Musical words

A concert is a public performance of music, usually by a band or some other group of musicians. Some concerts will have many hundreds of people in the audience.

Cymbals are a modern percussion instrument. They are found on every modern drum kit, and you can clearly hear them in rock and pop music made any time in the last 50 years. Cymbals are made from thin pieces of metal shaped like a flattened cone. You can either hit two cymbals together to make a noise, or you can hit them with a drumstick.

A drum is a percussion instrument, which means you hit it to make music. Drums are usually made from a round shell with a skin stretched tight over the top. How low or high the sound the drum makes depends on the size of the shell and how tight the skin is stretched. A drum kit is a group of drums of different sizes put near each other so one person can play them at once.

An electric guitar is similar to an acoustic guitar but instead of having a hollow wooden box under the strings to make it sound louder, there is an electronic device that needs to be plugged into an amplifier so you can hear the guitar. Electric guitars are used in almost all modern pop and rock music. Unlike acoustic guitars and most other instruments, electric guitars don't just have one sound - they can be changed to have almost any sound you want, which is part of the reason they are so popular.

A flute is a thin, wind instrument that is usually made out of silver or wood. You play it by blowing across a small hole at one end, and opening and closing holes along the length of the flute to change the note it plays. Someone who plays a flute is a flautist.