April 30, 2018 at 18:02Unusual musical instruments you need to know: Ocarina, pan flute, nozzle and glass harmonica
We have already published several collections of unusual musical instruments ( 1 , 2 , 3 ), but this, of course, is far from a complete list. Today we will replenish it with a few more exhibits (based on comments on previous materials): ocarina, pan flute, chromatic pipe and glass harmonica.
All these are examples of not very popular musical instruments now, which were quite widespread in the past. Photo Shunichi kouroki CC
Okarina is the Italian name (ocarina) for the wind instrument, better known to us as the whistle. Ocarin is the same “bird” of clay, porcelain or wood that can be found in many ethnographic museums. Translated from Italian ocarina means "gosling". Modern ocarins are often made from plastic or polycarbonate.
Usually, ocarina basically has the shape of a sphere (most often egg-shaped), but in fact there is practically no “gold standard” for the instrument. Whistles have a very different shape and a very different number of holes - usually from four to thirteen. The pitch depends only on the size of the holes, and the ocarina without additional holes becomes ... the usual whistle.
Italian and inventor Giuseppe Donati brought Ocarina to Europe - it was he who came up with the more or less modern look of the “caterpillar” with ten holes tuned to the musical harmony familiar to Europeans. He came up with a special protrusion, similar to the mouthpiece (and at the same time to the goose's beak - hence the modern name).
But in fact, Ocarina is a deceptively modern name for one of the most ancient musical instruments known to mankind. According to some historians, Ocarina-like tools were used in ancient China 7 thousand years ago. Ceramic proto-ocarina was called Xun". In Russia, too, had its own ocarina - those same Dymkovo toys and Filimonovo whistles. The ancient ocarins had fewer holes and therefore the sound range was much more limited - however, the principle was the same as that of modern instruments.
In the 1960s, the Englishman John Taylor improved the design of Donati - he made the Ocarina with only four holes, which, however, were of different sizes. On the Ocarina of the "English" design, you can play all the notes from the usual diatonic scale.
Either " Pan 's flute ", or a multi-barrel flute - an instrument consisting of several tubes (usually from three to five) of different lengths (on average from 100 to 160 millimeters) and diameters fastened together. Each handset makes a sound in one key. Traditionally, multi-barrel flutes were made from reed stalks, bamboo or reeds. Now panflutes are also made of plastic. In modern variations, the instrument may have more tubes for additional sound variation. Tubes can go in several rows.
This tool is not very widespread now, but it has a rich history - it even appears in the famous ancient Greek myth. Nymph Syrinx (or Syringa) escaped from the god Pan in love with her and asked for help from the river god. He turned it into a reed, from which Pan made himself a flute and named his beloved. Hence the ancient name of the flute - syringa.
Different peoples called syringa in different ways - for example, in Russia “Pan flute” was called kugikly (by the name of the reed stems from which it was made - kugi). The only difference was that the tubes did not fasten together - they could be interchanged, getting a different instrument structure. Interestingly, kugikly is a tool for a predominantly ensemble game, rarely played solo on it.
A pipe is an “umbrella” name for a whole category of wind musical instruments. Usually flutes and pipes were made of wood or reeds. One end was cut obliquely, a tongue was made at the hole, from 4 to 8 holes in the pipe itself.
The history of the instrument (in one form or another) is rooted in Kievan Rus. Sopilka is the name of a Ukrainian musical instrument with a pipe-like construction. The nozzle has traditionally 6 holes, but there are variations. One of them is the construction of Dmitry Deminchuk with ten holes of different sizes. This system turns a traditionally diatonic instrument into a chromatic flute with midtones.
On such a pipe you can play a variety of melodies, and not only folk, in different frets and keys. And the sound will be more accurate - no need to partially clamp the holes to get different tones, as is the case with a recorder.
Another similar tool is a kalyuk. She also has a dozen different names - an overtone flute, celefate for the Norwegians, payupilli for the Finns. Kalyuka is a hollow tube with holes below and above, and a “whistle” at the top hole. The length and diameter of the tube is different. The player blows into the upper hole and adjusts the sound by opening and closing the lower hole with a finger. Kalyuka is rather a rhythmic instrument, which is most often used to maintain rhythm, and not for the main melody.
Photo elPadawan CC
Glass harmonica is a rare and little-known instrument with a very unusual sound and original history.
In the middle of the XVII century, glass harmonica was a construction of thirty or forty glasses filled with different amounts of water - the player touched the edges of the glasses, extracting “magic” sounds. In 1744, Irish musician Richard Pakrich perfected this technique - he created an instrument called “seraph”.
A more or less modern harmonic design is a series of glass hemispherical disks strung on a rotating metal axis. Sound is produced by rubbing or striking the performer’s fingers against wet glass. Lower notes (larger discs) are located on the left, higher notes (and smaller ones) are located on the right. The axis is driven by the pedal. It is this instrument that got the name of “glass harmonica”. It boasts a fairly wide range - from two and a half to four octaves, which brings it closer to keyboard instruments.
For the unearthly sound, the composers fell in love with harmonica - Mozart wrote two adagios for her, Tchaikovsky used the Nutcracker (Dance of the Fairy Dragee) in ballet, Glinka in Ruslan and Ludmila (Miracles of Chernomor), Donizetti in the opera Lucia di Lamermur. It is interesting that in the XVIII century they tried to forbid harmonics because of its supposedly negative impact on the health and psyche of people and animals.
By the 20th century, glass harmonics almost stopped playing. The instrument has become very rare - there are only a few dozen contemporary performers around the world. Since the instrument itself is very difficult to find, it is replaced with the very “proto-harmonica” from the 17th century - a set of glasses , which is sometimes called the “glass harp”.
Some of these tools appeared at about the same time in very different parts of the planet and in different cultures. They were called differently and somewhat different from each other, but at the heart they had similar designs and principles of sound production. Now many of them are undeservedly forgotten, but there is a chance that a surge of interest in ethnic culture or (as in the case of glass harmonics) to instruments with an unusual sound will return to them at least a fraction of their former popularity.
Related posts from our Hi-Fi World:
From April 30 to May 10, we decided to hold a big fair sale - 400 products with discounts up to 80%! You can buy in a store, or you can not go anywhere and order delivery - it is carried out seven days a week, and when ordering from 10,000 rubles it will be free for you.
All these are examples of not very popular musical instruments now, which were quite widespread in the past. Photo Shunichi kouroki CC
Ocarina
Okarina is the Italian name (ocarina) for the wind instrument, better known to us as the whistle. Ocarin is the same “bird” of clay, porcelain or wood that can be found in many ethnographic museums. Translated from Italian ocarina means "gosling". Modern ocarins are often made from plastic or polycarbonate.
Usually, ocarina basically has the shape of a sphere (most often egg-shaped), but in fact there is practically no “gold standard” for the instrument. Whistles have a very different shape and a very different number of holes - usually from four to thirteen. The pitch depends only on the size of the holes, and the ocarina without additional holes becomes ... the usual whistle.
Italian and inventor Giuseppe Donati brought Ocarina to Europe - it was he who came up with the more or less modern look of the “caterpillar” with ten holes tuned to the musical harmony familiar to Europeans. He came up with a special protrusion, similar to the mouthpiece (and at the same time to the goose's beak - hence the modern name).
But in fact, Ocarina is a deceptively modern name for one of the most ancient musical instruments known to mankind. According to some historians, Ocarina-like tools were used in ancient China 7 thousand years ago. Ceramic proto-ocarina was called Xun". In Russia, too, had its own ocarina - those same Dymkovo toys and Filimonovo whistles. The ancient ocarins had fewer holes and therefore the sound range was much more limited - however, the principle was the same as that of modern instruments.
In the 1960s, the Englishman John Taylor improved the design of Donati - he made the Ocarina with only four holes, which, however, were of different sizes. On the Ocarina of the "English" design, you can play all the notes from the usual diatonic scale.
Pan flute
Either " Pan 's flute ", or a multi-barrel flute - an instrument consisting of several tubes (usually from three to five) of different lengths (on average from 100 to 160 millimeters) and diameters fastened together. Each handset makes a sound in one key. Traditionally, multi-barrel flutes were made from reed stalks, bamboo or reeds. Now panflutes are also made of plastic. In modern variations, the instrument may have more tubes for additional sound variation. Tubes can go in several rows.
This tool is not very widespread now, but it has a rich history - it even appears in the famous ancient Greek myth. Nymph Syrinx (or Syringa) escaped from the god Pan in love with her and asked for help from the river god. He turned it into a reed, from which Pan made himself a flute and named his beloved. Hence the ancient name of the flute - syringa.
Different peoples called syringa in different ways - for example, in Russia “Pan flute” was called kugikly (by the name of the reed stems from which it was made - kugi). The only difference was that the tubes did not fasten together - they could be interchanged, getting a different instrument structure. Interestingly, kugikly is a tool for a predominantly ensemble game, rarely played solo on it.
Chromatic flute (or nozzle)
A pipe is an “umbrella” name for a whole category of wind musical instruments. Usually flutes and pipes were made of wood or reeds. One end was cut obliquely, a tongue was made at the hole, from 4 to 8 holes in the pipe itself.
The history of the instrument (in one form or another) is rooted in Kievan Rus. Sopilka is the name of a Ukrainian musical instrument with a pipe-like construction. The nozzle has traditionally 6 holes, but there are variations. One of them is the construction of Dmitry Deminchuk with ten holes of different sizes. This system turns a traditionally diatonic instrument into a chromatic flute with midtones.
On such a pipe you can play a variety of melodies, and not only folk, in different frets and keys. And the sound will be more accurate - no need to partially clamp the holes to get different tones, as is the case with a recorder.
Another similar tool is a kalyuk. She also has a dozen different names - an overtone flute, celefate for the Norwegians, payupilli for the Finns. Kalyuka is a hollow tube with holes below and above, and a “whistle” at the top hole. The length and diameter of the tube is different. The player blows into the upper hole and adjusts the sound by opening and closing the lower hole with a finger. Kalyuka is rather a rhythmic instrument, which is most often used to maintain rhythm, and not for the main melody.
Photo elPadawan CC
Glass harmonica
Glass harmonica is a rare and little-known instrument with a very unusual sound and original history.
In the middle of the XVII century, glass harmonica was a construction of thirty or forty glasses filled with different amounts of water - the player touched the edges of the glasses, extracting “magic” sounds. In 1744, Irish musician Richard Pakrich perfected this technique - he created an instrument called “seraph”.
A more or less modern harmonic design is a series of glass hemispherical disks strung on a rotating metal axis. Sound is produced by rubbing or striking the performer’s fingers against wet glass. Lower notes (larger discs) are located on the left, higher notes (and smaller ones) are located on the right. The axis is driven by the pedal. It is this instrument that got the name of “glass harmonica”. It boasts a fairly wide range - from two and a half to four octaves, which brings it closer to keyboard instruments.
For the unearthly sound, the composers fell in love with harmonica - Mozart wrote two adagios for her, Tchaikovsky used the Nutcracker (Dance of the Fairy Dragee) in ballet, Glinka in Ruslan and Ludmila (Miracles of Chernomor), Donizetti in the opera Lucia di Lamermur. It is interesting that in the XVIII century they tried to forbid harmonics because of its supposedly negative impact on the health and psyche of people and animals.
By the 20th century, glass harmonics almost stopped playing. The instrument has become very rare - there are only a few dozen contemporary performers around the world. Since the instrument itself is very difficult to find, it is replaced with the very “proto-harmonica” from the 17th century - a set of glasses , which is sometimes called the “glass harp”.
Some of these tools appeared at about the same time in very different parts of the planet and in different cultures. They were called differently and somewhat different from each other, but at the heart they had similar designs and principles of sound production. Now many of them are undeservedly forgotten, but there is a chance that a surge of interest in ethnic culture or (as in the case of glass harmonics) to instruments with an unusual sound will return to them at least a fraction of their former popularity.
Related posts from our Hi-Fi World:
- Wheel lyre, a harp and a musical saw - instruments that did not become mainstream
- What unusual musical instruments are used in the voice acting of horror films
- Yellow Carrot Bend: 8 Unusual Musical Instruments
From April 30 to May 10, we decided to hold a big fair sale - 400 products with discounts up to 80%! You can buy in a store, or you can not go anywhere and order delivery - it is carried out seven days a week, and when ordering from 10,000 rubles it will be free for you.