Music Technology & Sports Junction

The MADDALE is a percussion instrument from Karnataka, India. It is the primary rhythmic accompaniment in aYakshagana ensemble along with Chande. Maddale used in Yakshagana looks similar to mridangam but is markedly different in structure, acustics, playing techniques and the rhythm system (Yakshagana Tala). The traditional variety of maddale is shorter and high pitched. Maddale is available in more than three different variations.

The THAVIL  or TAVIL is a barrel shaped drum from South India. It is used in temple, folk and Carnatic music, often accompanying the nadaswaram. Thethavil and the nadaswaram are essential components of traditional festivals and ceremonies in South India.

In folk music contexts, a pair of wider, slimmer sticks is sometimes used. Thanjavur is famous for thavil, so called Thanjavur Thavil. InKollywood Filmi songs thavils are mostly used, Notable movies: "Thillaanaa Mohanambal", "Paruthiveeran", "Karagattakaran".

OCTOBANS, also known as tube toms, are deep, small diameter, single-head tom-toms. Octobans were originally grouped in melodically-tuned sets of eight, hence the name, in reference to octave and from octo meaning "eight".

Part sets of two or four drums or an individual drum or octo are common additions to a drum kit.

Complete and half sets of octobans are commonly mounted in clusters of four, in a square pattern. Mounts for four drums in a straight line, dual mounts for two drums, and individual mounts are all also reasonably common. In a drum kit, octobans are most commonly placed to the left of a right-handed drummer, above the hi-hats.

The NAGARA is a folk drum with double head that is played on one side with the bare hands. It is used in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia and other Caucasus regions. It has different names, according to the territory in which it is played. This membranophone is different from the dhol and nagara of India.

A BASS DRUM is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch.

Bass drums are percussion instruments and vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished.

The bass drum was imported from the Middle East

The MOHAN VEENA is a stringed musical instrument used in Indian classical music. It derives its name from its inventor, the Grammy Award winning Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt who resides in Jaipur India.

The instrument is actually a modified Archtop guitar and consists of 20 strings viz . three melody strings, five drone strings strung to the peghead, and twelve sympathetic strings strung to the tuners mounted on the side of the neck.^[1] A gourd (or the tumba) is screwed into the back of the neck for improved sound quality and vibration. It is held in the lap like a slide guitar. The Mohan Veena is under tremendous tension; the total strings pull to be in excess of 500 pounds.^[2]

Some of the popular performers include its inventor, Grammy Award winner Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Pandit Salil Bhatt ( who went on to inventing the Satvik Veena, a derivative of his father's Mohan Veena) and Pandit Satish Khanwalkar.

The VEENA  is an Indian plucked stringed instrument used mainly in Indian classical music. It derives its distinctive timbre and resonance from sympathetic strings, bridge design, a long hollow neck and a gourd resonatingchamber. The earliest veenaa was an instrument of the harp type whose type survives in the Burmese harp, whereas in the last centuries and nowadays, the word has tended to be applied to instruments of the lute type or even, recently, to certain kinds of guitars developed in India. The more popular, sitar is believed to have been derived from the veena, an ancient Indian instrument, which was modified by a Mughal court musician to conform with the tastes of his Persian patrons and named after a Persian instrument called the setar (meaning "three strings"). It subsequently underwent many changes, and the modern sitar evolved in 18th century India. A person who plays a veena is called a vainika.

The KANJIRA a South Indian frame drum, is an instrument of the tambourine family. It is used primarily in concerts of Carnatic music (South Indian classical music) as a supporting instrument for the mridangam. The kanjira have been used since 1880's, and was added to classical concerts during the 1930s.

Similar to the Western tambourine, it consists of a circular frame made of the wood of the jackfruit tree, between 7 and 9 inches in width and 2 to 4 inches in depth. It is covered on one side with a drumhead made of monitor lizard skin (specifically theBengal monitor, Varanus bengalensis, now an endangered species in India), while the other side is left open. The frame has a single slit which contain three to four small metal discs—often old coins—that jingle when the kanjira is played.

The kanjira is a relatively difficult Indian drum to play, especially in South Indian Carnatic music, for reasons including the complexity of the percussion patterns used in Indian music. It is normally played with the palm and fingers of the right hand, while the left hand supports the drum. The fingertips of the left hand can be used to bend the pitch by applying pressure near the outer rim. It is not tuned to any particular pitch, unlike the mridangam or the ghatam.

Normally, withoutdfg g, it has a very high pitched sound. To get a good bass sound, the performer reduces the tension of the drumhead by sprinkling water on the inside of the instrument. This process may have to be repeated during a concert to maintain a good sound. However, if the instrument is too moist, it will have a dead tone, requiring 5–10 minutes to dry. Tone is also affected by external temperature and moisture conditions. Performers typically carry a couple of kanjiras so that they can keep at least one in perfectly tuned condition at any given time.

The GOBLET DRUM (also chalice drum, darbuka, debuka, Kratom, doumbek, dumbec, or tablah) , is a single head membranophone with a goblet shaped body used mostly in the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. The African djembe-wassolou is also a goblet membranophone. This article focuses on the Eastern and North-Africangoblet drum.

The HELICON is a brass musical instrument in the tuba family. Most are B♭ basses, but they also commonly exist in E♭, F, and tenor sizes, as well as other types to a lesser extent.

The sousaphone is a specialized version of the helicon. The original sousaphone produced by the J.W. Pepper Company had an upright bell, hence the nickname "raincatcher". Later versions differ primarily in two ways: a bell shaped to face forwards with a larger flare, and a bell diameter of 22 to 28 inches, and a "goose-neck" leadpipe which offers greater adjustability of mouthpiece position at the expense of tone quality, while both instruments have circular shapes and are designed to be worn on the shoulder.

The instrument is very popular in Central and Eastern Europe and is a common choice for military fanfares. It is used by Ed Neuhauser of the traditional folk band Bellowhead.

Its range is two octaves below that of a cornet.

The HARP is a multi-string instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones (stringed instruments) and has its own sub category (the harps). All harps have a neck, resonator and strings. Some, known as frame harps, also have a pillar; those without the pillar are referred to as open harps. Depending on its size, which varies, a harp may be played while held in the lap or while it stands on a table, or on the floor. Harp strings may be made of nylon, gut, wire or silk. On smaller harps, like the folk harp, the core string material will typically be the same for all strings on a given harp. Larger instruments like the modern concert harp mix string materials to attain their extended ranges. A person who plays the harp is called a harpist or harper. Folk musicians often use the term "harper", whereas classical musicians use "harpist".

Various types of harps are found in Africa, Europe, North and South America and in Asia. In antiquity, harps and the closely related lyres were very prominent in nearly all cultures. The harp also was predominant with medieval bards, troubadors and minnesingers throughout the Spanish Empire. Harps continued to grow in popularity due to improvements in their design and construction through the beginning of the 20th century.

The XYLOPHONE  is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden (not steel) bars struck by mallets. Each bar is anidiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use. The term may be used generally, to include all such instruments, such as the marimba and balafon or, more specifically, to refer to an orchestral instrument of somewhat higher pitch range than the chromatic marimba. It is sometimes mistakenly used to refer to the similar lithophone andmetallophone, instruments of the glockenspiel or pixiphone type.

The Semantron  is a percussion instrument used in monasteries to summon monks to prayer or at the start of a procession.

The SAXOPHONE  is a conical-bore woodwind musical instrument. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846. He wanted to create an instrument that would be the most powerful and vocal of the woodwinds, and the most adaptive of the brass—that would fill the vacant middle ground between the two sections. He patented the saxophone on June 24, 1846, in two groups of seven instruments each. Each series consisted of instruments of various sizes in alternating transposition. The series pitched in B♭ and E♭, designed for military bands, has proved extremely popular and most saxophones encountered today are from this series. Instruments from the so-called "orchestral" series, pitched in C and F, never gained a foothold, and the B♭ and E♭ instruments have now replaced the C and F instruments in classical music.

While proving very popular in military band music, the saxophone is most commonly associated with jazz and classical music. There is substantial repertoire of concert music in the classical idiom for the members of the saxophone family. Saxophone players are called saxophonists.

EKTARA is a one-string instrument most often used in traditional music from Bangladesh, India, Egypt, and Pakistan.

In origin the ektara was a regular string instrument of wandering bards and minstrels from India and is plucked with one finger. Theektara usually has a stretched single string, an animal skin over a head (made of dried pumpkin/gourd, wood or coconut) and pole neck or split bamboo cane neck.

Pressing the two halves of the neck together loosens the string, thus lowering its pitch. The modulation of the tone with each slight flexing of the neck gives the ektara its distinctive sound. There are no markings or measurements to indicate what pressure will produce what note, so the pressure is adjusted by ear.

The various sizes of ektara are soprano, tenor, and bass. The bass ektara, sometimes called a dotara often has two strings (as literally implied by do, "two"). Yet another version is khamak, one-headed drum with a string attached to it which is plucked. The only difference from ektara is that no bamboo is used to stretch the string,which is held by one hand, while being plucked by another.

The TANPURA is a long-necked plucked lute (a stringed instrument found in different forms in Indian music culture. Hindustani musicians speak of 'tanpura' whereas Carnatic musicians say 'tambura'; 'tamburi' is a smaller instrument used for accompanying instrumental soloists. For practical use, all these types are called 'tanpura' in the text. The body shape of the tanpura somewhat resembles that of the sitar, but it has no frets – as the strings are always plucked at their full lengths. One or more tanpuras may be used to accompany vocalists or instrumentalists. It has four or five (rarely six) wire strings, which are plucked one after another in a regular pattern to create a harmonic resonance on the basic note or keynote.(bourdon or drone function). Tanpuras form the root of the ensemble and indeed of the music itself, as the tanpura creates an acoustic dynamic reference chord from which the ragas derive their distinctive character, color and flavor. Concerning its history, a quote from Shri A. D. Ranade: 'The first unambiguous reference to the tanpura is in Sangit Parijat (1620). It is neither mentioned by the earlier texts nor does it find a place in sculptures'. Anelectronic tanpura, a small box that imitates the sound of a tanpura, is often used in contemporary Indian classical music performances instead of, or in addition to a tanpura.

Tanpuras come in different sizes and pitches: larger "males", smaller "females" for vocalists, and a yet smaller version is used for accompanying sitar or sarod, called tamburi. Male vocalists pitch their tonic note (Sa), often at C♯; female singers usually a fifth higher, though these tonic notes may vary according to the preference of the singer, as there is no absolute and fixed pitch-reference in the Indian classical music systems. The male instrument has an open string length of approximately one metre; the female is three-fourths of the male. The standard tuning is 5-8-8-1 (sol do' do' do) or, in Indian sargam, PA-sa-sa-SA. For ragas that omit the fifth tone, pa, the first string is tuned down to the natural fourth: 4-8-8-1 or Ma-sa-sa-Sa. Some ragas require a less common tuning with shuddh NI (one semitone below octave sa), NI-sa-sa-SA. With a five-string instrument, the seventh or NI (natural minor or major 7th) can be added: PA-NI-sa-sa-SA (5-7-8-8-1)or MA-NI-sa-sa-SA (4-7-8-8-1).

The name tanapura is probably derived from tana, referring to a musical phrase, and pura, which means "full" or "complete". Both in its musical function and how it works, the tanpura is unique in many ways. It does not partake in the melodic part of the music, but it supports and sustains the melody by providing a colourful and dynamic harmonic resonance field based on one precise tone, the basic note or key note. Also, it is not played in rhythm with the music, as the precise timing of plucking a cycle of four strings in a continuous loop is a determinant factor in the resultant sound.

Tanpuras are designed in three different styles:

A KEYBOARD is a musical instrument played using a keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Some other types of keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, carillons, which are highly different instruments made by man-kind that are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or other municipal buildings, and other non-acoustic instruments, such as various electronic organs, synthesizers, and keyboards designed to imitate the sound of other musical sounds. Today, the term "keyboard" is mostly commonly used to refer to keyboard-style synthesizers. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may also be used to control dynamics, phrasing, shading, articulation, and other elements of expression, depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument.

A MOUTH ORGAN is a generic term for free reed aerophone with one or more air chambers fitted with a free reed. Though it spans many traditions, it is played universally the same way by the musician placing their lips over a chamber or holes in the instrument, and blowing or sucking air to create a sound. Many of the chambers can be played together or each individually.

The mouth organ can be found all around the world and is known by many different names and seen in many different traditions. The most notable variations include theharmonica, the pan flute, and Asian free reed wind instruments consisting of a number of bamboo pipes of varying lengths fixed into a wind chest; these include the sheng,khaen, lusheng, yu, Shō, and saenghwang. The melodica, consisting of a single tube that is essentially blown through a keyboard, is another variation.