Exploring Music as a Cellist

 My first introduction to Mongolian music was The Hu, a Mongolian folk metal band. Their song, 'Wolf Totem' is my favorite song to listen to before hard workouts and competitions!       However, this is not the true glory that is the traditional music of Mongolia. If you haven't had the pleasure of hearing about the history of  Mongolia, it is deeply intertwined with horses. An entire empire was created from the back of a horse. Even the most popular instrument is a two-stringed instrument topped by a horse head! Sounds cool right? This instrument is called a Morin Khuur  and though it resembles a cello in the way it is played, it is firmly and completely rooted in Mongolia. Legend has it that the first of this magnificent instrument was made from one of the fastest horses. It could travel great distances in an instant but one day the man who rode it found the horse dead and in his grief made an instrument out of its tendons, bones, hair, and head. He started playing this m

     I first heard the Theremin in 2015 in my Advanced Orchestra class. Clara Rockmore performed The Swan  from "The Carnival of the Animals" and it not only inspired me to learn the song on my own instrument, but led me to fall in love with this quirky instrument. Leon Theremin created his masterpiece completely by accident! The Russian scientist was originally supposed to be creating a machine to monitor the densities of gasses but quickly realized he had created something else. This is how, in the middle of the Russian civil war, a revolutionary instrument was born!      The instrument is played by moving your hands between two antenna. One to control Pitch and one to control volume. It is also monophonic because it can only produce one clear sound at a time. It has a wide range to it as well because of the users ability to manipulate the sound. On the modern version of the instrument there are many nobs that can adjust the pitch, brightness, and wave form of the instrumen

 No that is not a typo in the title, the song is indeed called Undertale.  It was released, along with the game, in 2015 by the developer and composer Toby Fox. Undertale and its music took the gaming world by storm and people till, to this day make covers and create masterpieces with the music.  The Games and Symphonies orchestra even performed some of the music! This is the song that I used to teach myself piano and it has gotten me through many hard times in my life Even if you do not play the game I highly recommend listening to the soundtrack! It has some of the most iconic and noteworthy songs in gaming culture.     The song starts out homophonic with a lovely guitar melody but changes to polyphonic when the piano melody joins in. Though these two melodies do not fight, they are each clear, crisp and stand out in the complexity of the song. The dynamic of the song start out at a soft mezzo piano and, when the piano plays a descending scale, increases to a solid forte for the end