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Boomwhacker
A Boomwhacker is a percussion instrument in the plosive aerophone and idiophone family. They are lightweight, hollow, color-coded, plastic tubes, tuned to a musical pitch by length. They were first produced by Craig Ramsell through his company Whacky Music in 1995. The term is now a registered trademark by Rhythm Band Instruments. History Boomwhackers evolved at a time when junk bands and performers using instruments made from recycled materials were popular. Bands often used gas pipes or various cast-offs from plumbers that were cut to length to produce different pitches when struck on an open end. Schools, meanwhile, created their own junk bands as a cheap way to simultaneously promote creativity and encourage recycling. However, creating a custom kit was labor-intensive, leaving a niche for Boomwhackers, which are premade and mass-produced. American Craig Ramsell reportedly came up with the idea for his Boomwhackers in 1994 while at home recovering from radiation therapy. W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plosive Aerophone
An aerophone () is a musical instrument that produces sound primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes (which are respectively chordophones and membranophones), and without the vibration of the instrument itself adding considerably to the sound (or idiophones). According to Curt Sachs, Sachs, These may be lips, a mechanical reed, or a sharp edge. Also, an aerophone may be excited by percussive acts, such as the slapping of the keys of a flute or of any other woodwing. A free aerophone lacks the enclosed column of air yet, "cause a series of condensations and rarefications by various means." Overview Aerophones are one of the four main classes of instruments in the original Hornbostel–Sachs system of musical instrument classification, which further classifies aerophones by whether or not the vibrating air is contained within the instrument. The first class (41) includes instruments which, when played, do ''not'' contain the vibratin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hand
A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each "hand" and fingerprints extremely similar to human fingerprints) are often described as having "hands" instead of paws on their front limbs. The raccoon is usually described as having "hands" though opposable thumbs are lacking. Some evolutionary anatomists use the term ''hand'' to refer to the appendage of digits on the forelimb more generally—for example, in the context of whether the three digits of the bird hand involved the same homologous loss of two digits as in the dinosaur hand. The human hand usually has five digits: four fingers plus one thumb; these are often referred to collectively as five fingers, however, whereby the thumb is included as one of the fingers. It has 27 bones, not including the sesamoid bone, the number o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North American Percussion Instruments
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is related to the Old High German ''nord'', both descending from the Proto-Indo-European unit *''ner-'', meaning "left; below" as north is to left when facing the rising sun. Similarly, the other cardinal directions are also related to the sun's position. The Latin word ''borealis'' comes from the Greek '' boreas'' "north wind, north", which, according to Ovid, was personified as the wind-god Boreas, the father of Calais and Zetes. ''Septentrionalis'' is from ''septentriones'', "the seven plow oxen", a name of ''Ursa Major''. The Greek ἀρκτικός (''arktikós'') is named for the same constellation, and is the source of the English word ''Arctic''. Other languages have other derivations. For example, in Lezgian, ''kefer'' can mean b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hand Percussion
Hand percussion is a percussion instrument that is held in the hand. They can be made from wood, metal or plastic, bottles stops and are usually shaken, scraped, or tapped with fingers or a stick. It includes all instruments that are not drums or pitched percussion instruments such as the marimba or the xylophone. Shakers A shaker (percussion) is any instrument that makes a noise when shaken. Historically they were naturally occurring items such as seed pods. A caxixi is a basketwork shaker with a gourd base. Gourds are used all over the world and covered with a net with shells or seeds to create an instrument such as the shekere. Modern shakers are often cylinders made from metal wood or plastic containing small hard items such as seeds, stones, or plastic - an example is the Egg Shaker.There is another category of shaken instrument using jingles, little discs of metal which tap together when shaken. Tambourines fall into this category. Scrapers This can be a wood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Idiophones Struck Directly
An idiophone is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the vibration of the instrument itself, without the use of air flow (as with aerophones), strings (chordophones), membranes (membranophones) or electricity ( electrophones). It is the first of the four main divisions in the original Hornbostel–Sachs system of musical instrument classification (see List of idiophones by Hornbostel–Sachs number). The early classification of Victor-Charles Mahillon called this group of instruments ''autophones''. The most common are struck idiophones, or concussion idiophones, which are made to vibrate by being struck, either directly with a stick or hand (like the wood block, singing bowl, steel tongue drum, triangle or marimba) or indirectly, with scraping or shaking motions (like maracas or flexatone). Various types of bells fall into both categories. A common plucked idiophone is the Jew's harp. According to Sachs, idiophones Etymology The word is from Ancie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melody
A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch (music), pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively, the term can include other musical elements such as Timbre, tonal color. It is the foreground to the background accompaniment. A line or part (music), part need not be a foreground melody. Melodies often consist of one or more musical Phrase (music), phrases or Motif (music), motifs, and are usually repeated throughout a musical composition, composition in various forms. Melodies may also be described by their melodic motion or the pitches or the interval (music), intervals between pitches (predominantly steps and skips, conjunct or disjunct or with further restrictions), pitch range, tension (music), tension and release, continuity and coheren ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metallophone
A metallophone is any musical instrument in which the sound-producing body is a piece of metal (other than a metal string), consisting of tuned metal bars, tubes, rods, bowls, or plates. Most frequently the metal body is struck to produce sound, usually with a mallet, but may also be activated by friction, keyboard action, or other means. 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 single row of bars, tuned to the distinctive pelog or slendro scales, or a subset of them. The Western glockenspiel and vibraphone are also metallophones: they have two rows of bars, in an imitation of the piano 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 single row of metal bars suspended over a resonator box. Metallopho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use. The term ''xylophone'' may be used generally, to include all such instruments such as the marimba, balafon and even the semantron. However, in the orchestra, the term ''xylophone'' refers specifically to a chromatic instrument of somewhat higher pitch range and drier timbre than the marimba, and these two instruments should not be confused. A person who plays the xylophone is known as a ''xylophonist'' or simply a ''xylophone player''. The term is also popularly used to refer to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acoustic Resonance
Acoustic resonance is a phenomenon in which an acoustic system amplifies sound waves whose frequency matches one of its own natural frequencies of vibration (its ''resonance frequencies''). The term "acoustic resonance" is sometimes used to narrow mechanical resonance to the frequency range of human hearing, but since acoustics is defined in general terms concerning vibrational waves in matter, acoustic resonance can occur at frequencies outside the range of human hearing. An acoustically resonant object usually has more than one resonance frequency, especially at harmonics of the strongest resonance. It will easily vibrate at those frequencies, and vibrate less strongly at other frequencies. It will "pick out" its resonance frequency from a complex excitation, such as an impulse or a wideband noise excitation. In effect, it is filtering out all frequencies other than its resonance. Acoustic resonance is an important consideration for instrument builders, as most acoustic i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Octave
In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music," the use of which is "common in most musical systems." The interval between the first and second harmonics of the harmonic series is an octave. In Western music notation, notes separated by an octave (or multiple octaves) have the same name and are of the same pitch class. To emphasize that it is one of the perfect intervals (including unison, perfect fourth, and perfect fifth), the octave is designated P8. Other interval qualities are also possible, though rare. The octave above or below an indicated note is sometimes abbreviated ''8a'' or ''8va'' ( it, all'ottava), ''8va bassa'' ( it, all'ottava bassa, sometimes also ''8vb''), or simply ''8'' for the octave in the direction indicated by placing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
