1.
Musical instrument
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A musical instrument is an instrument created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument, the history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have used for ritual, such as a trumpet to signal success on the hunt. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment, Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications. The date and origin of the first device considered an instrument is disputed. The oldest object that some refer to as a musical instrument. Some consensus dates early flutes to about 37,000 years ago, many early musical instruments were made from animal skins, bone, wood, and other non-durable materials. Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world, however, contact among civilizations caused rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the Middle Ages, instruments from Mesopotamia were in maritime Southeast Asia, development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments. By 1400, musical instrument development slowed in areas and was dominated by the Occident. Musical instrument classification is a discipline in its own right, Instruments can be classified by their effective range, their material composition, their size, etc. However, the most common method, Hornbostel-Sachs, uses the means by which they produce sound. The academic study of instruments is called organology. Once humans moved from making sounds with their bodies—for example, by using objects to create music from sounds. Primitive instruments were designed to emulate natural sounds, and their purpose was ritual rather than entertainment. The concept of melody and the pursuit of musical composition were unknown to early players of musical instruments. A player sounding a flute to signal the start of a hunt does so without thought of the notion of making music. Musical instruments are constructed in an array of styles and shapes
Musical instrument
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Anne Vallayer-Coster, Attributes of Music, 1770. This
still life painting depicts a variety of French Baroque musical instruments, such as a
natural horn,
transverse flute,
musette,
violin, and
lute.
Musical instrument
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Found in
Slovenia, the
Divje Babe Flute is considered the world's
oldest known musical instrument
Musical instrument
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Two
Aztec slit drums, called teponaztli. The characteristic " H " slits can be seen on the top of the drum in the foreground.
Musical instrument
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Ancient Egyptian tomb painting depicting lute players,
18th Dynasty (c. 1350 BC)
2.
Balafo
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The balafon is a kind of wooden xylophone or percussion idiophone which plays melodic tunes, and usually has between 16 and 27 keys. It has been played in Africa since the 14th century, it originated in Mali, according to the Manding history narrated by the griots. Balafon is a Manding name, but variations exist across West Africa, including the balangi in Sierra Leone, similar instruments are played in parts of Central Africa, with the ancient Kingdom of Kongo denoting the instrument as palaku. Records of the balafon go back to at least the 12th century CE, in 1352 CE, Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta reported the existence of the ngoni and balafon at the court of Malian ruler Mansa Musa. European visitors to West Africa described balafons in the 17th century largely identical to the modern instrument, the Atlantic Slave Trade brought some balafon players to the Americas. The Virginia Gazette records African-Americans playing a barrafoo in 1776, which appears to be a balafon, other North American references to these instruments die out by the mid-19th century. The balafon has seen a resurgence since the 1980s in the growth of African Roots Music, most famous of these exponents is the Rail Band, led by Salif Keita. Even when not still played, its sound and traditional style has been exported to western instruments. Maninka from eastern Guinea play a type of music that adapts balafon playing style to the imported instrument. In the Malinké language balafon is a compound of two words, balan is the name of the instrument and fô is the verb to play, Balafon therefore is really the act of playing the bala. Bala still is used as the name of a large bass balafon in the region of Kolokani and these bala have especially long keys and huge calabashes for amplification. Balani is then used as the name of the high pitched, small balafon with small calabashes, the balani is carried with a strap and usually has 21 keys, while the number of keys on a bala vary with region. A balafon can be either fixed-key or free-key, the balafon usually has 17-21 keys, tuned to a tetratonic, pentatonic or heptatonic scale, depending on the culture of the musician. The balafon is generally capable of producing 18 to 21 notes, Balafon keys are traditionally made from béné wood, dried slowly over a low flame, and then tuned by shaving off bits of wood from the underside of the keys. Wood is taken off the middle to flatten the key or the end to sharpen it, in a fixed-key balafon, the keys are suspended by leather straps just above a wooden frame, under which are hung graduated-size calabash gourd resonators. As the balafon cultures vary across West Africa, so does the approach to the instrument itself, in many areas the balafon is played alone in a ritual context, in others as part of an ensemble. In Guinea and Mali, the balafon is often part of an ensemble of three, pitched low, medium and high, in Cameroon, six balafon of varying size perform together in an orchestra, called a komenchang. An Igbo variation exists with one large tuned key for each player
Balafo
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A fixed-key balafon, showing resonators with membrane holes.
Balafo
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Children from Burkina Faso performing in Warsaw, Poland during the 5th Cross Culture Festival, September 2009
Balafo
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Gum-rubber mallets on a balafon
Balafo
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The gyil of northwestern Ghana
3.
Txalaparta
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The txalaparta is a specialized Basque music device of wood or stone. In some regions of the Basque Country, zalaparta means racket, while in others txalaparta has been attested as meaning the trot of the horse, a sense closely related to the sound of the instrument. During the last 150 years, txalaparta has been attested as a device used for funeral, celebration or the making of slaked lime. After the making of cider, the board that pressed the apples was beaten to summon the neighbours. Then, a celebration was held and txalaparta played cheerfully, while cider was drunk, evidence gathered in this cider making context reveals that sound emitting ox horns were sometimes blown alongside txalaparta. Actually, cider and cider houses are the traditional context for the txalaparta we have got to know first-hand. The same background applies to a related Basque percussion instrument, the kirikoketa, another instance of the same instrument class and geographical area should be noted here, the toberak. Some claim that txalaparta has been used this way for millennia, bells were not used in Christian churches before the 10th century. The txalapartas musical use evolved out of its original use, traditional txalaparta was almost extinct in the 1950s with a handful of pairs of peasants maintaining the tradition. It was then revived by folklorists, such as Jesus and Jose Antonio Artze from the group Ez dok amairu, innovators started to labour and assemble the boards to achieve some melody. Other materials started to be pressed into service, the txalaparta today is a musical instrument used in Basque music. It is classified as an idiophone, on the two ends, between the long board and the supports, corn husks are placed for vibration. However, as the txalaparta evolved, that kind of equipment has been phased out and only showcased in special festivals featuring the former and rural txalaparta set. The boards, which may number no less than three in modern txalaparta, are laid on the trestles hip high, while the used to be arranged slightly above knee high. The material of the boards has often shifted from locally available timber to more beautifully sounding wood from other geographical reaches such as iroko, sapele, furthermore, stone and metal tubes have been added, so widening the range of sounds and contrasts available. In some instances, they have even substituted the customary wooden boards, big cardboard tubes can be beaten vertically on the floor. It is worth highlighting the manufacture by the group Oreka TX of a txalaparta based on ice blocks on their Scandinavian tour, music is made using the txalaparta by having one or more performers produce differing rhythms, playing with wood knots and spots of the boards for different tones. On the other hand, some txalaparta players rule out this novelty as alien to the instrument, both players perform consecutively by striking with the sticks on the boards
Txalaparta
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Txalaparta
Txalaparta
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Txalaparta players on the Gudari Eguna (2006).
Txalaparta
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Two board txalaparta
Txalaparta
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Five board txalaparta
4.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
Greek language
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Idealized portrayal of
Homer
Greek language
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regions where Greek is the official language
Greek language
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Greek language road sign, A27 Motorway, Greece
5.
Percussion mallet
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A percussion mallet or beater is an object used to strike or beat a percussion instrument in order to produce its sound. Some mallets, such as a wand, are normally used only with a specific instrument. Some mallets, such as mallets, are normally just called mallets, others have more specialised names including, Drum sticks, of many types. Wands used to strike a triangle, brushes, used particularly with snare drum but also with many other instruments. Tippers used to strike a bodhrán, hammers, also just called mallets or dongers, used with a xylophone. Bachi, used with Japanese taiko drums, Drum sticks are beaters normally used in pairs, with each held in one hand, and are similar to or derived from the snare drum sticks that were subsequently adopted for kit drumming. They are the most general-purpose beaters, and the covers a wide variety of beaters. As well as being a term for a hand-held beater, mallet is also used specifically to refer to a hand-held beater comprising a head connected to a thin shaft. Wrapped mallets are also the mallets of choice to play suspended cymbal, felt mallets or cartwheel mallets have heads composed of layers of felt, held between two steel washers. They are mainly used on untuned percussion, and in the context of kit drumming are referred to as soft sticks, mallet shafts are commonly made of rattan, birch, or synthetic materials such as fibreglass. Different mallets are used primarily to alter the timbre of the instrument being played. Generally, mallets composed of materials will stick to the instrument for longer as they bounce off of it. Mallet choice is left up to the performer, though some compositions specify if a certain sound is desired by the composer. Players frequently employ two mallets in a grip or four mallets in a four-mallet grip, however, use of up to six mallets is not uncommon. Brushes are a set of bristles connected to a handle so that the make a rounded fan shape. They are often used in jazz or blues music, but also in other such as rock, country. The bristles can be made of metal or plastic, the handles are made of wood or aluminum. Some brushes are telescoping so that the bristles can be pulled inside a hollow handle, retracting the bristles also protects the brush when it is not being used
Percussion mallet
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Mallet bag showing variety of mallets
Percussion mallet
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Yarn mallets (model 13)
Percussion mallet
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Timpani Mallets
Percussion mallet
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Cartwheel mallets, with wooden shafts and heads of felt held between steel washers
6.
Idiophone
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An idiophone is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the instrument as a whole vibrating—without the use of strings or membranes. It is the first of the four divisions in the original Hornbostel–Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification. The early classification of Victor-Charles Mahillon called this group of instruments autophones, most percussion instruments that are not drums are idiophones. Hornbostel–Sachs divides idiophones into four main sub-categories, the first division is the struck idiophones. This includes most of the percussion instruments familiar in the West. They include all idiophones made to vibrate by being struck, either directly with a stick or hand or indirectly, various types of bells fall into both categories. The other three subdivisions are rarer, other classifications use six main sub-categories, Concussion idiophones are instruments that produce sound by being struck against one another. Percussion idiophones produce sound by being struck with a foreign object. Examples of non-vibrating objects are mallets, hammers, and sticks, scraper idiophones are instruments that are scraped with a stick or other foreign objects to give off a sound. Plucked idiophones produce sound by plucking a flexible tongue from within the instrument itself, lastly, friction idiophones are rubbed to increase vibration and sound intensity. Idiophones are made of materials that give off unique sounds, the majority of idiophones are made out of glass, metal, ceramics, and wood. Idiophones are considered part of the section in an orchestra. A number of idiophones that are struck, such as vibraphone bars and cymbals
Idiophone
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A
Kouxian, a plucked idiophone.
Idiophone
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Set of
bell plates, range C2-E4, a struck idiophone (played with mallets) or friction idiophone (bowed).
Idiophone
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Claves (foreground), a struck idiophone.
7.
Musical scale
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In music theory, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A scale ordered by increasing pitch is a scale. Some scales contain different pitches when ascending than when descending, for example, the Melodic minor scale. Due to the principle of equivalence, scales are generally considered to span a single octave. A musical scale represents a division of the space into a certain number of scale steps. A measure of the width of each scale step provides a method to classify scales, based on their interval patterns, scales are put into categories including diatonic, chromatic, major, minor, and others. A specific scale is defined by its interval pattern and by a special note. The tonic of a scale is the selected as the beginning of the octave. Typically, the name of the scale specifies both its tonic and its interval pattern, for example, C major indicates a major scale with a C tonic. Scales are typically listed from low to high, most scales are octave-repeating, meaning their pattern of notes is the same in every octave. An octave-repeating scale can be represented as an arrangement of pitch classes. The distance between two notes in a scale is called a scale step. The notes of a scale are numbered by their steps from the root of the scale, for example, in a C major scale the first note is C, the second D, the third E and so on. Two notes can also be numbered in relation to other, C and E create an interval of a third. A single scale can be manifested at many different pitch levels, for example, a C major scale can be started at C4 and ascending an octave to C5, or it could be started at C6, ascending an octave to C7. As long as all the notes can be played, the octave they take on can be altered, the pitch distances or intervals among the notes of a scale tell us more about the sound of the music than does the mere number of tones. The notes of a scale form intervals with each of the notes of the chord in combination. A 5-note scale has 10 of these intervals, a 6-note scale has 15, a 7-note scale has 21
Musical scale
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Ascending and descending
chromatic scale Play (
help ·
info)
8.
Pentatonic scale
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A pentatonic scale is a musical scale or mode with five notes per octave in contrast to a heptatonic scale such as the major scale and minor scale. Pentatonic scales are common and are found all over the world. They are divided into those with semitones and those without, examples of its use include Chopins Etude in G-flat major, op. 5, the Black Key etude, in the major pentatonic, musicology commonly classifies pentatonic scales as either hemitonic or anhemitonic. Hemitonic scales contain one or more semitones and anhemitonic scales do not contain semitones, for example, in Japanese music the anhemitonic yo scale is contrasted with the hemitonic in scale. Hemitonic pentatonic scales are also called ditonic scales, because the largest interval in them is the ditone and this should not be confused with the identical term also used by musicologists to describe a scale including only two notes. Anhemitonic pentatonic scales can be constructed in many ways, the major pentatonic scale may be thought of as a gapped or incomplete major scale. However, the scale has a unique character and is complete in terms of tonality. Another construction works backward, It omits two pitches from a diatonic scale, if one were to begin with a C major scale, for example, one might omit the fourth and the seventh scale degrees, F and B. The remaining notes then makes up the major scale, C, D, E, G. Omitting the third and seventh degrees of the C major scale obtains the notes for another transpositionally equivalent anhemitonic pentatonic scale, omitting the first and fourth degrees of the C major scale gives a third anhemitonic pentatonic scale, G, A, B, D, E. The black keys on a piano keyboard comprise a G-flat major pentatonic scale, G-flat, A-flat, B-flat, D-flat, and E-flat and it may also be considered a gapped blues scale. The C minor pentatonic is C, E-flat, F, G, the A minor pentatonic, the relative minor of C, comprises the same tones as the C major pentatonic, starting on A, giving A, C, D, E, G. This minor pentatonic contains all three tones of an A minor triad, because of their simplicity, pentatonic scales are often used to introduce beginners to music. The five pentatonic scales found by running up the keys on the piano are. This may be derived by proceeding with the principle that gives the Pythagorean diatonic and chromatic scales. Considering the anhemitonic scale as a subset of a just diatonic scale, assigning precise frequency proportions to the pentatonic scales of most cultures is problematic as tuning may be variable. Composer Lou Harrison has been one of the most recent proponents, Harrison and William Colvig tuned the slendro scale of the gamelan Si Betty to overtones 16,19,21,24,28
Pentatonic scale
9.
Heptatonic scale
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A heptatonic scale is a musical scale that has seven pitches per octave. Indian classical theory postulates seventy-two seven-tone scale types, whereas others postulate twelve or ten seven-tone scale types collectively called thaat, several heptatonic scales in Western, Roman, Spanish, Hungarian, and Greek music can be analyzed as juxtapositions of tetrachords. All heptatonic scales have all intervals present in their interval vector analysis, there is a special affinity for heptatonic scales in the Western key signature system. In Western music, there are seven such scales, and they are known as the modes of the major scale. In traditional classical theory, the minor scale has two forms, as noted above, an ascending form and a descending form. Although each of these forms of itself comprises seven pitches, together they comprise nine, in certain twentieth-century music, however, it became common systematically to use the ascending form for both ascending and descending passages. Such a use has been ascribed to the works of Béla Bartók. The traditional descending form of the minor scale is equivalent to the natural minor scale in both pitch collection and tonal center. The harmonic minor scale is so called because in music of the common practice period chords or harmonies are derived from it more than from the natural minor scale or the melodic minor scale. The A♭ in the middle voice does not ascend to B, the names heptatonia prima and heptatonia secunda apply to various seven-note scales that can be formed using tones and semitones, but without two semi-tones in succession. The less common series is While the diatonic modes have two and three tones between each semitone, the heptatonia secunda modes have one and four. g, if the interval of the augmented second is used, many other scales become possible. These include Gypsy I-♭II-III-IV-V-♭VI-VII Hungarian I-II-♭III-♯IV-V-♭VI-VII The scales are symmetrical about the tonic and dominant respectively, Phrygian major or dominant harmonic minor I-♭II-III-IV-V-♭VI-♭VII This differs from the Phrygian in having a major third. It may also be considered built on the dominant of the minor scale. Verdis Scala Enigmatica I-♭II-III-♯IV-♯V-♯VI-VII i. e. G A♭ B C♯ D♯ E♯ F♯, melakarta is a South Indian classical method of organizing Raagas based on their unique heptatonic scales. The postulated number of melakarta derives from arithmetical calculation and not from Carnatic practice, seven-pitch melakarta are considered subsets of a twelve-pitch scale roughly analogous to the Western chromatic scale. The second and third melakarta tones can be picked from the 4 chromatic tones, arithmetically this produces 25, or thirty-two, possibilities, but Hindustani theory, in contradistinction to Carnatic theory, excludes scale forms not commonly used. Gongche notation heptatonic scale gives a do, re, mi, sol, la, diatonic and chromatic Modes of the ancohemitonic heptatonic scales and the key signature system
Heptatonic scale
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Melodic minor scale (ascending) on A Play (
help ·
info)
10.
Diatonic scale
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This pattern ensures that, in a diatonic scale spanning more than one octave, all the half steps are maximally separated from each other. The word diatonic comes from the Greek διατονικός, meaning progressing through tones, the seven pitches of any diatonic scale can be obtained using a chain of six perfect fifths. Musical keyboards are designed to play notes, and hence diatonic scales. A diatonic scale can be described as two tetrachords separated by a whole tone. The term diatonic originally referred to the genus, one of the three genera of the ancient Greeks. In musical set theory, Allen Forte classifies diatonic scales as set form 7–35 and this article does not concern alternative seven-note diatonic scales such as the harmonic minor or the melodic minor. Western music from the Middle Ages until the late 19th century is based on the diatonic scale, there is one claim that the 45, 000-year-old Divje Babe Flute uses a diatonic scale, but there is no proof or consensus it is even a musical instrument. There is evidence that the Sumerians and Babylonians used some version of the diatonic scale and this derives from surviving inscriptions that contain a tuning system and musical composition. Despite the conjectural nature of reconstructions of the known as the Hurrian songs from the surviving score. The scales corresponding to the medieval Church modes were diatonic, one of these, the one starting on B, has no pure fifth above its reference note, it is probably for this reason that it was not used. Of the six remaining scales, two were described as corresponding to two others with a B♭ instead of a B♮, A–B–C–D–E–F–G–A was described as D–E–F–G–A–B♭C–D and C–D–E–F–G–A–B–C as F–G–A–B♭–C–D–E–F, as a result, medieval theory described the Church modes as corresponding to four diatonic scales only. Heinrich Glarean considered that the modal scales including a B♭ had to be the result of a transposition, by the beginning of the Baroque period, the notion of musical key was established, describing additional possible transpositions of the diatonic scale. Major and minor scales came to dominate until at least the start of the 20th century, some Church modes survived into the early 18th century, as well as appearing occasionally in classical and 20th-century music, and later in modal jazz. Glareans six natural scales could be transposed not only to include one flat in the signature, of these six scales, three are major scales, three are minor. To these may be added the seventh diatonic scale, with a fifth above the reference note. Transposing each of seven scales on the twelve degrees of the chromatic scale results in a total of eighty-four diatonic scales. The modern musical keyboard originated as a keyboard with only lower keys. The major scale, for instance, can be represented as T–T–S–T–T–T–S or 2–2–1–2–2–2–1 The major scale or Ionian scale is one of the diatonic scales and it is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth that duplicates the first an octave higher
Diatonic scale
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The modern
piano keyboard is based on the interval patterns of the diatonic scale. Any sequence of seven successive white keys plays a diatonic scale.
11.
Chromatic scale
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The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone above or below another. On a modern piano or other equal-tempered instrument, all the semitones have the same size, in other words, the notes of an equal-tempered chromatic scale are equally spaced. An equal-tempered chromatic scale is a nondiatonic scale having no tonic because of the symmetry of its equally spaced notes, the most common conception of the chromatic scale before the 13th century was the Pythagorean chromatic scale. Due to a different tuning technique, the twelve semitones in this scale have two different sizes. Thus, the scale is not perfectly symmetric, many other tuning systems, developed in the ensuing centuries, share a similar asymmetry. Equally spaced pitches are provided only by equal temperament tuning systems, the term chromatic derives from the Greek word chroma, meaning color. Chromatic notes are understood as harmonically inessential embellishments, shadings. The chromatic scale may be notated in a variety of ways, ascending and descending, The chromatic scale has no set spelling agreed upon by all. Its spelling is, however, often dependent upon major or minor key signatures, the images above, therefore, are only examples of chromatic scale notations. As an abstract entity, the chromatic scale is usually notated such that no scale degree is used more than twice in succession. The ancient Chinese chromatic scale is called Shí-èr-lǜ, however, it should not be imagined that this gamut ever functioned as a scale, and it is erroneous to refer to the Chinese chromatic scale, as some Western writers have done. The series of twelve known as the twelve lü were simply a series of fundamental notes from which scales could be constructed. The Indian solfège, i. e. sargam, makes up the notes of the chromatic scale with respective sharps. The total chromatic is the set of all pitch classes. An array is a succession of aggregates and these are 19-EDO just intonation approximations. In Pythagorean tuning the chromatic scale is tuned as follows, with higher than their enharmonic flats. The 12 golden notes of music Hewitt, Michael
Chromatic scale
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Chromatic scale drawn as a
circle: each note is equidistant from its neighbors, separated by a semitone of the same size.
12.
Marimba
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The marimba is a percussion instrument consisting of a set of wooden bars struck with mallets to produce musical tones. Resonators suspended underneath the bars amplify their sound and this instrument is a type of idiophone, but with a more resonant and lower-pitched tessitura than the xylophone. The marimba was developed in Central America by African slaves, and descended from its ancestral balafon instrument, Marimba is now the national instrument of Guatemala and Costa Rica. Modern uses of the marimba include solo performances, woodwind and brass ensembles, marimba concertos, jazz ensembles, marching band, drum and bugle corps, contemporary composers have used the unique sound of the marimba more and more in recent years. A player of the marimba can be called a marimbist or a marimba player, xylophones are widely used in music of west and central Africa. The name marimba stems from Bantu marimba or malimba, xylophone, the instrument itself is present, but is called balafon or heri in Mali and/or Guinea, while its known as gyil among the Akan peoples in and around Ghana. The word marimba and derivative words is used widely in East, other sources credit the creation of the marimba and the kalimba to Queen Marimba of the Wakambi people, who live south of Lake Victoria. In the Swahili language imba means song, Marimba, is said to be the mother of song and the creator of all the instruments, including the marimba. Mama means mother in Kiswahili, so it makes sense that the word mother would be combined with the word for song. The karimba is also said to have created by Queen Marimba. In much of East & Central Africa the karimba is seen as a version of the marimba. Diatonic xylophones were introduced to Central America in the 16th or 17th century, the first historical record of Mayan musicians using gourd resonator marimbas in Guatemala was made in 1680, by the historian Domingo Juarros. It became more widespread during the 18th and 19th centuries, as Mayan, in 1821, the marimba was proclaimed the national instrument of Guatemala in its independence proclamation. The gourd resonators were later replaced by harmonic wooden boxes, variants with slats made of steel, glass or bamboo instead of wood appeared during the 19th century. In 1892, Corazón de Jesús Borras Moreno, a musician from Chiapas, expanded marimba to include the chromatic scale by adding another row of sound bars, the name marimba was later applied to the orchestra instrument inspired by the Latin American model. In the United States, companies like Deagan and Leedy company adapted the Latino American instruments for use in western music, metal tubes were used as resonators, fine-tuned by rotating metal discs at the bottom, lowest note tubes were U-shaped. The marimbas were first used for music and dance, such as Vaudeville theater. Clair Omar Musser was a proponent of marimba in the United States at the time
Marimba
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Classical marimba, model Antonko AMC-12
Marimba
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"The Marimba" from "The Capitals of Spanish America" (1888)
Marimba
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Folk and popular marimba
Marimba
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Contra Bass Marimba: range of G1–G3
13.
Balafon
–
The balafon is a kind of wooden xylophone or percussion idiophone which plays melodic tunes, and usually has between 16 and 27 keys. It has been played in Africa since the 14th century, it originated in Mali, according to the Manding history narrated by the griots. Balafon is a Manding name, but variations exist across West Africa, including the balangi in Sierra Leone, similar instruments are played in parts of Central Africa, with the ancient Kingdom of Kongo denoting the instrument as palaku. Records of the balafon go back to at least the 12th century CE, in 1352 CE, Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta reported the existence of the ngoni and balafon at the court of Malian ruler Mansa Musa. European visitors to West Africa described balafons in the 17th century largely identical to the modern instrument, the Atlantic Slave Trade brought some balafon players to the Americas. The Virginia Gazette records African-Americans playing a barrafoo in 1776, which appears to be a balafon, other North American references to these instruments die out by the mid-19th century. The balafon has seen a resurgence since the 1980s in the growth of African Roots Music, most famous of these exponents is the Rail Band, led by Salif Keita. Even when not still played, its sound and traditional style has been exported to western instruments. Maninka from eastern Guinea play a type of music that adapts balafon playing style to the imported instrument. In the Malinké language balafon is a compound of two words, balan is the name of the instrument and fô is the verb to play, Balafon therefore is really the act of playing the bala. Bala still is used as the name of a large bass balafon in the region of Kolokani and these bala have especially long keys and huge calabashes for amplification. Balani is then used as the name of the high pitched, small balafon with small calabashes, the balani is carried with a strap and usually has 21 keys, while the number of keys on a bala vary with region. A balafon can be either fixed-key or free-key, the balafon usually has 17-21 keys, tuned to a tetratonic, pentatonic or heptatonic scale, depending on the culture of the musician. The balafon is generally capable of producing 18 to 21 notes, Balafon keys are traditionally made from béné wood, dried slowly over a low flame, and then tuned by shaving off bits of wood from the underside of the keys. Wood is taken off the middle to flatten the key or the end to sharpen it, in a fixed-key balafon, the keys are suspended by leather straps just above a wooden frame, under which are hung graduated-size calabash gourd resonators. As the balafon cultures vary across West Africa, so does the approach to the instrument itself, in many areas the balafon is played alone in a ritual context, in others as part of an ensemble. In Guinea and Mali, the balafon is often part of an ensemble of three, pitched low, medium and high, in Cameroon, six balafon of varying size perform together in an orchestra, called a komenchang. An Igbo variation exists with one large tuned key for each player
Balafon
–
A fixed-key balafon, showing resonators with membrane holes.
Balafon
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Children from Burkina Faso performing in Warsaw, Poland during the 5th Cross Culture Festival, September 2009
Balafon
–
Gum-rubber mallets on a balafon
Balafon
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The gyil of northwestern Ghana
14.
Semantron
–
The semantron or semandron, or semanterion, also called a xylon is a percussion instrument used in monasteries to summon the monastics to prayer or at the start of a procession. The portable semantron is made of a long, well-planed piece of timber, usually heart of maple, from 12 feet and upwards in length, by 1 1⁄2 feet broad and it both predates and substitutes for bells, being used to call worshipers to prayer. The metal variety is made of iron or brass, formed of curved metal plates. A metal semantron, smaller than those of wood, is hung near the entrance of the catholicon. Where there is a metal semantron, it is customary to strike it after the one has been played. The semantron is sounded every midnight for night offices, this is done by the candle-lighter, the semantra are usually suspended by chains from a peg in the proaulion or perhaps outside the refectory door, or on a tree in the courtyard. The joy shown at Constantinople on the occasion of the translation of the relics of St. Anastasius was shown by the beating of xyla, St. Sabas rose for his devotions before the hour of striking. Larger and smaller semantra have been used, the smaller being sounded first, followed by the larger, then by those of iron. Theodore Balsamon, in a treatise on the subject, compares the sounding of the little, great and iron semantra to the preaching of the Law and of the Gospel, and the Last Trumpet. He also says that the congregations were summoned by three semantra in monasteries, and only by one large one in parish churches, semantra, from their size and shape, furnished formidable weapons, and were sometimes so used with fatal effect in a church brawl. In Russia, the techniques for playing the bilo were retained in bell-ringing rubrics, also, a semantron may be in use because the monastery cannot afford a bell. The Syrian Orthodox hold the semantron in great veneration, based on an ancient tradition that Noah invented it. According to the story, God told him, Make for yourself a bell of box-wood, which is not liable to corruption, three cubits long and one and a half wide, and also a mallet from the same wood. Strike this instrument three separate times every day, once in the morning to summon the hands to the ark, once at midday to call them to dinner, and once in the evening to invite them to rest. The Syrians strike their semantra when the liturgy is about to begin, a Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, p.1879
Semantron
–
A Russian monk playing a semantron
Semantron
–
A wooden semantron
Semantron
–
A metal semantron hanging at
Neamţ Monastery,
Romania
Semantron
–
A portable wooden semantron standing in the
catholicon of
Djurdjevi Monastery,
Serbia
15.
Orchestra
–
The term orchestra derives from the Greek ὀρχήστρα, the name for the area in front of a stage in ancient Greek theatre reserved for the Greek chorus. A full-size orchestra may sometimes be called an orchestra or philharmonic orchestra. The actual number of employed in a given performance may vary from seventy to over one hundred musicians, depending on the work being played. The term chamber orchestra usually refers to smaller-sized ensembles of about fifty musicians or fewer, the typical orchestra grew in size throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, reaching a peak with the large orchestras called for in the works of Richard Wagner, and later, Gustav Mahler. Orchestras are usually led by a conductor who directs the performance with movements of the hands and arms, the conductor unifies the orchestra, sets the tempo and shapes the sound of the ensemble. The first violin, commonly called the concertmaster, also plays an important role in leading the musicians, the typical symphony orchestra consists of four groups of related musical instruments called the woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings. The orchestra, depending on the size, contains almost all of the instruments in each group. Chamber orchestra usually refers to smaller-sized ensembles, a chamber orchestra might employ as many as fifty musicians. The term concert orchestra may also be used, as in the BBC Concert Orchestra, the so-called standard complement of doubled winds and brass in the orchestra from the first half of the 19th century is generally attributed to the forces called for by Beethoven. The composers instrumentation almost always included paired flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, the exceptions to this are his Symphony No. 4, Violin Concerto, and Piano Concerto No,4, which each specify a single flute. Beethoven carefully calculated the expansion of this particular timbral palette in Symphonies 3,5,6, the third horn in the Eroica Symphony arrives to provide not only some harmonic flexibility, but also the effect of choral brass in the Trio movement. Piccolo, contrabassoon, and trombones add to the finale of his Symphony No.5. A piccolo and a pair of trombones help deliver the effect of storm and sunshine in the Sixth, for several decades after his death, symphonic instrumentation was faithful to Beethovens well-established model, with few exceptions. Apart from the core orchestral complement, various instruments are called for occasionally. These include the guitar, heckelphone, flugelhorn, cornet, harpsichord. Saxophones, for example, appear in some 19th- through 21st-century scores.6 and 9 and William Waltons Belshazzars Feast, and many other works as a member of the orchestral ensemble. The euphonium is featured in a few late Romantic and 20th-century works, usually playing parts marked tenor tuba, including Gustav Holsts The Planets, cornets appear in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskys ballet Swan Lake, Claude Debussys La Mer, and several orchestral works by Hector Berlioz
Orchestra
–
The Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra.
Orchestra
–
Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra
Orchestra
–
Göttinger Symphonie Orchester
Orchestra
–
A modern orchestra concert hall: Philharmony in
Szczecin, Poland
16.
Timbre
–
The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include spectrum and envelope. Singers and instrumental musicians can change the timbre of the music they are singing/playing by using different singing or playing techniques, for example, a violinist can use different bowing styles or play on different parts of the string to obtain different timbres. On electric guitar and electric piano, performers can change the timbre using effects units, in simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical sound have a different sound from another, even when they have the same pitch and loudness. For instance, it is the difference in sound between a guitar and a playing the same note at the same volume. Experienced musicians are able to distinguish between different instruments of the type based on their varied timbres, even if those instruments are playing notes at the same pitch. Tone quality and tone color are synonyms for timbre, as well as the attributed to a single instrument. However, the texture can also refer to the type of music, such as multiple. The sound of an instrument may be described with words such as bright, dark, warm, harsh. There are also colors of noise, such as pink and white, in visual representations of sound, timbre corresponds to the shape of the image. The Acoustical Society of America Acoustical Terminology definition 12, Timbre has been called. the psychoacousticians multidimensional waste-basket category for everything that cannot be labeled pitch or loudness. Many commentators have attempted to decompose timbre into component attributes, the richness of a sound or note a musical instrument produces is sometimes described in terms of a sum of a number of distinct frequencies. The lowest frequency is called the frequency, and the pitch it produces is used to name the note. The dominant frequency is the frequency that is most heard, for example, the dominant frequency for the transverse flute is double the fundamental frequency. Other significant frequencies are called overtones of the frequency, which may include harmonics. Harmonics are whole number multiples of the frequency, such as ×2, ×3, ×4. There are also sometimes subharmonics at whole number divisions of the fundamental frequency, most instruments produce harmonic sounds, but many instruments produce partials and inharmonic tones, such as cymbals and other indefinite-pitched instruments. When the tuning note in an orchestra or concert band is played, each instrument in the orchestra or concert band produces a different combination of these frequencies, as well as harmonics and overtones. The sound waves of the different frequencies overlap and combine, the timbre of a sound is also greatly affected by the following aspects of its envelope, attack time and characteristics, decay, sustain, release and transients
Timbre
–
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17.
Lithophone
–
A lithophone is a musical instrument consisting of a rock or pieces of rock which are struck to produce musical notes. Notes may be sounded in combination or in succession, the lithophone is an idiophone similar to the bars on instruments such as the glockenspiel, metallophone, xylophone and marimba. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, lithophones are designated as 111.22 – directly-struck percussion plaques. A rudimentary form of lithophone is the gong, usually a natural rock formation opportunistically adapted to produce musical tones, such as that on Mfangano Island, in Lake Victoria. The Great Stalacpipe Organ of Luray Caverns, Virginia, USA uses 37 stalactites to produce the Western scale, another stalactite lithophone is to be found at Tenkasi in South India. Ringing Rocks Park in Pennsylvania is another well known lithophone, vietnamese lithophones dating back to ancient times, called đàn đá, have been discovered and revived in the 20th century. The ritual music of Korea features the use of stone chimes called pyeongyeong, the Musical Stones of Skiddaw from Cumbria, England, have been made into an instrument found in Keswick Museum and Art Gallery. A lithophone called the Musical Stones has been created at Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin in Cumbria, England. The Silex Piano, circa 1885, employed suspended flints of various sizes which were struck with other flints to produce sounds, composer-vibraphonist Wolfgang Lackerschmid uses an instrument called the gramorimba, which is featured alongside the vibraphone and marimba in a trio setting. Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós constructed a slate marimba from rocks found in Iceland, the hōkyō, a lithophone invented in Japan, has been made from the bars of sanukite. The German composer Carl Orff calls for a lithophone called Steinspiel in his later works, some lithophones include electric pickups to amplify the sounds. A stone marimba is a configured in the manner as the more typical wooden bar marimba. The bars are usually wide like a marimba, but are thinner and flat. The stone marimba may or may not have resonators, a stone marimba housed at the Musée de lHomme is possibly the oldest-known musical instrument on the planet. Phonolite Ringing rocks Sankarjang The British composer Will Menter invented the llechiphone, UK Musician, Tony Dale developed a resonated slate lithophone in 1984 featured by composer John Hardy. Other slate lithophones, called stonaphones, are made in the U. S. state of Maine by Jim Doble out of recycled slate roofing, an installation in Quark Park by Perry Cook and Jonathan Shor, consisting of 17 bars stretched over a 35-foot long path. Audio and video of Stalacpipe Organ on Sound Tourism site lithophones. com Photographs, audio clips, the Musical Stones of Skiddaw being played Video of the Great Stalacpipe Organ The Parkbench Lithophone The Ringing Rocks of Montana
Lithophone
–
The
Musical Stones of Skiddaw
Lithophone
–
This postcard from 1906 illustrates the method of early lithophone performances in Luray Caverns, Virginia, United States
Lithophone
–
Lithophone made of
Phonolite in the botanic garden in Schellerhau (Germany)
Lithophone
–
Ethiopian Lithophones with Stand, Monastery of Na’akuto La’ab
18.
Metallophone
–
A metallophone is any musical instrument consisting of tuned metal bars which are struck to make sound, usually with a mallet. Metallophones have been used in music in Asia for thousands of years, there are several different types used in Balinese and Javanese gamelan ensembles, including the gendér, gangsa and saron. These instruments have a row of bars, tuned to the distinctive pelog or slendro scales. The Western glockenspiel and vibraphone are also metallophones, they have two rows of bars, in an imitation of the keyboard, and are tuned to the chromatic scale. In music of the 20th century and beyond, the word metallophone is sometimes applied specifically to a row of metal bars suspended over a resonator box. Metallophones tuned to the scale are often used in schools, Carl Orff used diatonic metallophones in several of his pieces. Metallophones with microtonal tunings are used in Iannis Xenakis Pléïades and in the music of Harry Partch, metallophones are a subset of Hornbostel-Sachs category 111.22 Percussion plaques. Celesta Fangxiang Gangsa Gendér Glockenspiel Jegogan Jublag Kulintang a Tiniok/Sarunay Ranat ek lek Ranat thum lek Roneat dek Roneat thong Saron Slentem Step bell Steel marimbaphone Ugal Vibraphone
Metallophone
–
A metallophone used in a
Gamelan —Indonesian Embassy in Canberra
Metallophone
–
Kulintang a Tiniok: A
Philippine metallophone
19.
Pixiphone
–
The Pixiphone was a range of toy glockenspiels. The larger Pixiphones had a raiser-bar which could be used to end a note abruptly, although marketed as a childrens toy, the Pixiphone could be tuned pitch-perfect and was very robust, resulting in many children using them at British schools. The Pixiphone was manufactured by Chas E. Methven Ltd, Chatham, Kent, England, the Pixiphone was played by Steve Took on three Tyrannosaurus Rex albums, where it is incorrectly credited as a Pixiephone. A similar but unrelated instrument was sold as the Sooty Pixie Xylophone in the same period
Pixiphone
–
Pixiphone
Pixiphone
Pixiphone
Pixiphone
–
Sooty Xylophones sold in the 1950s and 1960s
20.
Organology
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Organology is the science of musical instruments and their classification. It embraces study of history, instruments used in different cultures, technical aspects of how instruments produce sound. There is a degree of overlap between organology, ethnomusicology and the branch of the devoted to musical instruments. A number of ancient cultures left documents detailing the musical instruments used and their role in society, one of the most important organologists of the 17th century is Michael Praetorius. His Syntagma musicum is one of the most quoted works from time on the subject. Praetoriuss Theatrum instrumentorium contains possibly the first pictures of African instruments in a European publication, for much of the 18th and 19th centuries, little work was done on organology. Explorers returned to Europe with instruments from different cultures, however, so that by the end of the 19th century and this led to a renewed interest in the subject. This remains the most common scheme used by organologists today. Andre Schaeffner introduced a system based on state-of-matter of the sound-producing mechanism, reference to Kartomis book, page 173. A number of societies exist dedicated to the study of musical instruments, among the more prominent are the Galpin Society, based in the United Kingdom, and the American Musical Instrument Society, based in the United States. Filaret Kolessa – Ukrainian folklorist and ethno-organologist
Organology
–
Musical instrument classification by physics-based organology.
21.
Glockenspiel
–
A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone, however, the glockenspiel, moreover, is usually smaller and higher in pitch. In German, a carillon is also called a Glockenspiel, while in French, in music scores the glockenspiel is sometimes designated by the Italian term campanelli. When used in a marching or military band, the bars are mounted in a portable case and held vertically. However, sometimes the bars are held using a harness similar to a marching snare harness. In orchestral use, the bars are mounted horizontally, a pair of hard, unwrapped mallets, generally with heads made of plastic or metal, are used to strike the bars, although mallet heads can also be made of rubber. If laid out horizontally, a keyboard glockenspiel may be contrived by adding a keyboard to the instrument to facilitate playing chords, another method of playing chords is to use four mallets, two per hand. The glockenspiel is limited to the register, and usually covers about two and a half to three octaves, but can also reach up to three and a half octaves. The glockenspiel is an instrument, its parts are written two octaves below the sounding notes. When struck, the give an very pure, bell-like sound. Glockenspiels are quite popular and appear in almost all genres of music ranging from hip-hop to jazz. A keyboard-operated glockenspiel, as played by Danny Federici on such hit songs as Born to Run and Hungry Heart, is considered part of Bruce Springsteen, john Lennon also plays it on Only a Northern Song. Panic. at the Disco have used glockenspiel in several of their songs, including their hits I Write Sins Not Tragedies and Build God, Then Well Talk. Radiohead have used glockenspiel on their single No Surprises as well as on The Tourist, Lull, Morning Bell/Amnesiac, Sit Down/Stand Up, songs From the Wood, Heavy Horses and Stormwatch. Solo glockenspiel can be heard briefly, but notably at the beginning of Shostakovichs 15th Symphony, a modern example of the glockenspiel can be heard in Steve Reichs 1970–71 composition Drumming, in which the glockenspiel plays a major role in the third and fourth movements. Other instruments that work on the same principle as the glockenspiel include the marimba. The Dulcitone has a sound to the glockenspiel since its sound is made by hammers striking tuning forks. The dulcitone uses soft hammers which damp the forks, compared to the hammers of the glockenspiel
Glockenspiel
–
Glockenspiel
Glockenspiel
–
A Mardi Gras musician playing a glockenspiel.
Glockenspiel
–
Two bell lyres in use
Glockenspiel
–
Most orchestral glockenspiels are mounted in a case
22.
Cameroon
–
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Cameroons coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. French and English are the languages of Cameroon. The country is referred to as Africa in miniature for its geological and cultural diversity. Natural features include beaches, deserts, mountains, rainforests, the country is well known for its native styles of music, particularly makossa and bikutsi, and for its successful national football team. Early inhabitants of the territory included the Sao civilisation around Lake Chad, portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English. Fulani soldiers founded the Adamawa Emirate in the north in the 19th century, Cameroon became a German colony in 1884 known as Kamerun. After World War I, the territory was divided between France and the United Kingdom as League of Nations mandates, the Union des Populations du Cameroun political party advocated independence, but was outlawed by France in the 1950s, leading to the Cameroonian Independence War. It waged war on French and UPC militant forces until 1971, in 1960, the French-administered part of Cameroon became independent as the Republic of Cameroun under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. The southern part of British Cameroons federated with it in 1961 to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon, the federation was abandoned in 1972. The country was renamed the United Republic of Cameroon in 1972, Cameroon enjoys relatively high political and social stability. This has permitted the development of agriculture, roads, railways, nevertheless, large numbers of Cameroonians live in poverty as subsistence farmers. Power lies firmly in the hands of the president since 1982, Paul Biya. The English-speaking territories of Cameroon have grown increasingly alienated from the government, politicians and civil society in English-speaking regions have called for greater decentralization and even complete separation or independence from the former French-governed territories. The territory of present-day Cameroon was first settled during the Neolithic Era, the longest continuous inhabitants are groups such as the Baka. From here, Bantu migrations into eastern, southern, and central Africa are believed to have originated about 2,000 years ago, the Sao culture arose around Lake Chad c. AD500 and gave way to the Kanem and its successor state, kingdoms, fondoms, and chiefdoms arose in the west. Portuguese sailors reached the coast in 1472 and they noted an abundance of the ghost shrimp Lepidophthalmus turneranus in the Wouri River and named it Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English
Cameroon
–
Bamum script
Cameroon
–
Flag
Cameroon
–
Former president
Ahmadou Ahidjo ruled from 1960 until 1982.
Cameroon
–
A statue of a chief in
Bana, West Region.
23.
Rosewood
–
Rosewood refers to any of a number of richly hued timbers, often brownish with darker veining but found in many different hues. All genuine rosewoods belong to the genus Dalbergia and it is best known as Brazilian Rosewood, but also as Bahia rosewood. This wood has a sweet smell, which persists for many years. Another classic rosewood comes from Dalbergia latifolia known as Indian rosewood or sonokeling and it is native to India and is also grown in plantations elsewhere in Pakistan. Madagascar rosewood, known as bois de rose, is prized for its red color. It is overexploited in the wild, despite a 2010 moratorium on trade and illegal logging, throughout southeast Asia Dalbergia oliveri is harvested for use in woodworking. It has a fragrant and dense grain near the core, however the outer sapwood is soft. Dalbergia cultrata that has variegated burgundy to light color, a blackwood timber is sold as Burmese Rosewood. Products built with rosewood based engineered woods are sold as Malaysian Rosewood or as Dalbergia oliveri, some rosewood comes from Dalbergia retusa, also known as the Nicaraguan rosewood or as palisander is controlled by CITES under Appendix 2 which allows some commercial activity. Several species are known as Guatemalan rosewood or Panama rosewood, D. tucerencis, D. tucarensis, stevensonii, also on CITES Appendix 2, is used for marimba keys, guitar parts, clarinets and other musical and ornamental applications. Not all species in the large genus Dalbergia yield rosewoods, only about a species do. The woods of some species in the genus Dalbergia are notable—even famous—woods in their own right, African blackwood, cocobolo, kingwood. The woods of some species are usable for tool handles at best. The timber trade will sell many timbers under the name due to some similarities. A fair number of these come from other legume genera. Another that may be found in market from Southeast Asia is Pterocarpus indicus, Dalbergia sissoo is timber from rosewood species from India and Bangladesh, usually known as Sheesham or North-Indian Rosewood. It is extremely dense and has mild rot resistance, but it is porous and its exterior is soft and it is used for making cabinets, flooring and carving. It is exported as quality veneers, due to its after work quality when sealed and dyed, it is often sold as genuine rosewood or as teak
Rosewood
–
A classic rosewood surface
Rosewood
–
Chess pieces in
Dalbergia latifolia rosewood
Rosewood
–
Back of guitar made with East Indian rosewood
Rosewood
–
A
Chinese Ming Dynasty compound
wardrobe made of 'huanghuali' rosewood, latter half of the 16th century.
24.
Padauk
–
Pterocarpus is a pantropical genus of trees in the family Fabaceae. It belongs to the subfamily Faboideae, and was assigned to the informal monophyletic Pterocarpus clade within the Dalbergieae. Most species of Pterocarpus yield valuable timber traded as padauk, other names are mukwa or narra. The wood is marketed as amboyna when it has grown in the burl form, the scientific name is Latinized Ancient Greek and means wing fruit, referring to the unusual shape of the seed pods in this genus. Padauk wood is obtained from species of Pterocarpus. All padauks are of African or Asian origin, padauks are valued for their toughness, stability in use, and decorativeness, most having a reddish wood. Most Pterocarpus woods contain either water- or alcohol-soluble substances and can be used as dyes, the padauk found most often is African Padauk from Pterocarpus soyauxii which, when freshly cut, is a very bright red/orange but when exposed to sunlight fades over time to a warm brown. Its colour makes it a favourite among woodworkers, burmese Padauk is Pterocarpus macrocarpus while Andaman Padauk is Pterocarpus dalbergioides. Padauks can be confused with rosewoods to which they are somewhat related, like rosewood, padauk is sometimes used to make xylophone and marimba keys, and guitars. It is an important material in traditional Chinese furniture, Some padauks, e. g. P. soyauxii, are used as herbal medicines, for example to treat skin parasites and fungal infections. Pterocarpin is a found in Pterocarpus spp. A total of 35 species are accepted,1 Some sources treat Pterocarpus echinatus as a synonym of Pterocarpus indicus. Pterocarpus in West African plants – A Photo Guide
Padauk
–
Pterocarpus
Padauk
–
Wood of Pterocarpus officinalis.
25.
Transposing instrument
–
A transposing instrument is a musical instrument whose music is notated at a pitch different from the pitch that actually sounds. Playing a written C on an instrument produces a pitch other than C. For example, a written C on a B♭ clarinet sounds a concert B♭, rather than a property of the instrument, the transposition is a convention of music notation—however, instruments whose music is typically notated in this way are called transposing instruments. As transposing instruments is a convention, the issue of transposition is mainly an issue for genres of music which use sheet music, such as classical music. For some instruments, the pitch is still a C, but in a different octave. There are several reasons that composers, orchestrators and arrangers transpose music for certain instruments, many instruments are members of a family of instruments that differ mainly in size. For example, the fingerings which produce the notes of a C major scale on a standard flute, instruments that transpose this way are often referred to as being in a certain key, such as the A clarinet or clarinet in A. The instruments key tells which pitch will sound when the plays a note written as C. A player of a B♭ clarinet who reads a written C will sound a B♭ while the player of an A clarinet will read the same note, the non-transposing member of the family is thus called a clarinet in C. In the early 20th century, however, instruments with basic scales other than C were sometimes written as transposing instruments, before valves were invented in the 19th century, horns and trumpets could play only the notes of the overtone series from a single fundamental pitch. As a result, all music was written as if for a fundamental pitch of C. The introduction of valves made this unnecessary, though many players and composers found the tone quality of valved instruments inferior. F transposition became standard in the early 19th century, with the horn sounding a fifth below written pitch in treble clef. In bass clef composers differed in whether they expected the instruments to transpose down a fifth or up a fourth, when they played together in an ensemble, the parts of some instruments would then have to be transposed to compensate. In many of Bachs cantatas the organ part is notated a full step lower than the other instruments, a few early-music ensembles of the present day must do something similar if they comprise some instruments tuned to A415 and others to A440, approximately a semitone apart. Modern builders of continuo instruments sometimes include moveable keyboards which can play with either pitch standard. The harpsichord has a string for each note, plucked by a plectrum. Moving the keyboard mechanism right or left causes the A key to play the next string, instruments that transpose at the octave are not playing in a different key from concert pitch instruments, but sound an octave higher or lower than written
Transposing instrument
–
The
B♭ clarinet is a transposing instrument. When the note C occurs in a score that is especially written for a B ♭ clarinet (top), the instrument will actually sound a B ♭ (bottom), hence the name of the instrument. The very same fingering when played on an
A clarinet will sound an A, and in a score for A clarinet, an A will be written as a C.
26.
Resonators
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The oscillations in a resonator can be either electromagnetic or mechanical. Resonators are used to generate waves of specific frequencies or to select specific frequencies from a signal. Musical instruments use acoustic resonators that produce sound waves of specific tones, another example is quartz crystals used in electronic devices such as radio transmitters and quartz watches to produce oscillations of very precise frequency. A cavity resonator is one in which waves exist in a space inside the device. Acoustic cavity resonators, in sound is produced by air vibrating in a cavity with one opening, are known as Helmholtz resonators. A physical system can have as many resonant frequencies as it has degrees of freedom, systems with one degree of freedom, such as a mass on a spring, pendulums, balance wheels, and LC tuned circuits have one resonant frequency. Systems with two degrees of freedom, such as coupled pendulums and resonant transformers can have two resonant frequencies, a crystal lattice composed of N atoms bound together can have N resonant frequencies. As the number of coupled harmonic oscillators grows, the time it takes to transfer energy from one to the next becomes significant, the vibrations in them begin to travel through the coupled harmonic oscillators in waves, from one oscillator to the next. The term resonator is most often used for an object in which vibrations travel as waves, at an approximately constant velocity, bouncing back. The material of the resonator, through which the waves flow, therefore, they can have millions of resonant frequencies, although only a few may be used in practical resonators. The oppositely moving waves interfere with other, and at its resonant frequencies reinforce each other to create a pattern of standing waves in the resonator. If the distance between the sides is d, the length of a trip is 2 d. To cause resonance, the phase of a sinusoidal wave after a round trip must be equal to the initial phase so the waves self-reinforce. The above analysis assumes the medium inside the resonator is homogeneous, so the waves travel at a constant speed, and they are then called overtones instead of harmonics. There may be several such series of resonant frequencies in a single resonator, an electrical circuit composed of discrete components can act as a resonator when both an inductor and capacitor are included. Oscillations are limited by the inclusion of resistance, either via a specific resistor component, such resonant circuits are also called RLC circuits after the circuit symbols for the components. A distributed-parameter resonator has capacitance, inductance, and resistance that cannot be isolated into separate lumped capacitors, inductors, an example of this, much used in filtering, is the helical resonator. A single layer coil that is used as a secondary or tertiary winding in a Tesla coil or magnifying transmitter is also a distributed resonator
Resonators
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RF cavities in the
linac of the
Australian Synchrotron are used to accelerate and bunch beams of
electrons; the linac is the tube passing through the middle of the cavity.
Resonators
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A standing wave in a rectangular cavity resonator.
Resonators
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A sport motorcycle, equipped with exhaust resonator, designed for performance.
Resonators
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A
Dobro -style
resonator guitar
27.
Gourd
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A gourd is a plant of the family Cucurbitaceae, particularly Cucurbita and Lagenaria or the fruit of the two genera of Bignoniaceae calabash tree, Crescentia and Amphitecna. The term refers to a number of species and subspecies, many with hard shells, likely one of the earliest domesticated types of plants, subspecies of the bottle gourd, Lagenaria siceraria, have been discovered in archaeological sites dating from as early as 13,000 BC. Gourds have had numerous uses throughout history, including as tools, musical instruments, objects of art, film, gourd is occasionally used to describe crop plants in the family Cucurbitaceae, like pumpkins, cucumbers, squash, luffa, and melons. More specifically, gourd refers to the fruits of plants in the two Cucurbitaceae genera Lagenaria and Cucurbita, or also to their hollow, dried-out shell, a gourd can also have a hard shell when dehydrated. There are many different gourds worldwide, the main plants referred to as gourds include several species from the Cucurbita genus, Crescentia cujete and Lagenaria siceraria. The bitter melon/balsam apple/balsam pear is also referred to as a gourd. L. siceraria was brought to Europe and the Americas very early in history, being found in Peruvian archaeological sites dating from 13,000 to 11,000 BC and Thailand sites from 11,000 to 6,000 BC. The gourds found in the Americas appear to have come from the Asian subspecies, very early in history, a new study now indicates Africa. The archaeological and DNA records show it likely that the gourd was among the first domesticated species, gourds continued to be used throughout history, in almost every culture throughout the world. European contact in North America found extensive use, including the use of bottle gourds as birdhouses to attract purple martins. Almost every culture had musical instruments made of gourds, including drums, stringed instruments common to Africa and wind instruments and these include Teasle gourd, Spine gourd, Sweet gourd, balsam apple and Momordica sahyadrica. Cultures from arid regions often associated gourds with water, and they appear in creation myths. Since the beginning of their history, they have had a multitude of uses, including food, kitchen tools, toys, musical instruments and decoration. Today, gourds are used for a wide variety of crafts, including jewelry, furniture, dishes, utensils. The Chinese developed a technique of tying a two-part mould around young gourds, or a part of them, so that the gourd grew into the mould, shaped gourds had various decorative uses, especially as boxes, bottles and other containers. The Luffa gourds, Luffa aegyptiaca and Luffa acutangula, have been used throughout recent history as scrubbing sponge and this is prepared by removing the skin and pulp from the gourd, and bleaching the fibers. A güiro is a Latin American percussion instrument made from a gourd, maracas are percussion instruments often made from gourds. A sitar is a stringed instrument, parts of which are made from gourds
Gourd
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Cucurbita pepo gourds grown in a suburban garden
Gourd
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A
calabash gourd,
Lagenaria siceraria, used for drinking
mate
Gourd
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Chinese
snuff bottle (Biyanhu) with body from a moulded gourd, and a
jade stopper.
Gourd
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An assortment of gourds on a table.
28.
Helmholtz resonator
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Helmholtz resonance or wind throb is the phenomenon of air resonance in a cavity, such as when one blows across the top of an empty bottle. Helmholtz described in his 1862 book, On the Sensations of Tone, when the resonators nipple is placed inside ones ear, a specific frequency of the complex sound can be picked out and heard clearly. The proper tone of the resonator may even be sometimes heard cropping up in the whistling of the wind, the rattling of carriage wheels, a set of varied size resonators was sold to be used as discrete acoustic filters for the spectral analysis of complex sounds. This type of resonator is in use in the Fourier analyzer, when air is forced into a cavity, the pressure inside increases. When the external force pushing the air into the cavity is removed, due to the inertia of the moving air the cavity will be left at a pressure slightly lower than the outside, causing air to be drawn back in. This process repeats, with the magnitude of the pressure oscillations increasing and decreasing asymptotically after the sound starts, the port is placed in the external meatus of the ear, allowing the experimenter to hear the sound and to determine its loudness. The resonant mass of air in the chamber is set in motion through the second hole, a gastropod seashell can form a low Q Helmholtz resonator, amplifying many frequencies, resulting in the sounds of the sea. The term Helmholtz resonator is now generally applied to include bottles from which sound is generated by blowing air across the mouth of the bottle. In this case the length and diameter of the neck also contribute to the resonance frequency. By one definition a Helmholtz resonator augments the amplitude of the motion of the enclosed air in a chamber by taking energy from sound waves passing in the surrounding air. In the other definition the sound waves are generated by a stream of air flowing across the open top of an enclosed volume of air. This value is usually 1.4 for air and diatomic gases, a is the cross-sectional area of the neck, m is the mass in the neck, P0 is the static pressure in the cavity, V0 is the static volume of the cavity. From the definition of mass density, V n m =1 ρ, thus, ω H = γ P0 ρ A V0 L e q, and f H = ω H2 π, where, fH is the resonant frequency. The speed of sound in a gas is given by, v = γ P0 ρ, thus, the length of the neck appears in the denominator because the inertia of the air in the neck is proportional to the length. The volume of the cavity appears in the denominator because the constant of the air in the cavity is inversely proportional to its volume. The area of the neck matters for two reasons, increasing the area of the neck increases the inertia of the air proportionately, but also decreases the velocity at which the air rushes in and out. Depending on the shape of the hole, the relative thickness of the sheet with respect to the size of the hole and the size of the cavity. More sophisticated formulae can still be derived analytically, with physical explanations
Helmholtz resonator
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A brass, spherical Helmholtz resonator based on his original design, circa 1890-1900.
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