National Music Museum Tour

   This past week we went down (and over) to Nebraska to go to my Grandpa's funeral. Ken stayed home to keep his office open and so my sister and brother-in-law went with us instead. The route we went took us quite near Vermillion, SD - Home of the National Music Museum. We decided that on our return trip we would go there. I had been there as a child (before my sister was born) but nobody else had been there.

   We were very happy that we stopped! To start with all the kids were able to get in free as well as my brother-in-law who is going to college online (The lady at the desk told us that all students - any age - any school were free). So my sister and I each paid our $10 entrance fee and then we were ready to go. Also I noticed that if you should happen to make it there on Friday everybody gets in free that day.

   We were the only people there on a cold, snowy morning during Christmas break and the lady at the desk was very glad that we stopped. She set us all up with little electronic devices which we were able to use to listen to many of the instruments and also hear more information about them and to watch a few videos that went along with some of them.

Our family really enjoys music and instruments and this past year we have had a lot of fun adding more instruments to our home collection and learning to play them and so it was inspiring to see all the instruments there. We had fun trying to find "our" instruments. Aaron loves to play the mandolin so he was on the lookout for those. In the picture above he is next to a relative of a mandolin (it is smaller and a little different).

 I loved these Scandinavian fiddles!

 So many instruments were made in very creative ways!

 Megan loves to play the piano. We saw oodles of pianos, some really fancy, some very old and a lot that were quite different from pianos that we have now. Many of them had short keyboards and there were quite a lot of "box pianos".

 Aaron wanted to get my picture by the Pochettes (I think). It is basically a pocket fiddle. They are called after the french word for pocket.

 Jonathan is our banjo player. Here he is by a little banjo that we found.

I had fun noticing various instruments that looked like they were made by amateurs. It made me think that it would be fun for us to try making some instruments.

"My" piano of choice. Isn't it lovely? It would have been so fun to try playing a few but I totally understand why were were not supposed to touch.

Keren's pick.

Aaron in the room that was full of instruments from other countries.

Isn't this impressive?

Jonathan and Mara enjoying some of the more unique instruments.

Megan really enjoyed using the electronic device that was available for learning more about the instruments.

Mara plays the Ocarina (along with the piano and violin and penny whistle), we found a few Ocarinas there. The blue and white one behind her was her favorite.

We had fun dreaming about getting a harp one day and admiring the ones there.

Some more fun and unique looking instruments.

All in all we were very happy to have visited the National Music Museum. I highly recommend it. If you are not able to go in person their website does have virtual tours on it and tons of information about instruments.