Triangle, shaker and co. - How bones and animal skins became real instruments
- 21 Jan 2020
- Isabelle Keck
Drums were simpler to build, so it can be assumed, that they existed earlier, because people probably enjoyed drum sounds, singing, clapping and dancing even in prehistoric times.
Percussion instruments are actually nothing more than a substitute for what our ancestors already mastered and are used to produce sound and rhythm, which is why we make appropriate distinctions here between instruments. While mallet instruments with their tuned bars produce the same sound, the so-called percussion instruments are used to produce rhythm. Hand percussion is an important part of the Orff Schulwerk. Many different sounds and noises can be produced with it. STUDIO 49 offers a large selection of small rhythmic instruments for this purpose.
Very popular are shakers (shaking tubes) with which different rhythms can be produced by moving the hand back and forth, turning, beating and shaking. Sound and volume depend on the body and the filling.
World Music Instruments
Small wooden block drums (Woodblocks) with one or two slit-shaped openings on the sides became known through jazz bands. The cuboid wood block is struck with a wooden mallet and produces a relatively high sound.
Temple blocks, combined in groups of up to five on a stand, originally come from Korea and tend to produce a soft and full sound.
Percussion sticks, a primitive rhythm instrument made of hardwood sticks (mostly rosewood) are familiar to both the Far East and Africa. Under the name Claves, they came from Latin American folk and dance music into our musical world, where they very quickly found a wide distribution.
The castanets, similar to finger cymbals (also called dance cinellas), can be found in antiquity, as testified by representations on numerous art monuments of antiquity. They are probably of Asian origin.
Triangles, which are said to have a solitary existence in the back rows, elicit more than you might think: On triangles of different sizes you can play only one fundamental note at a time, but by using different keys they produce notes with different overtone content (i.e. different timbres.) In addition, short percussive notes can be produced by rapid damping.