Block Two

If block one is concerned with the nuts and bolts of sound, block two puts the fundamentals into practice by looking at the instruments used in music making. As most of you play an instrument, or have played, or at least own a voice, I hope that you'll find it an interesting area of study.

The difficulty with block 2 is the amount of material to work through. Audition keeps going, you have to read mountains of material, listen to audio and watch DVDs. Then in you spare time, the dedicated ones can practice your recorder!!!

Seriously, one of the most important aspects of this present block is to plan you time appropriately so that you can get through the volume of work effectively. My advice would be to

a. have a plan to deal effectively with the unit

b. look out for tricky topics on the voice (it's quite difficult)

c. watch out for the section on brass as it is quite long and detailed.

d. don't try to memorise/learn it all

Above all, remember that the work, acoustically at least, breaks down into a few acoustic concepts based on instrumental families. This means that once you understand open/closed pipes, cylindrical/conical, vibration of strings and things that you hit, you've pretty much got the unit sorted. The rest of the block, apart from the voice, is really the find detail exploring the differences between a clarinet and saxophone or looking at related instruments such as bagpipes. Once you have the basic concepts, you should be able to deal effectively (and quickly) with the others.

Do set aside some time to deal with the voice. It really is quite a difficult study and caused problems for people last year (especially as it was part fo the TMA and in the exam). As an instrument, it is probably one of the most complex and even though you own one, it's difficult to take to pieces to see how it works.

As always, it is useful to have some additional material to provide a different viewpoint. The University of South Wales site has some very good articles on the instruments, good diagrams and sound clips. It also approaches the study of the instruments in a slightly different way to the TA225 course team so provides some useful insights into instruments like the didjeridu.