Musical Instruments

The distinctive tone of the Gibson Les Paul Classic electric guitar has as much to do with the specific components it uses as it does with how these electronics are wired. The Les Paul guitar,...

No matter what styles and genres of music you enjoy listening to, the power of this universally-loved art form is its ability to communicate ideas and feelings that might otherwise be...

The 1977 movie "Smokey and the Bandit" featured popular movie stars Burt Reynolds and Sally Field. Another actor in the movie is Jerry Reed, who also was an accomplished country music writer,...

The mandolin is a member of the lute family, and has been in existence since around 1700. Today, mandolins are used in many types of music, from traditional European music to American folk and...

The recorder, a woodwind musical instrument, is prevalent among elementary schools today, as plastic versions of the instrument can be produced with little cost. Perhaps your son or daughter is...

Guitar strings vibrate on a number of frequencies to form a note. Guitarists play harmonics in order to force a string to vibrate at only one frequency. This creates a single note that more...

The Spanish guitar has existed for centuries. It is still the instrument most used by classical guitarists. Over the years many variations of the design have been made. Finishing a classical...

Tongue drums (aka log drums or slit drums) are in the Idiophone instrument family. An idiophone is an instrument whose whole body vibrates when played. Another idiophone known to us all is the...

So you want to learn to play drums, but don't know where to start. Start here. Starting to play a drum set can be intimidating, but with work and repetition you can be playing in no time.

Teach Yourself to Play Jazz When I first got into the Air Force Band, I could read music but not improvise. I had to learn to play jazz, because I was assigned to the big band as well as the...

A concert grand piano weighs about a half ton, has more than 12,000 moving parts, and takes more than 400 people to construct. All the parts of a piano must work together to give the instrument a...

Have you ever wanted to learn to play the guitar? The guitar is one of the most played instruments and friends love to sing-along when a guitar is played! Here are some keys to learning how to...

A tabla is a pair of drums that are used in Indian music. The smaller drum is called a dayan and the larger drum is called a bayan. The smaller drum, the dayan, is made from wood, most commonly...

A tremolo harmonica is mostly used for folk music and is played throughout the world. It is an instrument that has two reeds, giving each note its distinctive sound, or tremor. The reeds are...

Parlor guitars were somewhat popular from the late 19th century through the early 20th century. Parlor guitars are easily recognizable, as their bodies are smaller than those of concert guitars....

Building a Celtic (wire strings) or folk (nylon strings) harp from scratch, using purchased blueprints, is a challenging but rewarding project for the advanced to experienced woodworker. ...

Becoming skilled at improvisation on any musical instrument takes serious practice. There are, however, several things you can do that will improve your improvisational abilities.

Teaching children how to play the piano can be very challenging because each child's learning abilities and structure of learning is different. However, it is not impossible to teach young...

Although the viola is tuned in concert pitch (or "C"), not only is the music for this instrument written in an unusual clef, it shares a range with many instruments that are not in concert pitch....

Triplet notes are a type of musical rhythmic notation where three notes are placed into the space of an even number of beats (usually one or two). Playing triplets creates certain challenges that...

Though the valve trombone has outlived its heyday and is becoming an increasingly rare or novelty instrument, it continues to have a use in situations where music calls for the subtle...

Whether you are a professional guitarist or a beginner, you can make a customized electric solid-body guitar. With a few tools as well as some creativity, you can design and build a unique guitar...

The key principle to this pattern is being able to break up the press roll and play a pattern around the press roll using the 2 and 4, accenting off the hi-hat and snare. This is a groove I...

Learning to play the guitar can be a frustrating exercise if you're expecting quick results with very little effort. While you can learn enough to be able to strum a two-chord sing-along in a week...

The piano is one of the oldest musical instruments and one that is seen in virtually every genre of music. Most people do not realize that a piano is actually a stringed instrument. A series of...

When it comes to the business of teaching piano, the majority of available students tend to be children. For pianists looking to break into the business of teaching kids, it's important to...

The bass clarinet is an instrument with its own characteristics and capabilities separate from its higher-pitched cousin, the soprano B-flat clarinet. As a result, writing music for bass clarinet...

A working knowledge of the overtone series makes it a lot easier to keep fingerings straight. As a bonus, on those hopefully rare occasions when you undershoot (or overshoot) notes, it gives you a...

A violin is a stringed instrument that's played with a bow. It's the smallest member of a group of stringed instruments known as the violin family. A violin bow is about 29-inches long and usually...

Though most of us have heard it, many probably can't recognize the sound of the pedal steel guitar. Based on a technique first popularized in Hawaii in the late 1800s, the pedal steel found a home...

A properly tuned drum kit is important for getting a good drum tone. Tuning a drum can be a difficult, time-consuming process. The process and goal are quite straight-forward. The level of ear...

Modifying your Peavey Classic 30 tube amplifier may seem like a nearly impossible task at first. However, there are a few simple things that you can do to greatly improve the tone and performance...

The violin is a traditional instrument in classical orchestras. It is also quite commonly used in almost any other genre of music, including rock and metal, in either a supporting role or as a...

If you're going to tune your own piano then, logically, you want to end up with a well-tuned piano. Your first goal, however, must be to "do no harm."

The brass finish on an old saxophone may be worn and dull, but you can make the horn look new again by silver-plating it. The actual process of silver-plating is not all too difficult, but the...

Playing a piano will tennis balls is a trick pioneered by Dan Menendez and later performed by Wally Eastman. This is a trick that combines juggling skills with piano playing. It is possible to...

A broken violin bow can be disastrous for a violinist. Regardless of the physical value of a bow, which can be substantial, the personal sentimental value often is significant. Luckily, it is...

The music of the Andean highlands has the longest history in Latin America, dating back to the Incan Empire. Music was very important to the highland people and remains so today. They often used...

It's far easier to rock than to bop. Jazz guitar requires a tremendous amount of skill and is therefore often only pursued by serious music students. Not only must your playing improve...

A foundational instrument in both the rhythmic and harmonic backbone of the jazz ensemble, the piano is often also called upon to play improvised solos. The art of jazz piano improvisation is a...

A damaged neck can render a guitar unplayable, which makes repairing it properly especially important for an expensive model like a Gibson Les Paul Custom. Replacing a set neck is difficult and...

Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) was a renowned master luthier (maker of stringed instruments) who made about 1,200 stringed instruments, each of them by hand. Today, more than 270 years later, only...

Making a tenor recorder is a painstaking process even for a professional instrument maker. If you are interested in how it is done, read on. This is only a general outline of the process, not the...

When a child shows interest in learning how to play music, it isn't always easy to know what might be his or her ideal starting instrument. Once a specific instrument has been decided upon, the...

Teaching a musical instrument is not only a great way to give back to your community, it's a good option for a freelance musician looking to make some steady income. However, having great skill in...

When most of us think of violins, we think of an orchestra of Stradivari playing classical music. And we have no idea how to construct an instrument that complex and beautiful. There are a few...

Choosing a musical instrument can be a complicated process, especially for students or nonprofessional players who lack the training and experience to make such a decision without consultation....

I'm an experienced Violin player that has played Suzuki for 9 years. I'm going to try and help you start one of the greatest instruments there is. The Violin.

The saxophone is perhaps the most expressive of jazz instruments, offering a near infinite range of flexibility and expression to those who master it. Like learning any other musical skill,...

Playing overtones is a great way to improve tone, intonation, and altissimo on the saxophone. Overtones can be intimidating at first because their production can be confusing and result in harsh...