User:Skylerburnham/sandbox

I've always been interested in music, and learning about different musical instruments. When I was a kid, I played the clarinet in the school band. Clarinet is a reed instrument, an instrument with a wooden piece that you blow through in order to make the musical sound. Instead of a string vibrating, the reed vibrates. String vibrating is an example of percussion, where you hit the instrument to make sound, rather than blow into it. Drumming, for example. Drums may have been one of the first musical instruments, having been around for a very long time. But, I was never particularly interested in drumming, because I don't have a good sense of rhythm.

Other kinds of instruments have interested me, though, and eventually I found out that instruments can be and are grouped in families. For example, the string family where the strings are bowed or plucked. The violin and the piano are both apart of the string family. There have been many famous violin players spread all around the world. I never played the violin, though, because I played the clarinet. The piano is a funny example, because you would think that it is apart of the string family (because it has strings) but its actually apart of the percussion family because those strings are hit with little hammers inside the piano. Xylophones are another example of percussion instruments.

One of the weirdest instruments I know is called the "glass harmonica," apart of the orchestra family. It was invented by George Washington, and is a bunch of glasses together that make a singing sound. You don't strike it, you don't play it with a bow, and there is no reeds involved, either.

There are four families of instruments total, and we have talked about three of them in this essay: string, percussion and orchestra.