San Antonio College Library

The roots and foreign branches of the guitar-family tree. The program looks at the more important of the many relatives of this instrument.

The development of brass instruments from the lowly cow horn. Although trumpet fanfares and brass bands are relatively recent in the history of music, even the bone or wooden ancestors of the trumpet were associated with royalty, pomp, or war. David Munrow explains how pitch variations are achieved with these brasses.

This program features Matt Clifford, a brilliant keyboard artist who has toured with The Rolling Stones and Yes. After a detailed overview of synthesizers and their capabilities, he gives instruction on choosing a keyboard; notes and intervals; bending notes and vibrato; keeping time; scales; bass lines, left- and right-hand chords, melody lines, and rhythms; MIDI technology and sampling; using orchestral, classic rock, and synthesized sounds; building...

In the 11th century, European musicians tried to make their instruments sound like the human voice. Instead of plucking the strings, they began drawing a piece of wood or bone across them to sustain the tone. By Elizabethan times, the viol was the aristocrat of bowed instruments, while the violin was considered fit only for pubs and parties. This program shows how fashions as well as musical instruments changed.

This program is devoted to analyzing the essential features required in any instrument if a usable musical sound is to be produced. The first requirement is for a device that will produce regularity of pressure change, whether a vibration or wobble, a rotation (like the wheel of a siren), vibration of air in pipes, or tightly stretched strings, or more or less flat plates, or hollow vessels like bells. The program examines how energy can be provided...

Despite its title, this program actually covers all the wind instruments, including the pipe organ. It considers the way in which the technology of making instruments has affected the course of musical development, particularly the development of valves for trumpets and Boehm's system of woodwind keys. The program examines the subject of vibrations in tubes, the role of finger holes, and the components of tone quality. It concludes by putting a camera...

A close look at such rarities as the dulcimer and the hurdy-gurdy, as well as better-known instruments like the organ, harpsichord, and kettledrums.

This program opens with Fritz Reiner conducting the New York Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, with Jascha Heifetz as soloist; Reiner, whom Isaac Stern characterizes as a brilliant stick technician, is also seen conducting the Chicago Symphony in Beethoven's Seventh. The program also presents Szell in conversation and rehearsing the Cleveland in Brahms' Academic Festival Overture, von Karajan in conversation and performing Debussy's "La...

In this program, the orchestra uses lighthearted cafe music from the Milhaud ballet set in a Paris nightclub to illustrate how the use of various keys adds color to the musical landscape. Different instruments, performing the pieces in major and minor keys, give listeners a firsthand glimpse into how key changes add interest to music.