A couple months ago I got an email from a guitarist interested in the tongue drum. Turns out Detman plays music for his church and wanted to have the drum to share with his friends and family. Of course I was happy to oblige, and it’s great to see that they’re having as much fun playing the drum as I had making it.

Here’s a video of Detman’s friends gathered around the tongue drum. Keep dishing out the beats, we love it!! After the video Click Here to check out the hang, metallic cousin of the tongue drum.

With a full arrangement of Chinese instruments, this piece captures the Eastern spirit as well as any recorded. Just listen to the erhu on center stage, accompanied by the pipa (Chinese guitar) and gu zheng (zither), among others.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Chinese music is that it is primarily a feminine art. Whereas the rest of the world is mostly driven by repetitive rhythms and other bold masculine themes, the subtle texture of Chinese music is as expressive as it is reserved…

Balance.
The perfect state of equilibrium.

So once you’ve appreciated this special piece of music, Click Here to see another world music video.

Perhaps the most important instrument to Middle Eastern music is the oud. Predecessor of the western lute, the oud is characterized by its lack of frets, allowing for sounds similar to both the fretless Japanese shamisen and the fretted western lute.

Of course the sound of the oud is truly unique to itself, and drawing any further comparisons would be an injustice to the originality of the instrument. In this video of instrumental Arabic music, the oud finds itself center stage with the accompaniment of the guitar, flute, drums and other world instruments. After viewing, Click Here to check out another unique string instrument.

Every good djembe sounds a bit different than any other, it is this unique quality that makes them great. Check out the deep bass sound on this djembe.

After the video, click here to see the action in this drum circle.

The remarkable thing about the didgeridoo is that pretty much everything about the instrument is just plain strange.

I mean, traditionally the didgeridoo is crafted by termites as they eat and hollow out the inside of a eucalyptus or bamboo trunk, the origin of the instrument is of the Australian Aborigine, the name itself seems to be an onomatopoeia, and the unusual technique of circular-breathing is often used to allow for continuous play. Definitely unique among instruments.

Some modern versions of the didgeridoo are made of pvc pipe, and while these produce an interesting sound in their own right, these of course pale in comparison to the original (or aboriginal as it were…).

After the video, click here and check out some African hand-drums.

Dating back at least 12,000 years to ancient Chinese, Mayan and Aztec cultures, the ocarina is one of the oldest known musical wind instruments. Made of any kind of hollowed vessel, just about anything can be turned into an ocarina. Most commonly, ocarinas are made of wood or ceramic, but they have been known to be made out of anything from carrots to sea shells too.

Interesting that two civilizations across the world from each other would develop practically the same instrument at pretty much the same time, eh?

What makes them unique is that, unlike other flute-like instruments, the tone of the ocarina is produced by the percentage of the surface covered, not the location of the holes themselves. That and the fact that most all ocarinas are hand-made, and so no two of these are the same.

The ocarina was made popular world-wide in 1998 with the release of the Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. Here is a little tribute to that momentous occasion. After the video, Click Here and check out another world wind-instrument.