Instruments | Free-Reed Instruments Around the World | Woodwind

The birthplace of free reeds seems to have been eastern Asia. There, it is typical to place a small free reed, made of metal or bamboo, into a bamboo tube cut to the appropriate length so that its air column resonates at the reed’s frequency, increasing the volume and allowing the player to allow it to sound, or to stop it, by opening or closing the airway.

What is a Free-Reed Instrument?

If the tongue of a Vietnamese dan moi (jew’s harp) is bent slightly so that its rest position is no longer in the plane of the frame, it is possible to activate it without plucking, simply by blowing or sucking (depending which way it is sprung), to produce a steady, non-decaying note. The instrument has thus been transformed from ‘plucked idiophone’ to a free reed. Unlike the single and double reeds, a free reed doesn’t produce its sound by opening and closing an airstream – it produces it by its own vibration.

Sheng

Bunches of such reed-pipes, tuned to chords or a scale, are attached to a single mouthpiece; each tube has a hole that the players keep covered with their fingers unless they wants that particular note to sound. The best-known of these ‘mouth-organs’ is the Chinese sheng, which looks a little like a metal teapot with a thicket of 17 or more thin bamboo pipes emerging from its lid, with the spout to blow or suck down. Instruments working on the same principle can be found in the neighbouring countries of Korea, Laos, Thailand, Borneo, Vietnam and Japan.

The Japanese sho is descended from a version of sheng introduced from China in the eighth century. The Lao and Thai khaen has two rows of bamboo pipes, each with a tuned reed, that extend both above and below the wind-chest; the pipes can be very long, up to a couple of metres, as can those of the almost bow-and-arrow shaped Laot and Thai gaeng, and the similar south Chinese lusheng, both of which have a long tubular wind-chest and fewer pipes.

Chinese Pipes

The pipes of the Chinese hulusheng (‘gourd sheng’), an older but still played form of which the modern sheng is a development, have lower openings flush with the bottom of the gourd wind-chest; the player can bend notes by closing these with his thumb.

This principle is taken further in the small range of single-pipe free-reed instruments, of which the best known is the ba-wu of China’s Yunnan region. It looks like a bamboo transverse flute, but a ‘V’-shaped brass free reed is set into it where a flute’s blowing hole would be. By blowing through the reed and fingering as one would a flute, the reed is forced above its fundamental into a scale of just over an octave, with an alluring dark, clarinet-like tone. There are kindred single-tube free-reed instruments in Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. The Vietnamese...

To read the full article please either login or register .

Source: The Illustrated Complete Musical Instruments Handbook, general editor Lucien Jenkins

AUTHORITATIVE

An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...

CURATED

Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.

Rock, A Life Story

Rock, A Life Story

The ultimate story of a life of rock music, from the 1950s to the present day.

David Bowie

David Bowie

Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers his life, music, art and movies, with a sweep of incredible photographs.