The Viola

Many people have no idea what a viola is upon hearing the word. This is actually my primary instrument, meaning that it is the one that I started playing when I was a kid, and the one that I played through college while I was working on my music degree. These days, as a private music instructor, I generally play way more violin than viola because most students play violin, but the viola always holds a very special place in my heart as my main instrument. 

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The easiest way to tell the difference between a violin and a viola is that the viola is a little bit bigger than the violin. The reason for this to allow the lower sound of the viola to resonate properly. The viola plays slightly lower notes than the violin and, as a result, the two instruments compliment each other quite nicely. 

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More people are familiar with the other two instruments in the "violin family": the cello and the bass. The cello is quite a bit larger than the violin and viola, and the bass is much larger than all of them. This makes it so that the cello has a lower sound than the violin and the viola, and the bass has the lowest sound of all, sounding much lower than even the cello. Combining the different members of violin family makes for a beautifully full and resonant sound with the violin playing the high notes, the bass playing the low notes, and the cello and viola filling in the registers in between.