Unusual Instruments

I guess anyone who reads this knows about my website, The Virtual Museum of Music Inventions. At first, I wasn't terribly interested in having students do this project because I wanted them to have as many musical experiences as possible and making an instrument is pretty far down on that list. Eventually, I cottoned to the idea and I positively enjoyed teaching the students about the parameters of what goes into creating a sound: vibration, resonance, timbre, pitch, etc. After all, in college I took a semester class in "Acoustics". Before that, I tested laboratory rats for my psychology class to see what their pitch thresholds were.
Fundamentally, though, I've always been interested in new ways of making sound. Recently, I remembered some childhood experiences along that line:

• I used to have fun making a shrill whistle from two blades of grass, holding them in the middle of an opening of my cupped hands.
• We used to bang silverware and glasses to make rhythms at the table after dinner.
• At camp, there was a counselor who had made a beautiful set of chimes from brake drums. He played them in the outdoor chapel, in a grove of trees by the lake, as we watched the sun set.
• This same guy played the saw! He held one end of a large saw on his knee and used an actual violin bow to create the sound. He bent the saw very hard to get high notes and he bent it softly it get low notes.

All through my life, I've been interested in world instruments: taiko, gamelan, conga drums, flutes of different types, including an old double flute my parents brought back from Romania, koto, samisen, shakuhachi, harps, alp horns. . . you name it!

I even enjoyed John Cage's notion of "ambient" music, where you focus in on the sounds you hear right now . . . in the same way you listen to music. In this case, your own brain is the organizing factor, or not.

The Kindergarten Singers

One day, as I was musing about how life has changed and about how people probably don't sing as much as they used to (at home, with friends, etc.), I was riding my bike not far from my house. I saw a group of kindergarten children waiting at the corner of a busy street. As I passed by, I heard their sweet little voices raised in song! It was so delightful! It made me so happy to hear that!

Music Then and Now

Way back in history, before the invention of gramophones or any kind of recording devices, people made their own music. I have heard that, in order to hear new symphonies, people would buy reductions of orchestral scores and play them on the piano. People used to sing or play whatever instruments they had at hand or knew how to play. Many people never got to hear live musical concerts in large concert halls. Only people who lived in cities went to those.

Things are so different now. I can hear a huge variety of music on my iPod as I walk down the street! Such a thing would have been thought miraculous in the "old days"!

I wonder if people sing as much as they used to? I wonder if they make their own music as much as they used to? (playing instruments, etc.)

Things are different . . .