Like the snare drum and tenor drum, the bass drum originated in the Middle East. It is a large instrument with a cylindrical body and two heads, and is the drum used to keep the rhythm in marching bands. The modern orchestral bass drum (100 cm/70 in diameter and 50 cm/20 in long) is double headed and rod tensioned. ...
The bluesman who took the blues into the mainstream, B.B. King (b. 1925) is also its ambassador to the world. His solid, seasoned style is heard internationally. King’s style draws on the Mississippi blues of Elmore James and Muddy Waters, the Chicago blues of Buddy Guy and Magic Sam, and the West-Coast blues of T-Bone Walker ...
The double bass is the only survivor from the viol family to have found a regular place in the orchestra. Like other members of the viol family, it initially carried frets – tiny knotted pieces of gut that measured out the fingerboard. As it was adopted into the violin family, it settled down as a four-stringed instrument, shed ...
Drum’n’bass was a kind of re-branding that came from the scene itself – the producer side that wanted to allow filmic sounds to speak for them rather than some patois MC. By downplaying the ragga, producers and DJs were effectively saying that they wished to communicate a message or mood sonically rather than verbally. Some have argued that drum’n’bass is ...
Commonly pitched in B flat like the standard orchestral clarinet, but sounding an octave below it, the bass clarinet began life as an eighteenth-century instrument that looked faintly like a dulcian, though with an upward-pointing bell. Adolphe Sax (1814–94) and L. A. Buffet (fl. 1839–43) both worked on the instrument in the nineteenth century. Sax developed one with ...
Attempts were made in the nineteenth century to turn the bassoon into a metal instrument: Charles and Adolphe Sax experimented with brass bassoons and the latter patented such an instrument, with 24 keys, in 1851. There were rival arrangements of keys (which implied different ways of fingering) available in the nineteenth century. There continue to be French and German ...
The invention of valves meant that brass instruments could now explore the bass register, and soon after 1835 bass tubas started being manufactured in Germany. Essentially a keyed bugle by descent, the bass tuba (confusingly, the name tuba comes from the Latin word for trumpet) has a very wide conical bore and as a result requires a good ...
Drumming in West Africa is a rural indigenous art form, and it accompanies dance and singing. Master drummers are members of the griot class of professional musical entertainers. These men lead the drumming and promote the tradition by teaching students. The two main types of West African drum are goblet drums and hourglass drums made from a hollowed-out single log ...
Drums are an essential part of urban music, classical ensembles, sacred Sufi music, and traditional folk music throughout the Middle East. Dumbek, Tar and Riq The dumbek is a goblet drum (10–22 cm/4–9 in diameter and 22–40 cm/9–16 in long). It has a hollow pottery, wood or metal body and a goatskin or fish-skin head. There ...
The snare drum and tenor drum both originated in the Middle East. Today, cylindrical drums like these are played in western classical music, and in pop, rock and jazz. They appear in marching and military bands, in the orchestra and as part of the drum kit. Cylindrical Drums The body of a cylindrical drum is usually made ...
A frame drum is a skin stretched over and nailed to a shallow square or circular frame. It is played with sticks or with the hands. Frame drums are common to many musical cultures, and the modern tambourine and bodhrán are essentially the same instruments that were being played in Arabia and India in pre-Islamic times. They are often played ...
Drums are widely used in traditional music in the Far East, along with a diverse range of cymbals, gongs, metallophones and untuned wooden idiophones. In much traditional music of this region, the drum is played by the director of the ensemble, who uses specific signals for the other performers. Chinese Drums Most Chinese drums (gu) are ...
Friction drums are folk instruments of pre-industrialized Central Europe, Africa and Latin America. They are often associated with spiritual music because of their unusual sound. Construction A friction drum comprises a vessel covered in a membrane which is made to vibrate by means of a stick or string rubbed against or pushed through it. In the Brazilian cuíca, the ...
String drums are simple string instruments that are struck in a technique similar to playing the violin col legno (literally ‘with the wood’) or battuta (measuring time by beating). They are traditional instruments of Hungary and the Balkans. Ttun ttun The ttun ttun is a Basque instrument constructed from a tapered hollow wooden case that is 11 cm (4 in) wide at ...
Slit drums, or log drums, are found in many pre-industrialized cultures in Africa, Australasia, Central and South America, and the Far East. They are formed by hollowing a block of wood through a lengthwise slit, and are sounded by the players’ stamping feet or by being beaten with sticks. Slit drums are really idiophones as ...
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