Category: MTMS Blog Posts

We listen when our students tell us what they’re learning. We post a lot of the information here that we give to the students in lab for the theme.

Archers and those who made the bows and arrows were the first to realize that the strings made sounds and that it was musical. While the bone flute pre-dates this, that is a really cool discovery!

Chordophones – the earliest ones date back to 4500 years ago and they’re string instruments. The first chordophones were the lyres of Ur, and the ravanastrom was a very old stringed instrument from Sri Lanka. The Oud is considered the king of instruments in the Middle East.

Andrea Amati was a violin maker in Italy. Orchestras sync up in cool ways to do music. There are specific woods that are better for instruments and specific ways of moving on those instruments to make sounds.

High is happy and lively and low is sad and slow. (That’s quite a metaphor for life, right?)

Many of the Asian styles of string instruments were surprising and unknown to students, but they loved the patterns of notes.

The evolution of the string instruments, how the guitar gained strings over time and how you can do rhythm and melody on string instruments playing together was quite a revelation.

As a lover of string instruments, I appreciate all of the thought about the way strings are created and played – and I wonder if these kids will be considering that for future composition stations.

Home | Prince & Fox Music (princeandfoxmusic.com)

During launch of a new store of K-Pop music, get 35% off albums. There may be limited supply, but this cute new store is bound to be an up-and-coming addition to the music landscape. Enjoy the new favorites that you’re learning while it’s our theme!

Enjoy your music, and we will see you next week.

Born in 1989, Taylor Swift is an incredibly accomplished musician. She’s known for writing or co-writing her music, and she plays guitar, piano, banjo, and ukulele. Of course she also sings.

She learned music from a computer repairman, Ronnie Cremer, when he went to fix her broken computer. She was 12, and he played guitar left-handed. So while she is right-handed, she still plays left-handed.

She began professional songwriting when submitting covers of Dolly Parton and Dixie Chicks karaoke covers. She did better with her original music and got an artist development deal at 13.

When she was 14, her family sold their Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania and moved to Nashville to let her follow her musical dreams. Her influences may have been The Chicks, Shania Twain, and Faith Hill, which led her to the wide and varied songs she writes today.

Don’t forget MTMS is holding a Swiftie Camp this summer. It’s going to be amazing. Begins 10 June.

String Instruments have a long history. This month in the lab students will learn about string instruments and how they came about thousands of years ago, and how they changed over time and different cultures. Some of these started with tough vegetable or fruit skins and plucked bow and arrow strings. They’ve evolved into the instruments we know and love today, and ask your student what they learned about string instruments in the lab.