98 Making Music-Mid

Making Music FOCUS Question How do different musical instruments produce sound?

Make Some Vibrations Strike a cymbal. Blow a trumpet. Playing an instrument makes a part of it vibrate, or move back and forth. The vibrations travel through the air and into our ears. We hear sound. When a group of sounds go well together, our brain interprets them as music. Music is a collection of sounds played in a rhythm (RI-thum)—a regular pattern that repeats. All instruments can make music, but they make it in different ways.

Bang the Drums Players strike percussion (pur-KUH-shun) instruments to make sound. Most drums only play one note, or pitch. They are used to keep a steady beat. When you hit the drum the drumhead vibrates. Large drumheads vibrate slowly and have a lower pitch. Smaller drumheads vibrate faster and have a higher pitch. You can raise the volume of the drum by hitting it harder. BOOM! Cymbals are also percussion instruments. Strike the metal cymbal with a drumstick to make it vibrate. CRASH Xylophones (ZY-lo-fones) are percussion instruments. that can play tunes. They have metal or wooden bars of different sizes. Each bar plays a different note when you hit it.

The Sound of Woodwinds Woodwind instruments have hollow tubes. Flutes have a hole at one end of the tube that you blow air across. This air vibrates and makes sound To change the pitch, cover other holes on the side of the flute. Cover all the holes. The sound travels down the whole tube. Sound that moves down a long column of air has a lower pitch. Cover only the hole closest to your mouth Now the air only goes a short distance before it leaves the flute. This sound has a high pitch.

Clarinets are also woodwind instruments. They have a mouthpiece that holds a single reed—a small, flat piece of wood. When you blow into the clarinet the reed vibrates against the mouthpiece to make sound. An oboe has two reeds. The reeds vibrate together to make sound. You use keys on woodwinds to open and close the holes along the tube. This makes the pitch higher or lower.

Pucker Up for Brass Make your lips tight and blow. In brass instruments, your lips vibrate against a metal mouthpiece. This vibration moves through a long metal pipe and makes sound. The pipe is coiled to make it easier to hold. The end is shaped like a bell, which makes the sound louder. The pitch depends on the length and shape of the pipe. Bugles are simple brass instruments. To change the pitch, tighten or loosen your lips. This changes the speed of the vibrations. In trumpets, trombones, and other brass instruments, you push valves or move a slide to close off sections of the pipe. Opening and closing sections of the instrument changes the pitch.