniest of the group. I had never heard the sound of a flute before, aside from the cheap imitation of one on my family’s electronic keyboard. Nevertheless, I picked the pretty, gleaming, easy-to-carry flute on that first day of band class. Three years later, I can’t imagine playing anything else. What started off as blind luck and an attraction to shiny objects is now a part of my life. Playing an instrument is always a worthwhile investment; you develop a skill that many people only wish they had, you have opportunities to meet other musicians, and you may even get to travel in a band setting. But in order to reap the benefits, you first have to learn how to play.
Physics is all around us, and yet we always overlook it. We see, hear or feel something happen but never stop to question why. Physics will tell us why. Music plays a part in everyone's lives. So much so that it is often overlooked and the technicalities of it are unappreciated. Sure there are times when we listen carefully to the music behind the songs we hear, we may focus on the rhythm or the harmonies, but we never think of what it took to make the sounds that we are hearing. In this paper, I will explain the physics musical instruments. I will describe and define sound in psychics terms and then describe how different instruments create their unique sounds.
Many people do not often realize what the most revolutionizing and most important instrument is. In fact, this instrument can be found in every style of music in some way, shape or form. The one instrument that fits this criteria is the drum. According to the Harvard Dictionary of Music, a drum is a generic name for instruments that consists of skin stretched over a frame or vessel and struck with either hands or sticks. Drums are membranous. In other words, a drum has something inside of it, or a "membrane," that gives it its sound (Apel 247). There are many different types of drums, and each drum has its own place in different styles of music. For example, a tympani drum, also referred to as a kettle drum, is mainly found in classical styles of music,