Museum of Making Music

I flew down to Long Beach airport last Tuesday and my sister Cynthia picked me up and we drove together down to San Diego. On the way, we stopped at the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad. It is is fairly small museum, and very inexpensive (only $5), but quite entertaining.
The beginning part of the museum when throughout the late 1800s to the present time. They provided examples of different categories of instruments from all around the world, along with samples of the music they created.

This is a beautiful Steinbeck piano, with incredible murals along the sides.
They had TONS of guitars over the years, but not playing the guitar myself, it was hard for me to really see all of the subtle differences and changes.

I thought that this electric organ from the 1980s was really neat, showing just how much wiring goes into producing the sound.
We also enjoyed listening to all of the different music videos from the 1980s from all of the different musical genres like pop, country, hard rock, classical, and ethnic, to name a few.

But, the BEST and most enjoyable part of the museum was the Interactive area at the end. We timed it perfectly in that we had the instruments all to ourselves.

Here I am trying to be a "rock star" . . . . I think I will just stick to sociology
Here's Cynthia jamming on the drum
And the banjo
I was able to be a dj and scratch these records- it was quite fun, but I'm not going to quit my day job.
However, the most unique instrument that we played was the theremin, one of the oldest electronic instruments. Its played without direct contact but the hand movement near the antennas interrupts the signal and results in differences in tone and pitch. Here's a video of Cynthia playing it.