On March 31, I attended the Carlsbad Museum of Making Music. I had never been to this gallery before, but I greatly enjoyed it and hope to return soon. This was a new experience for me all together; it was so interactive and informative about musical instruments throughout history and how evolved through time.
I just happened to have gone to the museum during the last day of the slide guitar exhibition. There was a wide assortment of slide guitars starting as far back as ancient Japan with the Ichigenkin, a one-stringed zither of unknown origin, up the more modern Hawaiian steel guitar.
Aside from the featured slide guitar exhibition, there were many other instruments and sound samples to listen to, starting as far back as the late 1800s all the way up to the present. There were a variety of real antique instruments, such as the player piano and the phonograph. One very interesting instrument I came across during my self-guided tour of the facility was the Theremin, first created in 1918. I had never seen nor heard of this strange-looking musical device before that day. This was extremely fascinating to me, that this odd little box and metal bars could control radio oscillator frequencies with the use of the player’s hands over the bars in various positions to create electric signals, synthesizing musical notes.
I must say I was skeptical at first about going into a music museum, but this was probably one of the most fun exhibits I have ever attended.
