History Of Progress In Music Essay, Research Paper

Music has been around sense the dawn of time. When man first

started to discover music it was not the kind of music we have today.

All it consisted of was grunts, moans, and banging things. Music has

evolved just as much as the people that created it. From Chromagnum

men to musician and from grunting too classical music, rock, and

rap. The first people imitated music from nature. They mimicked the

sound from their every day life. It had no rhythm, beat, or tune it

was just noise, but later turned into what we now call music.

Ancient people used music for much more than entertainment they

used it in every day life. They would yell and scream during battle,

blow a horn as a warning, have ceremonies to honor the dead or bring

the rain, signal danger, to show your importance in society, it was

also used as a healing power. On the front lines of battle would be

a soldier that would be holding a drum or a flute. When this was a

common act the instruments would be spread around to different

cultures after a battle. This brought on a new way of looking at

music. Around the 16th century people started to collect instead of

play music.

A persons hands and feet were the first of all the instruments

and is still the most common, because every one has them. A persons

hands and feet were readily available, and easy to use. The drum is

the second most common percussion instrument. Like most of the other

instruments the drum was found by accident when someone hit a hallow

log with a stick. The hallowed out stumps then became drums that were

decorated. Drums were used for war or for signaling over long

distances. The drum was a common instrument because it was so easy to

use; all they had to do was strike it.

The second percussion instrument was the rattle. The rattle was

found later in the time when humans started to grow plants. It was

found accidentally when someone picked up a dried out gourd of some

sort and shook it. The ancient rattles were readily available because

the people that grew the plants were just learning how to grow plant

so they made many mistakes.

The harp has been around since humans have started to use tools.

The harp was founded during the hunt. The harp was first a bow used

for killing small animals but when early humans realized that it made

music it became the harp. The harp is an instrument surrounded in

myths from many different cultures. The ancient harps were all shapes

and sizes, from small hand held harps to large harps that were bolted

to the floor. The harps would sometimes have colored strings on it to

make it easier to play because it would have many strings on it.

Some other ancient stringed instruments were the scrapers from

the 16th century, and the picker from the 16th century. The scrapers

and the pickers were all ancient forms of present-day violins,

fiddles, and guitars. Most of the ancient string instrument?s strings

were made of horsehair, hemp, or animal intestines.

One of the first woodwinds was the flute. The flute was one of

the first real instruments, because it was made on purpose. The

ancient flute was made up of reeds tied together with animal tendons,

or hemp and animal glue. The flutes were made of hallow pieces of

young wood. It was a part of many cultures and their cultural events

such as parades, ceremonies, and sporting events.

The first wind instrument was the rams horn. It was made from the

horns of rams, goats, or cattle. They were originally cups. The way it

became a horn was that the person broke the end and tried to blow out

the fragment so they could patch it up but when they did they realized

it could be an instrument. They were used to call long distance, or

amplify someone?s voice. Small horns would be carried and used for

signaling short distance and large horns were set in place to be used

for long distance calling.

The way ancient musicians would make a living was travel around

and playing their instruments. They would ask for money, food, and

shelter from the people they composed for, instead of just money. They

would tell stories, history, and sing folk songs for a living. They

had no permanent homes instead they depended on the kindness of

strangers. The people that used to be bards are now what we call

musicians, but musicians in this day and age would rather have money

than any thing else.

Queen Elizabeth had a great impact on England when she died in

1603, aside from the grief of her country. When she died the composers

in England had stopped composing and singing their music. Her death

caused a great slump in England?s music. After the death of Queen

Elizabeth when King James II came into power the music world changed

forever. His rule over England made the music world come alive with

new songs and old songs. The reason why is because the composer just

as much as everyone else hated the king so they wrote about that.

A French man by the name of Franco invented the notes and bar

graphs we have today four hundred years ago. He was a person with a

great impact on the world by making it easy to read music in the

twenty-first century.

The way music has changed is on such a large scale. The

instruments of the past have changed into the instruments of the

present and are still continuing to change. The way that the first

musicians played their hallowed out logs in a bard is much different

from the way drummers play the snare or the bongo in an orchestra. The

difference between an ancient harp and the guitar which it later

evolved into is a few thousand years. The way we look at music is

totally different from the way the first musician did. We have come so

far that now we don?t even need an instrument to make music. Music can

now be made on a computer. The types of music that we now have are so

unique that everyone has their own type of music instead of there just

being one.