If you stop and think about it, we are surrounded by so many different types of sounds. Close your eyes, keep still and listen very carefully. What do you hear? I hear people talking and children playing when I arrive at the kindergarten music class where I teach rhythm.
On the way to school, I hear the sound of cars, construction workers, and tractors in the nearby fields. As I am inside the classroom with the children, I play the piano and listen to the music I am creating as the students enthusiastically sing their patriotic songs.
Our world is filled with a variety of different sounds and sounds are made in many different ways. On the first day of school, I asked the children, “What is music?” I was pleased to hear their responses, such as the birds singing, their heart beating, and the music coming from the radio or television.
A dog’s bark produces sound, as does the ticking of a clock and the closing of a door. I guess you could say that water from a faucet also makes a running sound. The sounds described above are produced by movements called vibrations.
I have introduced homemade kazoos to the class as we are learning about sound and music. Tight wax paper that has a thin elastic band around the end of the paper-covered toilet paper roll changes the sound of the voice. Try it sometime. It is a fun activity. Yes, one can buy plastic kazoos at the dollar store these days, but I remember putting wax paper over a comb and listening to the altered sound of my voice. As a child, I would place wax paper behind the mallets inside the piano to listen to an old man play the piano.
Have you ever listed all the sounds that human voices make? Here are a few that I would like to mention:
1. Talking
2. Sing
3. Shots
4. Crying
5. Sneezing
6. Cough
7. Whispering
8. Screaming
9. Humming
10. Blowing
So your voice comes from a part of the throat called the larynx. You will find inside the larynx that there are flaps called vocal cords. Your vocal cords vibrate when you speak or sing. Also, their mouth and tongue help make the sounds we hear. One way to make the sound of music is to sing. So go ahead and sing out loud!
You hear the sound when it enters your ears. The shape of your outer ear picks up sound waves. From there, the sound waves travel through a tube to the delicate parts of the ear inside the head. While you’re inside, those sound waves cause your eardrum to vibrate and then sound messages are sent to your brain from your eardrum.
Children can also make musical sounds by blowing. For example, blow on the tops of some bottles. By placing different levels of colored water in the bottles and then blowing, it vibrates the air inside the bottle. What you have is a long column of air that vibrates to make a low note. Experiment with this a bit and you’ll find that short columns produce high notes.
One can make sounds of music by playing a musical instrument, such as hitting drums with drumsticks. What happens is that the drumsticks vibrate the skin of the drums and the air inside that causes the sound.
Many musical instruments have strings stretched over a box or board to make the sound louder. The strings vibrate and make sound. You can strum or pluck the strings of a guitar, mandolin, or banjo to produce vibrating string sounds.
So, you can hit an instrument, like a drum, play a triangle, or shake maracas, you know, that gourd-shaped percussion instrument that’s filled with beans or pebbles. Most important of all, as your day progresses, enjoy listening to the various sounds of your city, especially your own unique voice.