User:Leighleigh85/sandbox

=Disorganized Essay Example=

I've always been interested in music, and learning about different musical instruments. Learning about the different styles of instruments and families of which they are classified under such as reed, percussion, and woodwind would help me gain more knowledge in the music industry.

When I was a kid I played clarinet in the school band. The clarinet has been around for a long time, maybe even longer than the saxophone for instance. Clarinet is a reed instrument, which is an instrument that has a reed you blow through to make the sound. Instead of a string vibrating, the reed vibrates. Which is different from percussion, where you hit the instrument, like how you hit a drum with a stick. But clarinets aren't as old as drums.

Maybe the drum was the first musical instrument, but I was never particularly interested in drumming. I don't have a good sense of rhythm. One funny example is the piano. You'd think it was a string instrument, because it has strings in it, but it's a percussion instrument because the strings are hit with little hammers. Also, xylophones are percussion instruments.

Other kinds of instruments have also interested me, and eventually I found out that instruments are grouped in families, like there is the string family, which is instruments that have strings that are bowed or plucked. One example is the violin. There have been many famous violin players, and also the violin has spread all around the world. I didn't play violin when I was in school, though, because I played clarinet.

One of the weirdest instruments I know of is called the "glass harmonica." It was invented by Benjamin Franklin. It's a bunch of glasses that make a singing sound. I don't know what orchestra family that would fit under. You don't strike it, you don't play it with a bow, and there's no reeds. I wonder where a singer would go, too. There is one more family of instruments. There are four, and we have talked about three in this essay.