Certainly the Museum of Making Music fits that bill. This was Emma's find, and we ended up spending three hours in the National Association of Music Manufacturers' monument to its industry, located in a faceless industrial park in Carlsbad, about 30 miles north of San Diego.
If you're expecting paeans to Strindberg and Ginastera, composers of 20th century "serious" music, you'll find little to enjoy here. But if you want a great short history of pop music, you'll find a concise but comprehensive story, starting with a rare recording of John Philip Sousa's band playing the "Stars and Stripes Forver" to the early jazz of Louis Armstong to the Rat Pack offerings of Sinatra to the neoclassical rock of Springsteen and the glorious excesses of Steven Tyler and beyond.
There could be more access to music clips from the various periods, but for the casual visitor with only a couple of hours to spare, the curators have done an admirable job of finding representative styles.
The best part is a room in which non-musician and musician alike can be comfortable, trying out everything from the Beamz laser instrument to a reproduction of the Gretsch Chet Atkins Hollow-Body Electric. Perhaps best of all: High-tech headphones allow you to experiment without bothering anybody else.
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