A lamellophone worn around the neck, originating among the Yoruba of Nigeria, played by striking the box frame of the instrument with a ring worn around a thumb.
A percussive instrument made of metal or other hard material, typically in the shape of an inverted cup with a flared rim, which resonates when struck.
A bell (often more than one) belonging to a church, usually housed in a tower or steeple, customarily rung before church services or for other occasions such as weddings.
A concave plate of brass or bronze that produces a sharp, ringing sound when struck: played either in pairs, by striking them together, or singly by striking with a drumstick or the like.
A piece of metal with a series of ridges or corrugations on the surface, essentially a washboard without the frame, and characteristic of zydeco music.
Notes: The word kulintang is, in English, most precisely a type of ensemble that uses gong chimes, as well as the style of music performed by that ensemble, but the word sometimes refers to the instrument itself. In native languages of the area, the terminology is reversed: kulintang is most properly the name of the instrument (in the Maguindanao, Ternate and Timorese languages); the ensemble and its musical style are called basalen or palabunibunyan in Maguindanao.
A type of ratchet used mainly in Purim celebrations in Jewish tradition; it consists of a board and a gearwheel attached to a handle, and is played by swinging the mechanism to make the gearwheel scrape against the board, producing a percussive sound.
A musical instrument, a shaker, made of a hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side, and played by rubbing a stick or scraper ("pua") along the notches to produce a ratchet-like sound.
Note: The word guiro is more rarely used as a synonym for the Cuban instrument otherwise known as the chekeré, a type of shekere.
A musical instrument consisting of a flexible metal or bamboo “tongue” attached to a frame. This tongue is placed in the performer’s mouth and plucked with the finger to produce a note of constant pitch. Melodies can be created by changing the shape of the mouth and causing different overtones.
A mechanical instrument that creates sound with a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to pluck the tuned lamellae (teeth) of a steel comb.
A hollow tube lined on the inside by nubs and filled with seeds, used as a percussion instrument like a cylindrical rattle; it makes a characteristically rain-like sound.
A board and a gearwheel attached to a handle, played by swinging the mechanism, making the gearwheel scrape against the board to produce a percussive sound.
A scraped percussion instrument originating in Brazil; it was traditionally a wood or bamboo cylindrical body with notches, played like a guiro, but more modern instruments are metal boxes with springs for notches, and played with a metal stick.
An idiophone made from a hollowed-out propane tank whose bottom has been removed and some tongue-like projections radiating into the opening; the tone is changed by altering the tongues' size or adding a weight to them, and the instrument is played by striking with the fingers or a mallet.
Note: The word unmodified komuz refers to a type of fretless stringed instrument common throughout Central Asia. See also Appendix:Glossary of chordophones for more.
A U-shaped piece of wire that connects a wood box to a ball filled with metal teeth, which acts as a resonator when the ball is struck against a surface (often the performer's hand).
A rectangular board with a series of corrugations, originally intended for washing clothes but now mainly in use in the Western world as a musical instrument.
Note: The whip (A lash; a pliant, flexible instrument used to create a sharp "crack" sound) is also used as a musical instrument in whipcracking, but that is an aerophone.
Note: The word xylophone is sometimes used as a general category for all percussion idiophones of this type, such as the marimba and balafon. In other contexts, such as orchestral music, these words refer to very distinct instruments.
