Percussion instruments essays

Percussion instruments essays The xylophone is played with a padded mallet (which looks like a hammer). In 1898, Barnum and Bailey's circus pigs were trained to play this instrument, among other feats. But don't be fooled by this humorous depiction. Playing the xylophone well requires great precision to hit just the right bar at the right time, which produces a musical tone. The xylophone is a percussion instrument (one that is played either by striking, shaking or scraping it) that likely originated in Southeast Asia or Oceania. It's one of the central instruments of the music of Africa, possibly being brought to that continent through trade or people migrating from other places. Slaves from Africa brought the xylophone with them when they were taken to Latin America, and from there it eventually made its way to the United States. Today's xylophone has bars arranged in two rows, sort of like the keys of a piano, and rests on a stand. Listen to some xylophone music from 1921. The marimba is another percussion instrument that is played with a rubber mallet. Marimba is the African name for xylophone. It resembles that instrument in shape, but it's bigger and has a wider range of notes. Many popular songs in the early 1900s were given a marimba "twist," such as this recording of the "Stars and Stripes Forever March." The fact that marimba songs were well liked by Americans shows the increased exposure the public had to foreign styles of music. The hammered dulcimer, in its simplest form, is an instrument with 13 strings, played by beating the strings with a small hammer. The name "dulcimer" comes from Latin and means "sweet sound." The hammered dulcimer developed from the cimbalom, an instrument from Hungary with 48 strings that is played with small hammers. The piano of today has evolved from both the cimbalom and the hammered dulcimer. Have you ever seen the inside of a piano? When someone presses a piano key, a lever raises a hammer that then strikes the str...