Instruments Used in Celtic Music

-
The Celts created some of the most vibrant and unique music in the world. Celtic music has an unmistakable style complete with distinctive instruments that combine to play stirring, rhythmic, and buoyant musical works. Music was not only a form of entertainment, but also to boost morale, instill a feeling of community, and convey a love of their land.

Strings

A large portion of the melodies and motives in Celtic music consists of string instruments. The fiddle is a violin that is played in a distinctive way to play intricate, fast-paced melodies. Most fiddle players will play a violin and use thicker strings. The Celts also used fretted instruments like the mandolin, bouzouki, cittern, guitar and harp. Mandolins have rounded backs and four pairs of double strings. The bouzouki has pear-shaped body lute and sounds an octave lower than the mandolin. Citterns function and look like a smaller mandolin with metal strings.

Percussion

Percussion instruments play rhythm and ensure the ensemble plays in time. The bodhran is the most commonly used Irish instrument and is a medium-size drum conventionally made of goatskin. Lambeg drums are hefty drums akin to the bass drum. Celts carried lambegs with straps around the neck and played with bowed canes. The Celts were resourceful, and even used spoons and bones to add metrical musical elements.

Bagpipes

Celtic bagpipes included the bellow-powered uilleann pipe and Irish Warpipes. Bagpipers send air through the mouthpiece, which fills a bag before leaving the instrument through various pitched drones. The reed attached to the chanter vibrates to make sound. Bagpipes have drones, which can be sounded continually to add a harmonic backdrop to the music.

Accordions

Reed instruments were common Celtic instruments. Melodeons, piano accordions, button accordions, and concertinas were frequently used. Melodeons can only play diatonic notes and typically play in C. Button accordions are more sophisticated and have a double row of keys make chromatic pitches possible. Piano accordions are comparable to a contemporary accordion, complete with a keyboard. Concertinas are little accordions able of performing diatonic and chromatic scales.

Winds

The tin-whistle, also known as an Irish whistle, is a simple wind instrument that has six holes. The instrument resembles a recorder and has a plastic mouthpiece and a metal body. The instrument typically plays the melody line along with the fiddle. This instrument is also used commonly in Scottish traditional music.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Materials Did Claude Monet Use for His Paintings?

-
Image
Monet was a French Impressionist artist who used several materials to envision, draft and finally create his artwork. His first painting was “Impression: Sunrise” and provided the basis for the name of the Impressionist movement. Impressionists often used natural landscapes in their art and depicted varying degrees of light to create an impression of the actual image. Canvas The canvas that Monet chose to paint on con s isted of light hues, from white to a light gray and even yellow. His brushstrokes added texture and depth to his painting by juxtaposing several layers of color. His focus on creating textures on the canvas that complemented the object resulted in vibrant art. Many times, he mixed his colors and formed them directly on the canvas instead of using a painter’s palette. Oil Eugene Boudin was Monet’s mentor and began teaching him to use oil paints in 1856. The oil paints were used to master an outside painting technique. However, Monet actually finished many of his painting
Read more

List of Musical Techniques and Their Meanings

-
Musical techniques are the building blocks of any basic music training. These techniques allow performers to improve their coordination and develop accuracy through repetitive daily exercises. Musical techniques progressively build upon previously learned techniques. Scales Scales form the basis for other musical techniques. Student may study major and minor scales as well as modern scales, such as the whole-tone and octatonic scales. A scale consists of patterns of half steps and whole steps. These whole steps and half-step arrangements will be different for each scale. Scales are musical techniques that can help a performer to play faster and more accurately, and make learning new pieces easier. Chords Chords require knowledge of major and minor scales. Chords come in several different forms that affect the sound. Triads consist of three notes spaced a third apart and classified as major, minor, augmented and diminished chords. Seventh chords build on triads and have an additional no
Read more

How to Switch From Mono to Stereo in GarageBand

-
GarageBand provides Macintosh computer users with a free program to edit and manipulate audio. It is the entry-level audio application to the flagship product Logic Studio. While this program may be basic, it allows the user to make significant edits that are normally only possible in more expensive programs. While the default setting for all audio files is normally a stereo setting, you may occasionally find yourself working with a mono track on accident due to accidentally selecting a wrong setting. Step 1:  Open your audio file to prepare to make the necessary modifications to your audio track. Step 2:  Click on the audio track that you would like to turn back to a stereo track. If you have more than one track, you will have to complete this process for each track. Step 3:  Select the "Real Instrument" tab from the top left portion of the screen. Step 4:  Open the "Input Source" drop-down menu and change it from "Mono 1" or "Mono 2" to "S
Read more