--- title: Olympiad: music puzzles ★★★ — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: music puzzles ★★★», a lesson of the arts course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: This olympiad block mixes the music lessons into puzzles: counting beats in bars, reading the names of notes on the staff, sorting instruments by --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Arts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/) / Olympiad: music puzzles ★★★ # Olympiad: music puzzles ★★★ Lesson 41 of the arts course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/0/) — This olympiad block mixes the music lessons into puzzles: counting beats in bars, reading the names of notes on the staff, sorting instruments by how their sound is made, and checking claims people make about music. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/1/) — Counting puzzles are about beats: in 4/4 time a bar holds four crotchet beats, a minim lasts two beats and a quaver half a beat, so a minim and two crotchets fill a bar exactly, and a rest still counts as part of the bar. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/2/) — Family puzzles hide a trap: a shiny metal saxophone or flute looks like brass, but the family depends on HOW the sound is made, not on what the instrument is made of. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/3/) — Picture Ruby groaning, "I've practised this a million times and it still squeaks!" The million is hyperbole, so do not count it; the real clue is the squeak, which usually means blowing too hard or a gap under a finger. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/6/) — In 3/4 time each bar holds three crotchet beats, the swaying feel of a waltz; a rest is a counted silence and is part of the bar. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/7/) — In the treble clef the four spaces from bottom to top are F, A, C and E, and the five lines from bottom to top are E, G, B, D and F. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/8/) — The family of an instrument depends on how the sound is made: the saxophone is made of brass but is a woodwind because it uses a reed, and the flute is a woodwind because the player blows across an edge. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/9/) — Brass players buzz their lips into the mouthpiece; the trumpet, trombone, horn and tuba are brass. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/10/) — In the string family bigger instruments play lower: from highest to lowest they are violin, viola, cello and double bass. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/11/) — Orchestras usually seat the quieter strings at the front and the louder brass and percussion at the back, and before playing everyone tunes to an A, usually given by the oboe. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/12/) — On the recorder, B, A and G are played with the left hand alone, using one, two and three fingers. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/13/) — The kora of West Africa has 21 strings, the Chinese erhu has 2 strings and is bowed, and a modern concert bandura from Ukraine has around 55 to 65 strings and is plucked. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/14/) — The sitar has sympathetic strings that nobody plucks; they vibrate by themselves when matching notes are played. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/15/) — Ukraine has won Eurovision three times: in 2004, 2016 and 2022. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/16/) — Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" came out in 1994 and first reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 2019. - ← previous: [Show day: the exhibition, the concert and the big arts quiz](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/40-show-day-the-exhibition-the-concert-and-the-big-arts-quiz/) - next →: [Olympiad: picture puzzles, colours, dates and myths ★★★](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/42-olympiad-picture-puzzles/) - ↑ back to [Arts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/)