Thursday, November 18, 2010

11/17 - Percussion, day three

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

It's getting pretty chilly in Denton, even for a Colorado kid. It's the wind, I tell you. It's hard to ride a bike these days.

Let's get started with membranophones, since there are a lot of them.

Membranophones are typically drums. Typically. Kazoos are also membranophones, but also aerophones, since air resonates the membrane. But I'm pretty sure everything else is a drum.

There are plenty of different types of drums. I'll try to cover all of the bases:

In the tubular drums category, there are:
- Cylindrical drums, with non-sloping edges and usually two heads. Think bass drum, snare drum, toms.

And yes, I'm subconsciously obligated to support Dynasty as a UNT student.


- Conical drums, like this timbal baiano:


- Barrel drums, like this bendre from the Mossi people of Burkina Faso:



- Hourglass drums, like this talking drum:



- Goblet drums, like this darabukka:



- Footed drums, which are really just any drums held up from the ground by the feet:



- Long drums, which is any drum that's just really, uh, long. No that's what she said jokes, please.

Can't find a picture. Dangit.

There are also...
- Kettle drums, which include the timpani but also the tabla... (think about it)
- Frame drums, like the tambourine, kanjira, and bohdran.
- Friction drums, like the lion's roar and the thunder sheet, though I guess the last one isn't a drum.

All of these instruments are played either with sticks or hands, sometimes both, except the lion's roar.

Lion's roar is played by rubbing a cloth down a string connected to the drumhead to create friction, vibrating the string, vibrating the drumhead. It's pretty cool.

There are a whole lot of different instruments to learn, each with different techniques and standard patterns and genres and sounds, some of them taking a lifetime to master. I hope I can at least play them all, even if I don't achieve mastery.

That's all for today. I'll write a lot tomorrow, we have a lot of ground to cover.

M

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