Have you ever felt more relaxed when listening to music? Have you ever listened to music that instantaneously brought up strong feelings or brought you back to a special time from the past? Have you ever felt a sense of inner strength or spirituality when listening to music? Have you ever sung a lullaby to help comfort a crying baby or sung the alphabet song to a young child who is just learning the alphabet?

Music lessons provide invaluable skills that can help a student’s personal, social, and academic development. A student of music can foster and develop an appreciation for being creative, confident, and persistent in their efforts to improve upon a new ambition.

Humankind has always been interested in music, even when instruments were rare and rudimentary. Music is an essential part of life that unfailingly brings us joy and elevates our spirit. In a cultural and societal sense, music is ingrained in our everyday lives.

How exactly does a trombone extend and retract?

The origin of the cello-The bass viola da braccio

No one knows for sure when exactly the first cello was created. However, based on the instrument's first mention in writing, we know that it was being used at the beginning of the 16th century.  At first it appears that the instrument was called the bass viola da braccio ("viola for the arm"). As the name suggests, this was a viola da braccio (one of the ancestors of the violin) that was capable of playing in a lower register.

The B-flat clarinet is an orchestral instrument going back to the time of Mozart and beyond.  It is a transposing instrument, which means that the note heard is a major second below the note written on the page. 

Music Education and Brain Development

Over the past two decades, music training has been associated with better than average language and mathematical skills and higher IQ, while differences between musicians and nonmusicians have been found in brain areas related to hearing and movement, among others. What is the mechanism behind such differences? One important goal of our program is to understand the effects of music training on brain development, investigated in terms of psychological (emotional, cognitive, social) and actual neural functions.

Music and colors have few, if any, sensory properties in common: Music is auditory and has properties such as tempo, pitch, timbre, and rhythm. Color is visual and has the properties of lightness, vividness, and hue. But both music and color map aspects of emotion.

Listen to these three clips and pick two colors for each. 

As the "keeper of the rhythm," the drum provides the foundation for the overall sound of music.

The many instruments included in the percussion family include any instrument that is struck, shaken or scraped in order to produce the sound. Advanced percussion instruments include the timpani drums or kettle drums, the xylophone, marimba, vibraphone, chimes and many, many others. Most of the larger instruments are not used in young bands but all of these instruments are practiced by advanced players.