Hello everybody! Welcome to Music
Makers. My name is Geri. I'm the
children's Youth Specialist at the
Angleton Library, and I also play
clarinet in the Alvin Community Band. I'm
here with a couple other community band
members and we are going to teach you
about the instruments you'll find in a
band and some of the ones you might find
in an orchestra and just instruments in
general. So the instruments are divided
into families; there are four families. We
have woodwind, brass, percussion, and
strings. And all of these instruments
make different sounds but they all make
sounds in a very similar way. Something
else, we'll start with the
woodwind family and woodwinds are
instruments that are starting out made
as wood out of wood like this old wooden
flute. It's just a piece of wood hollowed
out, some holes were carved into it, and
this one makes the sound by the air
vibrating across the hole at the top.
Like this. So you blow across the hole
the air vibrates as it goes and that's
how it makes the sound and then it
evolved into the traditional flute that
you see in different orchestras and
bands. This one is made out of metal but
it's still called a woodwind because you
blow your air across the hole at the top
that vibrates to make the sound and to
play it you use all of your fingers to
change the notes. And so just like with
the wooden flute, you blow and it makes
the sound, and then you use your fingers,
you pick them up and put them down to
change notes. (♪    ♪)
As you can tell I don't play flute on a
regular basis. But you also change your
notes by changing how fast you blow so
you blow slower it's gonna be a lower note
(♪)
and if you go faster it's gonna be
higher. (♪) It's really cool huh? And another
interesting thing about the instruments:
the bigger the instrument is the lower
it sounds so our next instrument is the
clarinet, and is it bigger or lower than
the flute or bigger or smaller than the
flute? It's a little bit bigger so it's
going to have a lower sound (♪) and this
one is played by, it has a reed on it.
It's a little piece that you take on and
take off and the reed is what vibrates.
And that's how you make this sound as
your air flows over the reed. And (♪)  just
like the flute you pick up all your
fingers and put them down and change
notes (♪) just like that. And I'm gonna play
a little bit of one of my all-time
favorite clarinet songs. Let's see if you
recognize it. (♪)
Does anybody know what that one is? Well
if you don't, it's the cat tune from
Peter and the Wolf. Hi my name is Mr.
David, and I am actually the director of
the Alvin Community Band and also play
brass instruments. It's kind of fun today
because we are talking about the instruments
and you heard Ms. Geri talk about the
woodwind instruments. I'm going to talk
to you about the brass instruments.
There's a whole family of brass
instruments from high pitch to low pitch
brass instruments. Ms. Geri mentioned
a while ago that in order to make sound
something has to vibrate. The thing
that's common about brass instruments is
that your lips are actually the way that
things vibrate and you have to make a
really kind of funny sound. So to make
the buzzing sound, as we call it for
the brass instruments, what you do is you
take your lips and you press them
together like you're saying the letter P,
so you hold that together and then you
blow air through it, so it's like you're
saying the word Pooh, like Winnie the
Pooh. So what you do is press it together
P, push the air through it, and it makes
a funny sound like that. So that's the
buzzing, that's the vibration that makes
the sound. The bugle is actually this
type of instrument with no valves on it.
Valves didn't come around until about
the 1800s, 1820s, somewhere when the
Industrial Revolution came along. Before
that it was just a piece of metal with a
bell on the end. Now what you're gonna
notice about all of these modern brass
instruments is they look sort of similar.
They all have a place to blow in, this is
called a mouthpiece, it's where we make
our buzzing sound. And then there's a
piece of tubing that goes around and it
flares out into a bell at the end and
that's what projects the sound out. So
this instrument is actually a cornet;
it's similar to a trumpet. Trumpets a
little bit longer a little bit brighter
sound. So what we do is we take our
mouthpiece and we make the sound, the
buzzing sound, the pooh, okay and we put
that there and it kind of makes the
sound a little clearer. So then what we
do, is we take that mouthpiece and we put
it into the instrument, we make the same
exact buzzing sound into the instrument
(♪) and it makes it sound a lot better than
the buzzing or just the mouthpiece. It
clarifies it, gets the vibrations going.
So that's how you make the sound again
on all of these instruments. Now the
other thing that's
concept is we can make the sound higher
or lower by making that buzz faster or
slower higher and lower kind of thing. So
fast/slow, high/low, faster the higher (♪)
okay if I buzz slower, (♪) all I'm doing is
changing the way that I buzz the the
instrument okay. So by doing that (♪) I can
play several notes without pushing any
of these valves. So that's the other part
of the trumpets in some of these
instruments you'll see today's they have
valves on them. The valves basically make
the instrument longer or shorter. So the
longer the instrument, the lower it plays.
Ms. Geri mentioned that the bigger the
instrument, the lower it plays, and we'll
see that in just a minute, but if I push
these valves down I can make the
instrument longer or shorter and I can
play basically all the notes. So I'm
going to press the valves down. Basically
when you press them down it redirects
the air into some other pieces of pipe.
So if I press valves this time still do
the buzzing here's what we get. (♪) So we can get some sounds
like that and then we can play some
different tunes; you might know this if
you watch some of the old TV shows: (♪) So
something like a Lone Ranger that's
actually a song called William Tell
Overture by a guy named Rossini but we
can press the valves and play different
sounds. So again this is a cornet; it's
actually the highest of the brass
instruments. Next we're going to go to
this instrument. This is called a
trombone. It looks a little different.
It's brass, it's got a mouthpiece, it's
got a bell on the end, but notice there
are no valves. So what we have to do on
this instrument to make different sounds
is we have to, again the same concept,
make the instrument longer or shorter.
The longer the instrument the lower the
shorter the higher. So again, we're going
to do the same thing; this is a bigger
instrument so do you think it's gonna
play lower or higher?
Yeah, it's going to play lower. So what
we're going to do is we're going to play
the same buzzing thing (♪) so we'll make that
sound. It's a little bit lower. We put it
in the instrument (♪) and it makes the sound.
Again, the buzzing clarifies by the
instrument. Again I can change this the
tension on my lips tighter and looser (♪) and
then what I can do is I can move this -
this is called a slide - and it moves back
and forth and it will come all the way
off so you have to kind of be careful if
you don't want to drop that and then by
moving this and make the instrument
longer or shorter I can play different
notes. (♪) Letting this slide making this instrument
longer and shorter, tightening and
loosening the lips, and then play the
song. (♪) So it can be fun things like that,
that's a jazz song called Saints Go
Marching In. So anyway that's the
trombones, same basic concept as with all
the brass instruments.
Hi, my name is Miss Debbie, and I teach at
Alvin Community College, and I also play
piano and I also play percussion.
Percussion has two purposes: one of them
is to kind of keep the beat, I'm sure
you've heard this (♪) okay,
but the most fun part of percussion is
that it provides special effects to
certain songs. So how do we make a sound
on percussion? Percussion does not make a
sound the way these instruments do; these
instruments create a sound, or create
air vibrations, by air passing through
and vibrating. Percussion, there are two
ways that we make sounds on percussion.
One of them is striking like we do (♪)
and the other one is shaking, so let me
show you some of these instruments. The maracas,
I also bought these in Mexico;
they're very colorful, they make very
colorful instruments. They use them in
Latin and world music, made out of wood
with beads. You can do different things:
twirl them to make a continuous sound or
you can use like instrument (♪) just
different instruments you see them
in Cuban bands, you see them everywhere.
Claves are kind of fun another thing
they call them are shakers. You can
Now, these two are probably the most
common of all the percussion instruments.
This is a cymbal, actually a suspended
cymbal, often times you see what we call
crash cymbals where you have two of
these with handles and you see them in
marching bands like this. This is a
suspended cymbal and you play it with
mallets (♪)  and it'll kind of sound like that.
Now cymbal is used for sound effects
like maybe water splashing (♪) something falling into the water, or what about lightning? (♪) Kinda scary
right? A little bit scary. The suspended cymbal is very much fun to play. Okay and
then probably the most the most common
of all the percussion instruments the
snare drum. Now we call it a snare drum
as you can as you can see this has a
TomTom sound but a snare drum actually
has these metal snares at the bottom of
it and then when you put you over here
it moves the snares closer to the bottom
of the drum to create our typical
snare drum sound (♪). Here's a question for you:
why did they let the chicken play in the
band? Anybody? Because he brought his own
drumsticks. (♪) Okay so you hear that, so a
snare drum and a cymbal is used at the
end of a joke.
Also it you hear it in rock bands a lot. (♪) They kind of go together, march, roll.
Oftentimes, like marching season is
coming up in the fall, hopefully you'll
see marching bands and before a march
sometimes you hear what we call a
roll-off which is an introduction to the
march: you'll hear this (♪). There is one more
family of instruments and that's the
string instruments. And they're called
strings because they have strings. And
there are two ways to play them to make
the sound, you remember something has to
vibrate to make the sound, and this is a
violin. It's the smallest string
instrument and it is played by the
strings vibrating and you can make them
vibrate by running a bow across them
taking your bow and (♪)  dragging it across
the strings like that or by plucking. (♪)
Both ways make the strings vibrate and
I am not a string player so I don't
have any songs for you but Miss Debbie
has a different string instrument here.
Okay this is do you see this everywhere
or what? This is a guitar. A guitar you
see electric guitars, this is an acoustic
guitar meaning you don't need to plug it
in for the sound you can just play it
without an amplifier. Guitar has six
strings tuned like the violin Ms. Geri
was saying, you can play single single
melody single melodies on the strings or
you can play chords. Mostly just chords,
mostly you hear it with chords, so like
for a single melody have you heard this? (♪)
Batman. Okay what about now I think you
probably know this song: (♪) The Darth Vader song
right? You hear that but mostly it's just
chords you can play just different
rhythms (♪)
So like different chords and things. So
that's a guitar and you can play it in a
couple of different ways. Alright so
today you've heard about all of the
different families of instruments and
how they work individually and you've
heard brass and woodwind and percussion
and strings and that's really great. How
those work and individuals can people
can play those instruments on their own
but the really fun part of playing an
instrument is playing in a group, playing
in a band, or an orchestra or even a
smaller group and putting all of these
sounds together and making different
kind of music. So that's what we're going
to do now; we only have three of us so
we're gonna do a trio of a trombone, a
clarinet, and percussion and we're gonna
play together as a really small band. So
this is a song that you may have heard
especially around the 4th of July. (♪)
So that's Stars and Stripes Forever,
probably the most famous march ever
written and that was just three of the
parts. Now when we did that for real with
a real full band you hear all kinds of
other instruments as well, but it's a lot
of fun to play instruments, and a lot of
fun to play in a band. We hope you
had fun learning about all the
instruments and everything today. Don't
forget to sign up for the Summer Reading
Club; keep reading, keep tracking your
minutes, and have a great summer!
