Musical Instruments

Musical instruments are variations on tools used for other purposes and all you need to begin a music composition is your own voice and body movements. Rhythm is essential to music and originates in nature before and aside from musical sounds. Instruments evolved from several sources of vibration such as stretched skins, metal surfaces, reeds and tubes that vibrate to human breath, and strings that vibrate when stretched and plucked.

Ancient humans made wood and stones tools, hitting objects against each other, creating rhythmic sounds. Sticks, logs and animal skins came together as percussion instruments. Early music consisted of drumming, singing and dancing.

Musical information consists of pitch, loudness, timbre, location, and movement of the sound source. A combination of sounds of different pitches produces harmony and a sequence of pitches becomes melody. Timbre describes the harmonics in a sound that give it recognizable qualities. You can identify a trumpet, an oboe or a violin by recognizing its timbre. Music performance involves many agreements about instrument design, pitch assignment, the meaning of notation so that groups of people can produce harmonious sounds with compatible rhythms. The Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, determined that if you divided a vibrating string in half, you would hear an octave at double the fundamental vibration frequency. The octave interval sounds like the same note is being played, but at a higher pitch. Since we hear intervals differently as the pitch increases, a well-tempered tuning has been adopted that adjusts the wave frequency difference of intervals, which decrease as the pitch increases.

While classical music written in Europe is appreciated as high art and performed by skilled musicians, musical styles and forms in the 20th century proliferated and incorporated sounds from all over the planet. At the same time electronics advanced so that recorded music became the most popular way to experience music. The science and technology of sound physics and the neuroscience of sound perception advanced remarkably. I have enjoyed many different expressions of this technology and continue to learn about sound synthesis, instrument modeling, recording and editing sound. All these activities inform about the way our brain processes sound. The main distinction in the world of sound is between music which is intelligent and pleasing and noise which is neither.

Some Instrument Topics

Trumpet

Percussion

Synthesizers

Persona Digital Studio is located on the Sunshine Coast, Sechelt, British Columbia, Canada. www.personadigitalstudio.com email music@personadigitalstudio.com. Our Music catalogue includes recorded performances by the Trinity P2500 Band, Em4U, and the Persona Classical Consort. Music downloads are available from iTunes, Napster, AmazonMP3 and from our companion website: Persona Digital. We have enjoyed association with Reverb Nation who provides an online service for musicians to present and market their music.

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