Those Amazing Musical Instruments!: Your Guide to the Orchestra Through Sounds and Stories

by Genevieve Helsby

From the cello to the clarinet to the trumpet to the drums, Those Amazing Musical Instruments! takes readers on a musical tour, with notes on the history, construction and sounds of the instruments from each of the major instrument "families." They can see the parts of the violin working together, read about the flute in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro," or hear the different sounds of the tuba on the included CD-ROM. This interactive CD-ROM includes individual musical samples giving readers an audible taste of each instrument, as well as full orchestra pieces showing how they play together.
Those Amazing Musical Instruments! features noted conductor Marin Alsop as kids' guide to the instruments, offering helpful comments and tips throughout the book.

Genres: Music

176 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2007

Reviews

[forthefamilyssake Hailey White · Rating 5 out of 5]

After dissecting this book repeatedly this past week, it has been added to our personal library wish list.

This book was recommended as a resource for our orchestra unit study as part of home education CC Cycle 3.

The organization of the book is fantastic, as are the pictures and content!

[Mandee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those Amazing Musical Instruments! with CD: Your Guide to the Orchestra Through Sounds and Stories (Naxos Books) by Genevieve Helsby has a chart of how the orchestra is seated when on stage.

Those Amazing Musical Instruments! with CD: Your Guide to the Orchestra Through Sounds and Stories (Naxos Books) by Genevieve Helsby has a chart of how the orchestra is seated when on stage.

Those Amazing Musical Instruments! with CD: Your Guide to the Orchestra Through Sounds and Stories (Naxos Books) by Genevieve Helsby has numerous captions and labels that lead the reader to the CD that accompanies the book. This is so that the reader can hear what the author is explaining.

Those Amazing Musical Instruments! with CD: Your Guide to the Orchestra Through Sounds and Stories (Naxos Books) by Genevieve Helsby has diagrams of the vibrations or sounds waves look with the different instruments. It also shows the diagram of the way a violin is constructed.
The Story of Salt by Mark Kurlansky has an amazing diagram that shows the elements that are involved in making salt.


Those Amazing Musical Instruments! with CD: Your Guide to the Orchestra Through Sounds and Stories (Naxos Books) by Genevieve Helsby has headings that explain to the reader the highlight of what they are about to read.

Those Amazing Musical Instruments! with CD: Your Guide to the Orchestra Through Sounds and Stories (Naxos Books) by Genevieve Helsby has bullet points that explain the basic things in common in the string family.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very informative and the illustrations were excellent. I liked the way the location of the various instruments in the orchestra was given for each instrument, and why they would be seated in that particular area. It was fascinating to see an auditory range for each intrument as well.

[Kiddo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice list of instruments with pictures, descriptions, and audio on the CD-rom. It would have been nice to have video on the CD-rom in addition to the audio. Kido liked it already, but there is a great deal more information than he can yet appreciate.

[Arlene S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great illustrations, good historical background, and CD for listening. Organized into instrument families; with overview of each, orchestral maps, and trivia notes on which composers work has examples of each instrument.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

We spend hours reading this book and listening to the different instruments -- it's one of Elliott's favorites. Very informative with good pictures.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a good informational book to pick up from the library. Not one that I would own.