The ancient harps were all shapes and sizes, from small hand held harps to large harps that were bolted to the floor. The harps would sometimes have colored strings on it to make it easier to play because it would have many strings on it.

Some other ancient stringed instruments were the scrapers from the 16th century, and the picker from the 16th century. The scrapers and the pickers were all ancient forms of present-day violins, fiddles, and guitars. Most of the ancient string instrument’s strings were made of horsehair, hemp, or animal intestines.

One of the first woodwinds was the flute. The flute was one of the first real instruments, because it was made on purpose. The ancient flute was made up of reeds tied together with animal tendons, or hemp and animal glue. The flutes were made of hallow pieces of young wood. It was a part of many cultures and their cultural events such as parades, ceremonies, and sporting events.

The first wind instrument was the rams horn. It was made from the horns of rams, goats, or cattle. They were originally cups. The way it became a horn was that the person broke the end and tried to blow out the fragment so they could patch it up but when they did they realized it could be an instrument. They were used to call long distance, or amplify someone’s voice. Small horns would be carried and used for signaling short distance and large horns were set in place to be used for long distance calling.

The way ancient musicians would make a living was travel around and playing their instruments. They would ask for money, food, and shelter from the people they composed for, instead of just money. They would tell stories, history, and sing folk songs for a living. They had no permanent homes instead they depended on the kindness of strangers. The people that used to be bards are now what we call
musicians, but musicians in this day and age would rather have money than any thing else. Queen Elizabeth had a great impact on England when she died in 1603, aside from the grief of her country. When she died the composers in England had stopped composing and singing their music. Her death caused a great slump in England’s music. After the death of Queen Elizabeth when King James II came into power the music world changed forever. His rule over England made the music world come alive with new songs and old songs. The reason why is because the composer just as much as everyone else hated the king so they wrote about that.

A French man by the name of Franco invented the notes and bar graphs we have today four hundred years ago.