Music to your ears
What is music? It’s making sounds you like— and putting the sounds
together in different ways. You use the sounds to make a \”design” you
can hear, the same way you use a pencil or crayons to make a design you
can see.
The design you make can be a beat, or rhythm [(rihth]{.smallcaps} uhm).
It can be a tune you play or sing. And it can be the way different notes
sound when you put them together.
You can make music with your voice, your tapping feet, and your clapping
hands. Or you can use a musical instrument [(ihn]{.smallcaps} struh
muhnt)—a special sound-maker. With musical instruments, you can make
different kinds of sounds—high and low, loud and soft, short and long.
There are dozens of musical instruments
you can learn to play, each with its own special sound. But all of these
instruments make sounds in only a few ways. So you can think of each
instrument as a member of a family—a group that makes sounds in the
same way.
Percussion (puhr KUHSH uhn) instruments are one family. They have parts
that you hit to make sounds. Another family, the stringed instruments,
has strings that you play. Two families, the woodwinds and the brass
instruments, have tubes you blow into. And a few instruments belong to
very small families that have special ways of making sounds.
