Hot answers tagged instruments
17
Maple boards are typically placed on Swamp Ash or brighter wood bodies and it lends a snap to the tone of the guitar. Rosewood is known to be much mellower, and usually makes it's way on mahogany bodies and necks. They definitely feel different too. A maple neck is harder and feels very smooth under your fingers, while rosewood has some sponginess to it due ...
16
I'd suggest the piano. While it takes many years to master, the piano is one of the easiest instruments to begin playing. Learning to play even the simplest chords or melodies on other instruments can take weeks, but a complete novice can use a keyboard.
The piano also lends itself well to composition because it has a wide range and it is easy to play ...
13
I'm not really a brass player, though I used to be a band director and have some idea about brass acoustics.
The issue with multiple-valve combinations being too sharp is that the valve system is a compromise. Pretend for a moment that you have a straight trumpet with no valves (so, pretty much a bugle). Of course, you can play pitches in the harmonic ...
12
The reason we have wound strings is due to the physics of the string's vibration. A heavier string vibrates more slowly, causing a lower pitch.
The wound strings could be solid wires, and achieve the pitch we need, however getting it to bend correctly across the bridge and nut, be easily fretted, AND be tunable, would be difficult. Imagine trying to do a ...
12
A transposing instrument is one for which the standard practice is to write music in a key different from the sounding pitch of that instrument.
For example, a non-transposing instrument is something like a piano (anything with a keyboard, really)--when you read a C on the staff, you play a C and it sounds a concert pitch C. Most pitched percussion ...
10
The distance from the pickup to the strings determines - in simple terms - the strength of the magnetic field acting on the strings. Since a standard magnetic pickup (active or passive) is an electromagnetic transducer, the output voltage is generated when a string vibrates in a magnetic field.
So far so good, what of the pickup height? The stronger the ...
10
When you practice playing an instrument, you are practicing playing that particular instrument.
If you were a brass player, for example, you would NEVER want to spend all of your time practicing on a crappy instrument with wonky tuning and then do the gig on your $3,000 horn. Even if you sound pretty good on the crap instrument, you would be changing too ...
9
When it comes to guitar strings, there are basically 2 main types:
Wound and plain.
Wound strings have a 'core' string of one material (usually steel), and have another length of metal string that is wound around that core. The most common material that the winding string is made of is usually phosphor bronze/plain bronze.
The winding produces the ...
9
Pre-war Martins were built using Brazilian Rosewood for their back and sides, which is highly prized both for its look and its sound. But because it's so beautiful, it was also heavily used in the furniture industry as well (I've seen some enormous conference-room tables made of Brazilian Rosewood, and they knocked my socks off), and as a result it was ...
8
If your wife is a violinist there are many things than can be transposed from violin to cello in the search for quality. Don't forget the bow.
There are so many things... I will try to make a real answer in the coming hours and days by editing this one, I feel I have not yet touched 1/10th of what should be given.
But first, have you considered renting? ...
8
As far as I'm concerned, there are two requirements for musical instruments:
It must generate sound.
That sound must be controllable by a human being (or equivalent).
I actually really like this question, though it is based on some premises that I believe are too easily jumped to. I use a generalized definition of music as "organized sound," therefore, ...
8
You could look at portable guitars - either something like the Hohner G3T (I love mine when travelling) or even folding guitars.
Electric guitars are very quiet without amplification, and can be very portable. Connect one through a headphone amp and you can play without disturbing others, or hook one up to an amp and you can still get a big satisfying sound ...
8
An attempt to synthesise the various answers given, while giving some opinions of my own.
Portability
'Portable' is a bit of a vague requirement. Some instruments fit in your pocket. Some instruments fit in a small backpack. Some instruments fit in a large backpack.
Loudness
I'm not sure what's too loud for a dorm room. It depends on your neighbour's ...
8
Those are x-y MIDI controllers more commonly referred to as Kaoss Pads.
If you are familiar with a modulation wheel on a MIDI keyboard, you know you can assign that wheel to control any number of aspects of the instrument, from pitch bend, to volume, to vibrato, an LFO, or perhaps a filter. The x-y pad gives you two of those on a plane, with which you can ...
8
As others have mentioned, those strings do not have dampers (the felt things that mute a note when you release the key). The reasoning is several-fold.
First, the higher notes have much less sustain than lower notes. The dampers wouldn't really have much effect since those notes die out so quickly.
Second, undamped strings are free to vibrate ...
8
Traditionally speaking, composers throughout history have either been keyboardists of some sort or violinists. The reason for this is that before the advent of technology, the piano was the primary source for playback for a composer - thus, if a composer wanted to hear what they wrote, they had to learn to play the piano. As far as violin goes, I can only ...
7
All of your points are good; one of the reasons guitar became so popular in western culture in the early days, is because its portable.
So its sort of a travelling minstrels piano. During the late 19th/early20th centuries in America(post emancipation act), there were lots of travelling musicians who couldn't afford a piano; and even if they could, they ...
7
The guitar originated from the lute. What's called a 'kithara,' (a type of lyra) which when pronounced sounds a bit like 'guitar' is why people and historians get mixed up between the two being related.
The lute and the vihuela had their features combined in the 16th Century. The features that were combined were:
The body of the vihuela
The size the lute
...
7
As long as you are following good maintenance practices, then no, the only added risk of damage comes from the instrument not being in a protective case. (Hopefully the instrument isn't sitting on a stand long enough for it to collect dust.)
Of course, on a clarinet, part of good maintenance practice is swabbing out the moisture after every playing session, ...
7
Well, the piano started out with only about 60 keys, same as the harpsichord – in fact it WAS a harpsichord, except that the harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori (try saying that 10 times fast!) got the bright idea of putting hammers on one (to HIT the strings) instead of plectra (to PLUCK the strings).
So the piano was invented – ...
7
I would strongly advice getting a book for this, as there are many steps and you will want a complete thorough step by step guide. I would suggest reading through the book before starting the project. This way you wont get any nasty surprises in the middle of building.
I don't think you will find a good enough source online (at least for free) to make a ...
7
EXCELLENT question!
The answer actually rather like "Why does stopped french horn sound up a half step when closing the bell lowers my tuning?"
Horn players routinely adjust their hand position to close or open the bell of the instrument, thereby changing the tuning. When they need to adjust themselves down, they close the bell, and when they need to ...
7
While it's impossible to say definitively (someone could go make a keyboard out of lead tomorrow), I have never heard of anything like this and would say it's both impractical and not really useful for the reasons stated below:
Keyboard mechanisms are designed within very specific tolerances. In order for escapement to work properly and be useful, the key ...
7
Sure, you can, but there are some considerations you should be aware of.
String sets are designed to have more-or-less the same string tension across all six strings in standard tuning. If you mix string sets and tune them to standard pitch, the string tension will be uneven, which may cause neck twisting. This isn't an issue if you down-tune the heavier ...
7
As Indrek pointed out, this gives at least partial answers to your questions.
In short, the answer to who first put foot pedals on a piano is not known exactly, but the practice seems to originate in England. A piano of Americus Backers from 1772 might be the first one to use foot pedals instead of knee levers.
Then you have a different question in the ...
7
All pianos benefit from being in very stable environments, not too dry, not humid, and a static temperature. This will help to keep it in tune for longer. Realize though that playing the instrument will knock it out of tune and the more you play the faster it will happen. Also, if the pin block is shot, it will go out of tune fast no matter what you do, ...
7
TL;DR: With the notable exception of guitar, all classical instruments are taught "right-handed" regardless of handedness of the student, as there is no detriment past an intermediate level of instruction.
Now that I think of it, the only truly ambidextrous instruments might be the harmonica (since you can flip it upside down), slide whistle, handmade or ...
6
The best definitions in my opinion (and after some considerable research) are:
A trumpet has a mouthpiece and bell that are located at opposite ends of the instrument.
A trombone is defined by a bell section that is located to the rear of the instrument, with a mouthpiece located near the center of gravity and grip location.
Thus, the trumpet will be ...
6
Mahogany guitars are generally heavier, with alder being quite light. Because of this, alder gives a light bright sound, and Mahogany gives a deeper Les-Paulier sound.
Of course it depends what sort of guitar the wood is used in. Semi-hollowbodies and semi-acoustics are generally a bit lighter than solid-body guitars.
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