Belize Music Festival

The violin is so versatile because it is actually a very primitive instrument. You could call it a wooden box with a few strings on it, and you stroke it with a bow with horsehair.That's all you hold in your hands, the rest is up to you. You get nothing for free. For example, a keyboard makes it a lot easier for you. You press a key and it produces a clear tone that is always in tune.But the violin is more stubborn. You have to move the bow a certain way and place your fingers on exactly the right places on the strings to get a great sound.This is also the strength of the violin. Because there is nothing pre-programmed you can influence your music in unexpected ways. Just bow in a slightly different way, just move your fingers a bit and you get a totally different effect. Few musical instruments are so exciting.It is really surprising that for such a long time the violin has almost exclusively been played by classical musicians. Only a few of the possible sound effects are actually being used. In classical music there is little room for creativity because it has to sound ... [more..]

Long before radios, movies, television and the Internet popularized music, sheet music made compositions of the good old days popular, or at least, known.Defined, sheet music is a printed musical composition. Musicians back then publish their songs in these unbound sheets of paper. Performers also used these as they played a musical piece to an audience.Today, sheet music is still made. However, it is used mainly by musicians such as singers, pianists and guitarists. For many, they are just mere sheets of paper. You will often find old sheet music hidden in piano benches or placed in a box, untouched for ages, collecting dust.If you are interested in finding old sheet music, you can still see many of them in music stores. You can even find them in several web sites that offer them in computer-readable and easy to download formats. There are sites that sell sheet music for as low as $3 to as much as $50. There are also sites that allow sharing, downloading and printing of sheet music for free.Most free sheet music available is sheet music of classical and old songs. This is because the copyrights these old songs and classical music have already expired. In ... [more..]