🎷Meet The Instruments
This small, silver woodwind instrument is held sideways to play and makes the highest notes in the band.
What is the Flute?
This basic music symbol looks like a giant circle with no stem, and it gets exactly 4 beats of sound.
What is a Whole Note?
This squiggly music symbol means you stay completely silent for exactly one beat.
What is a Quarter Rest?
This term tells the band to play at a medium volume—literally "moderately loud"—represented by the letters mf.
What is Mezzo-Forte?
This is the stick that the conductor waves to show the band the steady beat and tempo.
What is a Baton?
This shiny brass instrument uses a long, sliding U-shaped tube instead of valves to change notes.
What is a Trombone?
These thin vertical lines cut across the 5-line staff to divide the music into neat, equal sections.
What are Bar Lines?
This math-based fraction tells you that a half note is worth exactly this many beats in 4/4 time.
What is Two Beats?
This symbol looks like a closing alligator mouth (>) and tells the band to gradually get softer.
What is a Decrescendo (or Diminuendo)?
This is what a brass player must press down on their instrument to change the length of the tubing and play different notes.
What are Valves? (or Keys)
This woodwind instrument is made of brass but uses a single wooden reed on a mouthpiece to make its sound.
What is a Saxophone?
This symbol looks like a small flat letter "b" and lowers a note's pitch by one half-step.
What is a Flat?
These fast-moving notes have a filled-in head, a stem, and a single flag (or are connected by a beam), and they are worth half a beat each.
This Italian word means "slow" and tells the band to play a song at a relaxed, slow pace.
What is Adagio?
This is the word for the specific physical shape of a wind player's lips, teeth, and jaw when blowing into their mouthpiece.
What is an Embouchure?
This percussion instrument features metal or wooden bars arranged like a piano that you hit with mallets to play different pitches.
What is a glockenspiel? (or bells/xylophone)
This is the name of the space between two bar lines that holds a specific number of beats.
What is a Measure?
This is the total number of beats found inside a single measure of a song with a 3/4 time signature.
What are Three Beats?
This articulation mark is a small dot placed directly above or below a note, telling you to play it short and detached.
What is Staccato?
This is the flat, wooden piece of cane that woodwind players must wet with saliva before it can vibrate to make a sound.
What is a Reed?
This brass instrument looks like a tiny tuba and plays in the same low range, but you hold it in your lap.
What is a Baritone? (or Euphonium)
This symbol cancels out a previous sharp or flat, returning the note to its normal pitch.
What is a Natural Sign?
This musical rest looks like a top hat sitting right on top of the middle staff line, and it means two beats of silence.
What is a Half Rest?
This curved line connects two or more different notes, telling wind players to change pitches using only their fingers without re-tonguing.
This is the term for a curved line that connects two notes of the exact same pitch, adding their time values together into one long note.
What is a Tie?