My Science School

Prokofiev, the Children's Composer

Imagine composing songs for a play at age 9. Sergei Prokofiev did just that. Prokofiev’s play, The Giant, included marches and waltzes. It also told of an outlaw giant who became a king.

Sergei Prokofiev was born in 1891 in Ukraine, a country in Europe. (At that time, Ukraine was part of Russia.) Like most children, Sergei enjoyed fairy tales. But he considered them amusing rather than magical.

Prokofiev did not like popular tunes. He preferred music that surprised people and made them smile. He developed his talent for writing such music at the Conservatory, a music school in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 1917, there was a revolution in Russia. A Communist government took over. The Communist rulers tried to control the arts as well as the government. So Prokofiev left Russia for the U.S.A. in 1918.

Within five years, orchestras in the U.S.A. and Europe were performing Prokofiev’s music. In 1927, the Communists welcomed Prokofiev’s performances to the Soviet Union, the Communist’s name for Russia. Nine years later, Prokofiev, his wife, and their two sons moved to the Soviet Union and settled in Moscow.

Soon after, Prokofiev wrote Peter and the Wolf for the Moscow Children’s Musical Theatre. He gave each character its own special music. Violins play when Peter takes the stage. Flutes announce the presence of a bird. An oboe speaks for a duck, and a French horn warns that the wolf is near.

Peter and the Wolf  has been loved by children for years. It also helps children recognize the sounds of different instruments.

The Basic Ingredients of Music

To make a cake, a baker uses basic ingredients like flour, sugar, and oil. To make music, a composer - a person who makes up music - uses basic ingredients too. They are tone, rhythm, melody, and harmony.

Tone is the difference in pitch between two notes. Pitch is the highness or lowness of a note’s sound. Notes are the building blocks of a piece of music.

Different notes are held for different lengths of time. Some notes last a long time just as some sounds do. Think of the slow swish-swish of windscreen wipers. Other notes last a short time - like the rapid raindrops in a storm. A composer mixes slow and quick notes to create rhythm.

Melody is the part of music that people hum. To make a melody, a composer mixes tones and rhythms. Short pieces of music, such as songs, have only one melody. Very long pieces of music, such as symphonies, have several melodies.

A composer creates harmony by sounding three or more notes together. Most music in Western countries is based on the idea of harmony.

Picture Credit : Google

Electronic Music

Some instruments have no strings, no tubes, and no hammers. These instruments use an electric current to produce music.

A synthesizer is an electric keyboard that can make sounds like almost any instrument. The music made by a synthesizer may sound like a single flute or a room full of bells or a giant duck - or all of these things together. It can also create sounds unlike those of any other instruments.

Keyboards

Have you ever made music by pressing keys? If you play an instrument from the keyboard family, you have. The most popular keyboard instruments are the piano, harpsichord, and pipe organ.

In a piano, small hammers hitting the wire strings make the sounds you hear. The strings are different sizes. Long, thick strings that vibrate slowly make the low sounds. And short, thin strings that vibrate very quickly make the high sounds.

When you press down a piano key, two things happen. A small cushion swings out of the way so the strings for that key can vibrate. At the same time, the key pushes a lever. This lever swings the hammer against the strings.

Wind Instruments

Have you ever whistled a happy tune? Many instruments make music the same way you do when you whistle - by using a stream of air. These instruments belong to the wind family. They are all played with “wind” - your breath.

Some wind instruments are called woodwinds, because many of them were once made of wood. These include flutes and clarinets.

A concert flute has a mouthpiece with a small hole on the top. When you blow across the hole, the air inside the flute vibrates. The vibrations inside the tube create sound waves, and these sound waves make the music.

To make or play notes, you press keys that open “windows” for the air. If you open the holes close to the mouthpiece, the vibrations travel a short distance to reach an opening. So the air forms short sound waves - and high notes. If you open holes further down the tube, the vibrations travel further. This forms longer sound waves - and lower notes.

Some flutes are blown from the end instead of the side. To play a Japanese bamboo flute called a shakuhachi, you cover one of its ends with your chin and blow into a notch on the top of the flute. To make or play different notes, you cover or uncover the holes along the flute with your fingers and thumb.

Brass instruments are part of the wind family of instruments. Where does the loud, sharp sound of a trumpet come from? It starts with you, the musician.

When you blow into a trumpet, you vibrate your lips against the cup-shaped mouthpiece. This makes the air in the trumpet vibrate and create a sound. Try changing the shape of your lips. This makes the air vibrate faster to make a high note or slower to make a low note.

You can also change the sound by making the vibrating air travel further. A trumpet has several loops of tube. When you press a button, you open a valve, or doorway, in one of the loops. When vibrations travel through extra loops, they make a lower sound.

The slide trombone has tubes but no valves. To make high or low notes, you slide a U-shaped tube in and out. The shorter you make the tube, the shorter the sound wave and the higher the note.

Picture Credit : Google

Singing Strings

When you play an instrument from the string family, that’s exactly what you do. Rubbing or plucking the strings makes they produce sounds.

To play a violin, you stroke its strings with a bow. A bow is a springy wooden stick with strands of horsehair stretched from one end to the other. Stroking the strings makes them vibrate, or “sing”.

The strings of the violin are stretched over a thin wooden part called a bridge. As the strings vibrate, they make the bridge vibrate. The vibrating bridge sends sound bouncing around inside the violin. All these vibrations produce the music you hear. You can make the sounds higher or lower by pressing down on the violin strings in different places. Pressing a string changes the length of the part that vibrates. The shorter the vibrating part, the faster it moves and the higher the note sounds.

Some stringed instruments are played without a bow. The Indian sitar, for instance, is played with a wire pick worn on the musician’s right index finger. The musician plucks the strings to play a tune. A harp is played by plucking the strings with your fingers.

Boom! Bong! Bam!

Tap a pencil against a box. It doesn’t play a tune, but it does make a sound.  One family of instruments makes sounds in the same way - you use something to hit or strike them. The instruments in this family are called percussion instruments. The word percussion means “striking”.

Drums, gongs, cymbals, and bells are percussion instruments. Musicians hit gongs with sticks that look like small hammers. Musicians hit two cymbals together or strike one with a mallet. And they shake bells so that the clappers hit the insides of the bells.

Most drums, such as the Irish bodhran and African long drums make only one sound. They are used to set the beat in a song. Each has a thin piece of animal skin or plastic called the drumhead, stretched over a hollow body. When you strike the drumhead, the air inside the drum bounces around, or vibrates. This makes the sound stronger. So instead of a light tapping, you hear a loud rat-tat-tat or even a boom-boom-boom.

Some drums, such as timpani, or kettle drums, can make several different sounds. The drumheads are tightened to make high sounds and loosened to make lower sounds. Timpani are played in orchestras.

Other percussion instruments that play tunes are the xylophone and marimba. Each has bars of different lengths that make different sounds when you hit them. The short bars vibrate faster and make higher sounds than the long bars.

Singing and Speaking

When you sing, you are a musical instrument. When you speak, you are not. Singing and speaking are different, even though you make the sounds in similar ways.

You sing and speak by making your vocal cords vibrate, or move backwards and forwards. These cords are a pair of small, stretchy bands in your throat.

When you are not singing or speaking, your vocal cords relax. Your breath goes in and out between the vocal cords without making them vibrate.

When you begin to speak, small muscles in your throat pull the vocal cords tight. The air you breathe out makes the vocal cords vibrate. This vibration produces sounds. Your tongue and lips make the sounds into words.

When you sing, your vocal cords vibrate in the same way, but at a different speed. To sing high, your vocal cords tighten. This makes them vibrate faster. To sing low, your vocal cords loosen. This slows the vibrations. So your vocal cords vibrate at exactly the right speed for each sound. Your voice is making music!

Music around the World

Good times everywhere are even better with music. But the sound of music can be different from place to place. Why? Because orchestras and bands of musicians in different parts of the world play different kinds of instruments.

For example, in North America and Western Europe, many people like big orchestras or bands with brass instruments. Also, many young people listen to rock groups with electric guitars and synthesizers.

In Mexico, people of all ages enjoy mariachi bands with non-electric guitars and accordions - keyboard instruments that you squeeze to make sounds.

Further south in Ecuador and Peru, Inca musicians play various traditional instruments such as panpipes and marimbas.

In China, musical groups play bells, drums, gongs, flutes, and stringed instruments called the quin and the pipa.

In Japan, special musical groups called gagaku also play bells, drums, gongs, flutes, and their own kinds of ancient stringed instruments.

In Indonesia, the popular gamelan orchestra includes many instruments that are played by striking them with sticks and hammers.

Music to Your Ears

You can make music with your voice, your hands, and even your feet. Or you can use special sound makers called musical instruments. There are many kinds of musical instruments, but they make sounds in only a few ways. So you might think of each kind of instrument as a family. Every member of that family makes sounds in the same way.

One family has parts that you hit to make sounds. Another family has strings that you pluck or strum. Two families have tubes you blow into. And a few instruments belong to families that make sounds in yet other ways.