Sound And Music

Sound and Music ♫

Industrial Engineering



Introduction
Listen to the sounds around you. What can you hear? Can you hear cars? Can you hear people’s voices? Maybe you can hear a television, or music on the radio.

How Sound Moves
When you speak, sing, or shout, the sound of your voice moves through the air. The sound goes to other people, and they hear it. Sound moves veryfast.
How does sound move through the air? The air is made of billions of molecules. The molecules are very small, so you can’t see them. Your voice pushes the molecules. The molecules move like weaves in the ocean. The movements of the molecules are called sound waves. The sound waves from loud sounds go far. The sound waves from quiet sounds don’t go far.



Low Sounds, High SoundsSome sounds are low and some sounds are high. We can hear low sounds and high sound everywhere. A plane makes a low sound, but when birds sing, they make a high sound.
Think about the strings of a guitar. The strings make a high sound and the thick strings make a low sound. The thin guitar strings vibrate fast. You can’t see them the move. The thick strings vibrate slowly. These different types ofvibration are called frequency. The sound of the thin strings has a high frequency.
A baby’s cry makes a high sound and it has a high frequency. A truck makes a low sound and it has a low frequency. A baby’s cry is made a of lots of thin sound waves. The sound waves from a truck are thicker.

Your voice
Everyone’s voice is different. A man’s voice is usually lower than a woman’s voice.Put your hand on the front of your throat and say something. When you speak, your throat vibrates. In your throat, you have vocal cords. When you speak, air from your lungs goes between your vocal cords, and your vocal cords vibrate.

When you sing, you use your mouth, your throat, and your chest. You make your vocal cords shorter or longer, so that you can sing high notes or low notes.Singers can learn how to use their body, so that they can sing better. Some singers have teachers who help them.

Music around the World
Around the world can find thousands of different musical instruments.




In Bali in Indonesia, there are orchestras called gamelans. In a gamelan there are lots of different percussion instruments. The players in a gamelan usually sit on the floor.The bandoneon is a type of wind instrument. It’s like a box with air inside. You squeeze it and it makes a sound. In Argentina, you can listen to bandoneon players in the street.
The koto is a stringed instrument from Japan. It has 13 strings. Koto players pluck the strings with their thumb and two fingers. The players move the small, white bridges to make different notes.
The sitar isa stringed instrument from India. It isn’t easy to play. It has lots of strings. Some sitars have 23 strings.




Rhythm
When you listen to music, you sometimes want to tap your foot. When you listen to music with a strong rhythm, you want to dance.
What is rhythm? Sing your favorite song, and tap your foot, too. The sound of your foot is the rhythm of then song. The rhythm of arock band is strong. When you listen, you want to move or dance.




All music has rhythm, but there are different types of rhythm. The rhythm of a marching band is always the same, like the sound of marching.
In flamenco music from Spain, the rhythm gets faster and slower. Flamenco dancing is sometimes slow, and sometimes fast. It’s very exciting!

Recording Music
Today there’smusic everywhere. People listen to music at home or in their car. Whit an MP3 player, they can listen to their favorite song when they are on a train or walking in the streets.
Where does a song come from? First, a songwriter writes a song and musicians play it. They practice, then they play the song in a recording studio in front of a microphone. In the studio, a sound engineer uses recording...