Colorado Public Radio’s popular podcast Music Blocks is set to return for its third season on September 19. This season, the podcast will delve into the world of instrument families, offering listeners an understanding of how instruments function across different genres, eras, and cultures.
Building upon the success of its previous two seasons, Music Blocks has resonated well with teachers, students, and families for its educational, diverse, and entertaining content. Each episode runs approximately five minutes, designed for classroom or family listening.
Hosted by CPR podcast producer Rebekah Romberg and CPR community audio producer Luis Antonio Perez, both hosts bring their musical experience to the show. For this season, the producers are taking a technical approach to categorizing instruments. They will use terms like aerophones, idiophones, and chordophones instead of the conventional strings, percussion, or woodwinds.
Dr. Carla Aguilar, a professor of music education at Metropolitan State University of Denver and the podcast’s education advisor, said, “We chose to organize the season using technical names for instrument families because we believe that these names are more inclusive of the variety of different instruments in the world and the way that these instruments produce sound. Using these technical names gives us information about how the sounds are produced, which is more inclusive than how the instrument might look.”
The show’s executive producer, CPR Executive Producer Brad Turner, said “We’re excited to take young listeners on a different kind of musical journey this season. We’ll explore how an instrument you might hear in a classic rhythm and blues track is related to sounds in a Tchaikovsky ballet or the groove in a cumbia song.”
Season three of Music Blocks will launch with six new episodes to be released on Tuesdays.