A thongophone is a

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

classified as a

percussion instrument A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

. Playing the thongophone is somewhat rare in Western music for solo performance, but was brought to prominence by the music of

Yanni Yiannis Chryssomallis ( el, Γιάννης Χρυσομάλλης; born November 14, 1954), known professionally as Yanni ( ), is a Greek-American composer, keyboardist, pianist, and music producer. Yanni continues to use the musical shorthan ...

and

Blue Man Group Blue Man Group is an American performance art company formed in 1987. It was purchased in July 2017 by the Canadian company Cirque du Soleil. Blue Man Group is known for its stage productions, which incorporate many kinds of music and art, bot ...

, among others. Thongophones are found in rural

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

. The thongophone produces sound by striking a rubber clapper, usually a

thong The thong is a garment generally used as either underwear or in some countries, as a swimsuit. It may also be worn for traditional ceremonies or competitions. Viewed from the front, the thong typically resembles a bikini bottom, but at the ...

, hence its namesake, against the opening of one of many PVC pipes of varying length. Vibrations are transmitted through the hollow pipes, each one resonating to a preset pitch. The tubing system that allows the instrument to generate its sounds, resembles a

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...

, which works on the same principle; however, the resonance is generated using a more direct method. In standard thongophones, there is a standard pitch designated for each tube; however the variable pitch thongophone, or drumbone, was made widely known due to its use by

, as seen in the

Intel Pentium 4 Pentium 4 is a series of single-core CPUs for desktops, laptops and entry-level servers manufactured by Intel. The processors were shipped from November 20, 2000 until August 8, 2008. The production of Netburst processors was active from 2000 un ...

commercials. The thongophone can also be played with the use of drumsticks, or virtually any other solid stick-like object to create resonance in the tube. On the instrument, one end of each pipe is set up to resemble the layout of a standard

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

in that the natural notes are at the front, C, D, E, F, G, A, B and so on, with the Accidental notes, C♯/D♭, E♭/D♯, F♯/G♭, G♯/A♭ and B♭/A♯ above them in groups of 2 and 3, just as in a piano or a

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 ...

References

Keyboard percussion instruments Percussion idiophones Papua New Guinean musical instruments {{Idiophone-instrument-stub