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=Thesis Essay=

I've always been interested in music, and learning about different musical instruments. When I was a kid I played clarinet in the school band, and the clarinet has been around for a long time, longer than the saxophone for instance. But clarinets aren't as old as drums. There are some drums that have been around for longer than we even have written history. 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. 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.

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. One funny example is the piano, which is a fairly new instrument, going back only to the 1900s. 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.

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