As the name suggests, a scraper comprises a ridged edge which is scraped with a stick. Scraping instruments are common in Africa, Central and South America and the Carribean, and are played with sticks, combs or a switch. Güiro The güiro or reco-reco (raspador, casaca) originated in Africa and is made of ridged bamboo, or ...
group and give signals to the performers using a whistle (apito). Make-Up of a Samba Band Typically a samba bateria will comprise a group of drums and a shaker (ganzá), scraper (reco-reco) and the agogo, a double- or triple-cone-shaped bell played with a metal or wooden stick. In ascending order of pitch, the drums are the surdo (bass drum), ...
The word ‘lute’ is the collective term for a category of instruments defined as ‘any chordophone having a neck that serves as string bearer, with the plane of the strings running parallel to that of the soundboard’. In other words, the lute is a soundbox with a neck sticking out. The strings of some are plucked, some are ...
distribution of the pellets when playing. A cabasa (afuche, xequebum) is a gourd with beads or small shells strung on the outside, and is a cross between a scraper and a shaker. Cabasas made from natural materials like the Brazilian xequebum normally have the beads sewn in a fine net around the gourd, whereas a metal cabasa is ...
Percussion instruments are a diverse and interesting family. Every human culture plays them, and they are among the oldest instruments known to man. Percussion instruments are indispensable to practically every genre and style of music. In many cultures, the leader of a musical ensemble plays a percussion instrument to give signals to the other performers, such as when ...
Schooled by Joe Satriani, trained by Frank Zappa and turned into a guitar hero by David Lee Roth, Steve Vai (b. 1960) has combined an energetic technique with a distinctive and often unusual sense of tone. Born and raised in North Hempstead, New York, Vai began taking guitar lessons from his schoolmate Satriani when he was 14. ...
Until it was reclaimed with an ironic wink by 1990s hipsters, easy listening had been hugely popular, but rarely cool. While the teenagers of the 1950s and 1960s were getting off on dangerous rock’n’roll and subversive R&B, their parents were sweetly cocooned in the music of Mantovani and Percy Faith. Easy listening music never launched any rebellions; no ...
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