Instrument Inquisition

This bulletin board can be used all year long as a kind of trivia contest, or all of the definitions can be posted and classroom activities can be planned with the info. I made several little books by cutting a couple of pieces of plain white copy paper in half and then stapling together those pages. On the front of the little book I put the term (instrument related) and on the inside pages the definition. Others who are more energetic than I may want to include pictures of the instruments or whatever.

If you didn't want to make any books you could decorate the board with black background paper and big yellow question marks. The term could be presented as a question (thus the "inquisition" part of the headline) and the definition, the answer. The following definitions were found at Musical Heritage Network.

aerophones -In the Sachs-Hornbostel hierarchical scheme for classifying musical instruments, aerophones are wind instruments - air is the primary vibrating agent causing sound. These include such instruments bull roarers, flutes, trombones or accordions.

chordophones-In the Sachs-Hornbostel classification scheme, these instruments all have strings or stretched between fixed points; harps, guitars, pianos, violins all fall into this category.

crook -a mechanical device, essentially a length of tube that can be inserted or removed from the body of a brass instrument (such as a trumpet or horn) to change the length of the airpassage - this enables you to change the range of pitch es the instrument can produce.

idiophones -Like membranophones, idiophones are also part of the Sachs-Hornbostel family of percussion instruments; sound is produced from the substance of the instrument itself - you shake them; no strings or drum heads required. These include rattles and bells, for example.

glissando -A glissando is a sliding musical sound, a smooth and seamless rising and falling of pitches; you can easily create this effect with your voice or on many other instruments such as the theremin, trombone or violin.

membranophones-Like idiophones, this is another family of percussion instruments categorized by the Sachs-Hornbostel system. You create sounds by striking or rubbing on the head , which is usually stretched hide or plastic. This family includes most drums.