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.
