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This group is for everyone, and for those who are engaged in world music, and for those who play any kind of instrument. For those who are interested in collaboration, and learning about unique instruments and all instruments from around the world. For those who simply wish to hear and research as much music as humanly possible.
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http://www.oddmusic.com ---- This website has many fascinating instruments describing how they work and who built them. There is also an audio clip for each instrument. You will recognize some of the photographs in this group from oddmusic.com
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Below I have given a brief description of each instrument you will find in the group's photo album starting from left to right.
(1) Thumb Piano - An African musical instrument, such as the kalimba or mbira, that has a small sound box fitted with a row of tuned tabs that are plucked with the thumbs. In Zimbabwean music, the mbira (sometimes also known as the likembe, board piano, thumb piano, karimba or kalimba) is a musical instrument consisting of a wooden board to which staggered metal keys have been attached. It is often fitted into a deze that functions as a resonator. Mbira performances are usually accompanied by hosho. Among the shona there are three that are very popular. The Mbira is usually classified as part of the lamellophone family of musical instruments.
(2) Hurdy Gurdy - There are many different models of the hurdy gurdy which you will see further down among these photographs. It is an instrument in which the strings are sounded by the rim of a rosined wooden wheel turned by a handle. A row of keys is used to produce the melody by stopping one or two strings; the remaining strings sound a constant drone. A hurdy-gurdy-like instrument existed in Europe by the 12th century; it took its present shape in the 13th century. It has long been associated with street musicians, and it is still played as a folk instrument in Europe. The name is also often used for the barrel organ, in which a hand crank rotates a barrel inside the case, on which several tunes are encoded, causing a small pipe organ to play.
(3) Harp - It is a stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicular to the soundboard. All harps have a neck, resonator and strings. Some, known as "frame harps", also have a forepillar; those lacking the forepillar are referred to as "open harps". Harp strings can be made of nylon (sometimes wound around copper), gut (more commonly used than nylon), wire, or silk. Various types of harps are found in Africa, Europe, North, and South America, and a few parts of Asia. The aeolian harp (wind harp) and autoharp are technically zithers, not harps, because their strings are not perpendicular to the soundboard. A theory of mine which seems probable is that thousands of years ago, when humans shot a bow and arrow the string made a sound once the arrow was shot, thus giving the idea to make an instrument out of the bow which we now know as the harp.
(4) Mouth Harp - Also known as the jew's harp and jaw harp. It is thought to be one of the oldest musical instruments in the world; a musician apparently playing it can be seen in a Chinese drawing from the 3rd century BC. The instrument is a lamellophone, which is in the category of plucked idiophones: it consists of a flexible metal or bamboo tongue or reed attached to a frame. On the other hand, the jew's harp belongs to the aerophones, together with the wind instruments and the instruments of the accordion type: In this class of instruments the sound is generated by a vibrating air column (flutes etc.) or by a stream of air stimulated to sound by a reed (harmonica, accordion, jew's harp). The tongue/reed is placed in the performer's mouth and plucked with the finger to produce a note. The frame is held against the performer's teeth or lips, using the jaw (thus "jaw harp") and mouth as a resonator, greatly increasing the volume of the instrument. The note thus produced is constant in pitch, though by changing the shape of his or her mouth and the amount of air contained in it the performer can cause different overtones to sound and thus create melodies. The instrument is known in many different cultures by at least forty different names.
(5) Hammered Dulcimer - It is a stringed instrument with the strings stretched over a trapezoidal sounding board. The instrument is typically set at an angle on a stand in front of the musician, who holds two small mallets, called "hammers" in each hand with which to strike the strings. The word dulcimer comes from the Latin "dulcis" meaning "sweet" and the Greek "melos", meaning "song". The origin of the instrument is uncertain, but tradition holds that it was invented in Iran roughly 2000 years ago, where it is called a "santur". (Another thoery of mine is that when the ancients made the harp from a bow and arrow, also thought to strike the strings with an object or their hand. From there they created what we now know as the hammered dulcimer.) The instrument has seen somewhat of a revival in America in the American folk music traditions. It is also still played in Wales, East Anglia, Northumbria, the Middle East, China and Thailand. It is also used in traditional folk music in Austria and Bavaria.
(6) Chapman Stick - The Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. He set out to create an instrument designed for the "Free Hands" tapping method of both hands parallel to the frets that he invented in 1969. The first production model of the Stick was shipped in 1974. Superficially, a Stick looks like a wide version of the fretboard of an electric guitar, with 8, 10 or 12 strings. It is considerably longer and wider than a guitar fretboard, however. Unlike the electric guitar, it is usually played by tapping or fretting the strings, rather than plucking them. Instead of one hand fretting and the other hand plucking, both hands sound notes by striking the strings against the fingerboard just behind the appropriate frets for the desired notes. For this reason, it can sound many more notes at once than most other stringed instruments, making it more comparable to a keyboard instrument than to other stringed instruments. This arrangement lends itself to playing multiple lines at once and many Stick players have mastered performing bass, chords and melody lines simultaneously.
(7) Bonang - It is one of the lead instruments in Javanese Gamelan music. It is a collection of small gongs (sometimes called "kettles" or "pots") placed horizontally onto strings in a wooden frame (rancak), either one or two rows wide. All of the kettles have a central boss, but around it the lower-pitched ones have a flattened head, while the higher ones have an arched one. Each is tuned to a specific pitch in the appropriate scale; thus there are different bonang for Pelog and slendro. They are typically hit with padded sticks (tabuh). This is similar to the other cradled gongs in the Gamelan, the Kethuk, Kempyang, and Kenong.
(8) Freenotes instruments - Gamelan inspired instruments. You will find it at oddmusic.com
(9) Serpentine Bassoon - An electroacoustic double reed instrument that controls effects machines and synthesisers. You will find it at oddmusic.com
(10) Harp Guitars - The creations of Chris J. Knutsen (1864-1930). You will find it at oddmusic.com
(11) Ukrainian Bandura - It is similar to a zither, as well as to its lute-like Baroque predecessor, the kobza. The term is also occasionally used by folk instumentalists when referring to a number of other common Eastern European string instruments such as the hurdy gurdy and the 5 string guitar (commonly referred to by the diminutive bandurka). Musicians who play the bandura are referred to as bandurists. Some traditional bandura players, often blind, were referred to as kobzars.
(12) Another model of the Hurdy Gurdy
(13) Double Violin - It is part of an ongoing project that has lasted over 25 years, another one of Jon Rose's "Relative Violins", here we see a 10-string double violin, sharing the same fingerboard. You will find it at oddmusic.com
(14) LEGO Harpsichord - It has a 61 note range, the instruments size is 6 x 3 ft. weighing approximately 150 lbs, and built with an estimated 100,000 LEGO pieces. You will find it at oddmusic.com
(15) Pikasso - It is a four neck guitar, has two sound holes, 42 strings, two access doors; one on the upper player's side and one at the tail block. You will find it at oddmusic.com
(16) LightHarp - It uses spotlights, lasers and light sensors to trace virtual strings through space for performers to play. The instrument does not make sound itself but rather it controls computers and synthesizer's in performance. You will find it at oddmusic.com
(17) Surbahar - It is a bass sitar and used in the Hindustani classical music of North India. The instrument's neck is made of tun (Cedrela tuna), or teak wood. The neck is fixed on a large pumpkin used as a resonator, and the instrument can emit low frequencies (less than 20 Hz). The surbahar has four rhythm strings (cikari), four playing strings (the thickest is 1 mm in diameter) and 15 to 17 unplayed sympathetic strings. All these strings lie on a flat bridge. This type of bridge considerably amplifies the sound and the spectrum, as the vibrating string hits the flat part of the bridge. The strings are played by way of a metallic plectrum fixed on the index of the right hand, the mizrab. Three metallic plectrums are used to play the dhrupad style of alap, jor, and jhala on the surbahar. In the dhrupad style of playing the surbahar, instead of performing the sitarkhani and masitkhani gats the slow dhrupad composition is played in accompaniment with the pakhawaj.
(18) Native American Flutes - It is the only flute in the world constructed with two air chambers. There is a wall inside the flute between the top (slow) air chamber and the bottom chamber which has the whistle and finger holes. The top chamber also serves as a secondary resonator, which gives the flute it's distinctive sound. There is a hole at the bottom of the "slow" air chamber and a (generally) square hole at the top of the playing chamber. A block (or "bird") is tied on top of the Flute. (There are two different types of Native American flutes - The plains flute and the woodlands flute, each with slightly different construction.) In a plains flute, a spacer is added or a channel is carved into the block itself to form a thin, flat air stream for the whistle hole (or "window"). In contrast, a woodlands flute has the channel carved into the top of the flute, allowing for a less reedy sound. It has achieved some measure of fame for its distinctive sound, used in a variety of New Age and World music recordings. The instrument was originally (and still is among tribes) played without accompaniment in courtship, healing, meditation, and spiritual rituals. Now it is also played along with other instruments or vocals both in Native American music and in other styles.
(19) Theremin Cello - It is also known as the "fingerboard theremin". Instead of strings, it has a flexible plastic film fingerboard which, when touched, produces a tone. You will find it at oddmusic.com
(20) Guitarangi da Gamba - It was created by Fred Carlson of Beyond the Trees, for multi-instrumentalist and solo performance artist Todd Green. It combines influences from eastern and western instrument traditions, as well as aspects of plucked and bowed instruments. You will find it at oddmusic.com
(21) Dijbass - It is a hollow body constructed of welded and machined 6061 anodized aluminum, the DIJBASS uses a system of internal baffles to 'fold' the air flow in half and direct it out the front holes. You will find it at oddmusic.com
(22) Theremin - (This photograph is of an old model) It is one of the earliest fully electronic musical instruments. It was invented by Russian inventor Léon Theremin in 1919, and it is unique in that it was the first musical instrument designed to be played without being touched. It consists of two radio frequency oscillators and two metal antennae. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. To play the theremin, the performer moves his or her hands around the two metal antennae, which control the instrument's frequency (pitch) and amplitude (volume). The Russian Dmitri Shostakovich was the first composer to include parts for the theremin in orchestral pieces, including a use in his score for the 1931 film "Odna". However, the theremin did not make it as a permanent member of the "orchestra" family.
(23) Great Highland Bagpipe - It is classified as a woodwind instrument, like the bassoon, oboe or clarinet, although it's design is decidedly different from any other instrument. Although it is classified as a double-reed instrument, the reeds are all closed inside the wooden stocks, instead of being played directly by mouth as other woodwinds are. The GHB actually has four reeds; the chanter reed (double), two tenor drone reeds (single), and one bass drone reed (single). They have historically taken numerous forms in both Ireland and Scotland. A modern set has a bag, a chanter, a blowpipe, two tenor drones, and one bass drone. The scale on the chanter is in Mixolydian mode with a flattened 7th or leading tone. It has a range from one whole tone lower than the tonic to one octave above it (in piper's parlance: Low G, Low A, B, C, D, E, F, High G, and High A; the C and F could or should be called sharp but this is always omitted). Although less so now, depending on the tuning of the player, certain notes are tuned slightly off of just intonation (for example, the D could be tuned slightly sharp for sound effects), but again, today the notes of the chanter are usually tuned in just intonation to the Mixolydian scale with a flattened 7th. The two tenor drones are an octave below the keynote (Low A) of the chanter) and the bass drone two octaves below. This "A" of the GHB is actually slightly sharper than B-flat, around 480 Hz, and within the realm of competitive pipe bands, seems to get slightly sharper each year. In the 1990s, there were a few new developments, namely, reliable synthetic drone reeds, and synthetic bags that deal with moisture arguably better than hide or older synthetic bags.
(24) Diagram of the Great Highland Bagpipe
(25) Bodhrán (plural bodhráns or bodhráin) - It is an Irish frame drum ranging from 25 to 65cm (10" to 26") in diameter. The sides of the drum are 9 to 20cm (3½" to 8") deep. A goatskin head is tacked to one side (The modern bodhrán sometimes has synthetic heads, or new materials like kangaroo skin). The other side is open ended for one hand to be placed against the inside of the drum head to control the pitch and timbre. One or two crossbars, sometimes removable, may be inside the frame, but this is increasingly rare on professional instruments. Some professional modern bodhráin integrate mechanical tuning systems similar to those used on drums found in drum kits. The Bodhrán was used during the Irish rebellion of 1603, by the Irish forces, as a war drum, or battle drum. The use of the drum was to provide a cadence for the pipers and warriors to keep to, as well as anounce the arrival of the army. This leads some to think that the Bodhrán was derived from an old Celtic war drum.
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