The melodica, like the pump organ and harmonica, is a free-reed instrument. Performers blow air through a mouthpiece that fits into a hole on the side of the instrument. A musical keyboard lies on top. Pressing a key opens a hole, and enables air to flow through the...
A set of chimes is a pitched percussion idiophone instrument consisting of 22 or fewer cast bronze bells, similar to a carillon (from medieval Latin Cymbala, meaning “bells”). They range from two to twenty bells. Although the Voorslag (automatic clock...
Firstly, the majority of popular music is diatonic. This means it was composed within a major or minor key signature and does not modulate. Furthermore, a key signature determines the set of pitches that “agree” with each other harmonically. There are usually 7...
Hocketing Hocketing is a compositional technique used to develop one long musical idea into a more interesting sequence by dividing it into shorter phrases and distributing them among instruments with similar sounds. The technique has proved to be effective...
The Duduk, a woodwind instrument, originated about a thousand years ago in what we know now as Armenia. Performances often present it in pairs. While the first player performs the melody, the second player plays a constant drone tone called “dum,”. The...
