In every continent in our world, you can find many musical instruments and they are all used to create music. There are many types of musical instruments. One of the main types of musical instrument includes the Idiophone musical instruments.
\nBefore we advance with familiarising whit what exactly are idiophones, let us first know how the different musical instruments are organized. We will first discuss the Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical instruments, which it is derived from.
\nThe Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instrument is a structure to categorize musical instruments. This classification system was first crated by Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs. They created this in order to find a way to properly organize the many instruments all over the world.
\nThis classification is based on how sounds are produced by each of these instruments. Erich von Hornsbostel and Curt Sachs noticed that there is pattern between instruments. These patterns are used to create categories and sub-categories for the various groups of instruments.
\nIn the Hornbostel-Sachs classification, the instruments are grouped into 4 major categories. These are aerophones, chordophones, membranophones and lastly the idiophones.
\nIdiophones, what are these instruments? In the Hornbostel-Sachs system idiophones are listed as the first classification of instruments. According to Wikipedia an idiophone is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the instrument as a whole vibrating—without the use of strings or membranes.
\nIdiophones are musical instruments that requires the use of a solid materials to make vibrations in order to produce sounds. The sound is produced by hitting the instrument in order for it to resonate.
\nThere are various materials that can be used in order to create these idiophones. You can use metals, stones and wood. The instruments made of these materials and then struck together to produce sounds are the idiophones.
\nBy the way idiophone instruments can be made of any materials with the exception of strings and membranes or drums. What this means that any instrument that primary creates sounds through resonations from string and membranes instruments does not count because they have their own category. String instruments are under the Chordophones and the membrane instruments are the Membranophones categories.
\nHave you heard of percussions before? What are percussions? These are musical instruments that produces sounds by being struck or scraped using a beating material. That means all idiophones are percussion instruments with the exception of drums which the membranophones.
\nIdiophone instruments comes in different forms. Many of these are made of normally available materials like wood, stones and metals. here are 8 basic types idiophones which are concussion, friction, percussion, plucked, scraped, shaken, stamped, and stamping.
\nIdiophones – is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the instrument as a whole vibrating—without the use of strings or membranes
\nThere are so many different kinds of idiophones in the world. They have come in starting from very simple designs to complicated designs.
\nYou can even easily make your own idiophone. For example, grab any pots, pans and a spatula. Hit the spatula with the pots and there you have it. Now your making sweet music and created your very own idiophone.
\nThere are many simple idiophones in the world and wood can be a very good material in making this kind of instrument. For example, you can grab 2 pieces of wooden sticks and hit them against each other to produce sound. By hitting them you make a clacking sound. This instrument is actually called the Clave. Similar instruments like the clapper, castanets and coconut shells also other example of idiophone instruments that produce music by simply hitting wooden materials together.
\nOther examples of a wooden idiophone instruments are the xylophone and marimba. Both of these instruments are very similar in design and how they produce music. Essentially, they are similar because both instruments feature multiple wooden bars that produces different notes when struck using a wooden mallet.
\nThere are countless more idiophones made of wood. Some of the most common example of wooden idiophones includes the kalimba, chimes, maracas, rainsticks, cajón and many more.
\nThough there are many wooden idiophones, there are also a lot of idiophones made out of metal. Just like the earlier instruments xylophone and marimba, there also exist metallic counterparts of these instruments. The instrument called Glockenspiel is the metallic version of the xylophone. While the Vibraphone is the metallic variation of the marimba.
\nSome of the other common metal idiophones includes bells, tambourine, gong, tank drum, cymbals, cow bell and triangle and many more.
\nIdiophones are many of the instruments that you constantly see. These instruments are everywhere. The best thing about them is that they can be played together with other musical instruments. They can create beautiful music when they are played as part of an ensemble.
\nThere are many famous ensembles in the world but the most famous and distinguished is the orchestra. An orchestra is large ensemble that play multiple instruments. There are many orchestras in the world, and they are known for playing western classical music.
\nThere are many instruments included in the orchestra. This includes the instruments that are part of the idiophone classification. Examples of hese instruments include the cymbals, xylophone, marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, triangle, tambourine, gong, chimes, castanets and bells.
\nThese idiophone instruments of the orchestra are more commonly known as percussions. The orchestra also includes other instruments from the Hornbostel-Sachs Musical Instrument classification classes including aerophones, chordophones and membranophones.
\nAs mentioned earlier, idiophones can be created using wood as main material for the instrument’s construction. Wood being a very abundant resource, people can easily use it to create musical instruments.
\nBamboo is a remarkable wooden material to create these idiophone instruments. The are many great and wonderful bamboo idiophones or percussions.
\nSome of the common idiophones can be crafted using bamboos included claves, clappers, spoons, castanets, chimes, xylophones, marimba, kagul, kalimba, slit drum, tambourines, maracas, rainstricks and kubing.
\nFor all the many bamboo instruments in the world, the website bambooinstruments.com was created in order to house information about all these instruments
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