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Spoons can be played as a makeshift percussion instrument, or more specifically, an idiophone related to the castanets. They are played by hitting one spoon against the other.
In the United States, spoons as instrument are associated with American folk music, minstrelsy, and jug and spasm bands. These musical genres make use of other everyday objects as instruments, such as the washboard and the jug. In addition to common tableware, spoons that are joined at the handle are available from musical instrument suppliers.
As percussion, spoons accompany fiddle playing and other folk sets. An example is seen in Midsomer Murders Series 6, episode 2, where Detective Sergeant Gavin Troy plays the spoons at a house party joining a fiddle player who is entertaining the guests. He uses the first technique. The guests also contribute percussion by hand clapping in time with the music.
The song "This Old Man" refers to a related concept, except with sheep bones (hence paddywhack) instead of spoons.
In Canada, the spoons accompany fiddle playing in Québecois and Acadian music. Also, Newfoundland and the Atlantic provinces popularly play the spoons at family gatherings. Playing the spoons in Western Canada is closely related to the Métis culture.
In Greece, spoons as a percussion instrument are known as koutalakia (Greek : κουταλάκια 'little spoons'). Dancers accompany their dancing with rhythms tapped out on the spoons. Many of them are sculpted or painted. The specific tradition is not common in the music of mainland Greece, but used to be popular among Anatolian Greeks.
Spoons are often used in ethnic Russian music and are known as lozhki (Russian : Ло́жки[plural]; Pronunciation: [singular]). The use of spoons for music dating at least from the 18th century (and probably older). [1] Typically, three or more wooden spoons are used. The convex surfaces of the bowls are struck together in different ways. For example, two spoons are held by their handles in the left hand, and the third, held in the right hand, is used to hit the two spoons in the left hand. The hit, in a sliding motion, produces a typical sound. [2] [3] One can also hold three spoons in the left hand and put a fourth into the bot or the pocket. A fifth spoon is then held in the right hand and used to hit the other four. Finally, one can hold the bowl of a single spoon in the left hand and hit it with another spoon. In this style, different sounds can be emitted by holding the bowl more or less tightly.
These wooden spoons are commonly used in performances of Russian folk music and sometimes even in Russian orchestras. [4] A video of a choir performing a Russian folk song with spoon and balalaika accompaniment can be found below.
Turkish spoons Turkish : kaşıklar are a Turkish and Uzbek percussion instrument. Kaşıklar made from boxwood are particularly favoured. There are also different holding styles.
The tambourine is a musical instrument in the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zills". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head. Tambourines are often used with regular percussion sets. They can be mounted, for example on a stand as part of a drum kit, or they can be held in the hand and played by tapping, hitting, or shaking the instrument.
The violin, sometimes referred as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino piccolo and the pochette, but these are virtually unused. Most violins have a hollow wooden body, and commonly have four strings, usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and are most commonly played by drawing a bow across the strings. The violin can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow.
The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a vibraphonist,vibraharpist, or vibist.
The washboard and frottoir are used as a percussion instrument, employing the ribbed metal surface of the cleaning device as a rhythm instrument. As traditionally used in jazz, zydeco, skiffle, jug band, and old-time music, the washboard remained in its wooden frame and is played primarily by tapping, but also scraping the washboard with thimbles. Often the washboard has additional traps, such as a wood block, a cowbell, and even small cymbals.
The bones, also known as rhythm bones, are a folk instrument that, in their original form, consists of a pair of animal bones, but may also be played on pieces of wood or similar material. Sections of large rib bones and lower leg bones are the most commonly used bones, although wooden sticks shaped like true bones are now more often used. Metal spoons may be used instead, as is common in the United States, known as "playing the spoons". The technique probably arrived in the U.S. via Irish and other European immigrants, and has a history stretching back to ancient China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. They have contributed to many music genres, including 19th century minstrel shows, traditional Irish and Scottish music, the blues, bluegrass, zydeco, French-Canadian music, and music from Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. The clacking of the loose rib bones produces a much sharper sound than the zydeco washboard or frottoir, which mimics rattling a bone up and down a fixed ribcage.
Clawhammer, sometimes called down-picking, overhand, or most commonly known as frailing, is a distinctive banjo playing style and a common component of American old-time music. The style likely descends from that of West African lutes, such as the akonting which are also the direct ancestors of the banjo.
The dholak is a two-headed hand drum, a folk percussion instrument. The dholak is most commonly recognised in countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, but can also be found amongst the Indo-Diaspora in countries such as Guyana, Suriname, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa and Mauritius. The dholak can be anywhere about 16" to 24" in length. It is widely used in qawwali, kirtan, bhajan, bhangra, chutney, baithak gana, Bollywood film songs, lokgeet and various classical styles such as Hindustani, Carnatic and Trinidadian local classical / Guyanese taan. The drum has two different sized drumheads. There is a smaller drumhead that can be from 5.5 to 8 inches in diameter and is made for sharp notes while the bigger drumhead, which can be from 7.5 to 10 inches in diametre, is made for low pitch. The two drumheads allow a combination of bass and treble with rhythmic high and low pitches. The body or shell of the Dholak can made of sheesham or mango wood. The larger drum head has a compound of tar, clay and sand, called "masala" which is applied to lower the pitch and produce the sound. The smaller drumhead is played with the person's dominant hand, while the larger is played by the person's weaker hand. A dholak can either be fitted with a nuts and bolts or a rope and steel rings for tuning. Commonly in the Indian subcontinent, there are only one set of rings for tuning the treble side of the dholak, while in the Caribbean, hook screws are placed into the sides of the dholak to allow tuning of both the treble and the bass. Dholak can be played in three ways — on the player’s lap, while standing, or pressed down with one knee while sitting on the floor.
The morin khuur, also known as the horsehead fiddle, is a traditional Mongolian bowed stringed instrument. It is one of the most important musical instruments of the Mongol people, and is considered a symbol of the nation of Mongolia. The morin khuur is one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity identified by UNESCO.
The ghaṭam is a solid instrument used in various repertoires across the Indian subcontinent, especially in Southern India. Its variant is played in Punjab and known as gharha as it is a part of Punjabi folk traditions. Its analogue in Rajasthan is known as the madga and pani mataqa.
Zills or zils, also called finger cymbals, are small metallic cymbals used in belly dancing and similar performances. They are called sāgāt in Egypt. They are similar to Tibetan tingsha bells. In Western music, several pairs can be set in a frame to make a tambourine.
Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar or bass guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking. The term "fingerstyle" is something of a misnomer, since it is present in several different genres and styles of music—but mostly, because it involves a completely different technique, not just a "style" of playing, especially for the guitarist's picking/plucking hand. The term is often used synonymously with fingerpicking except in classical guitar circles, although fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues and country guitar playing in the US. The terms "fingerstyle" and "fingerpicking" are also applied to similar string instruments such as the banjo.
The morsing is an instrument similar to the Jew's harp, mainly used in Rajasthan, in the Carnatic music of South India, and in Sindh, Pakistan. It can be categorized under lamellophones, which is a sub-category of plucked idiophones. The instrument consists of a metal ring in the shape of a horseshoe with two parallel forks which form the frame, and a metal tongue in the middle, between the forks, fixed to the ring at one end and free to vibrate at the other. The metal tongue, also called the trigger, is bent at the free end in a plane perpendicular to the circular ring so that it can be struck and made to vibrate.
Stevens grip is a technique for playing keyboard percussion instruments with four mallets developed by Leigh Howard Stevens. While marimba performance with two, four, and even six mallets had been done for more than a century, Stevens developed this grip based on the Musser grip, looking to expanded musical possibilities. Stevens codified his grip and his approach to performance techniques developed during his studies at the Eastman School of Music in his 1979 book, Method of Movement for Marimba. In this book, Stevens explains that his grip is an evolution of the Musser grip, and it is sometimes called the Musser-Stevens grip.
The Gravikord is a 24 string electric double bridge-harp invented by Robert Grawi in 1984, which is closely related to both the West African kora and the mbira. It was designed to employ a separated double tonal array structure making it possible to easily play cross-rhythms in a polyrhythmic musical style in a modern electro-acoustic instrument. The Gravi-kora is a similar instrument, also developed by Grawi, which is tuned identically to a traditional 21 string kora.
Playing the violin entails holding the instrument between the jaw and the collar bone. The strings are sounded either by drawing the bow across them (arco), or by plucking them (pizzicato). The left hand regulates the sounding length of the strings by stopping them against the fingerboard with the fingers, producing different pitches.
A flamenco guitar is a guitar similar to a classical guitar, but with lower action, thinner tops and less internal bracing. It usually has nylon strings, like the classical guitar, but it generally possesses a livelier, more gritty sound compared to the classical guitar. It is used in toque, the guitar-playing part of the art of flamenco.
Castanets, also known as clackers or palillos, are a percussion instrument (idiophone), used in Spanish, Calé, Moorish, Ottoman, Italian, Mexican, Sephardic, Portuguese, Brazilian and Swiss music. In ancient Greece and ancient Rome there was a similar instrument called the crotalum.
The khong wong yai is a circle with gongs used in the music of Thailand. It has 16 tuned bossed gongs in a rattan frame and is played with two beaters. The player sits in the center of the circle. It is used in the piphat ensemble to provide the skeletal melody the other instruments of the elaborate ensemble. The gongs are individually tuned with beeswax under the gongs. The khong wong yai can either be played with soft beaters or hard beaters.
Guitar picking is a group of hand and finger techniques a guitarist uses to set guitar strings in motion to produce audible notes. These techniques involve plucking, strumming, brushing, etc. Picking can be done with:
In percussion, grip refers to the manner in which the player holds the sticks or mallets, whether drum sticks or other mallets.
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