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Musical Instruments

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Cabasa - South American rattle. It’s a stainless steel cylinder with metal ball chains wrapped around it, which are scraped against it.

Cabrette or Cabreta -  bagpipe from Auverne (France)

Cadenas -  Spanish iron chains used as a percussion instrument

Caixa

Caixeta -  Portuguese or Brazilian wood block.

Caja - snare drum of Spain and Spanish America.

Cajita -  a small trapezoidal box from Peru. The lid is opened and closed with one hand, while the other hand hits the box with a wooden stick.

Cajón

Calabash - 1. dried hollow shell of a gourd, used as a rattle. 2. Large dried hollow shell of a gourd, used as a bass drum (West Africa).

Calebasse - Calabash in French.

Campana - bell in Spanish.

Canaveira -  a cane with a slit in the middle. It is held tightly and the lower half is struck rhythmically to obtain a certain kind of clapping sound (Galicia, Spain).

Cannada - a Sardinian metallic container used by shepherds to replace the guitar. 

Cántaras - Spanish drum made from a clay pitcher.

Cántaro - Spanish drum made from a clay pitcher.

Caña rajada -  slit reed. Used in popular Andalusian folk music.

Caña de agua - rainstick from South America. It is also called palo de lluvia

Capachos -  Colombian maracas

Cará -  South American maracas

Caracachás -  South American scraper.  

Carajillo - small clapper (Spain).

Cáscara - The shell or sides of the timbales

Castanet -

• El mundo de las castañuelas (the world of castanets)

Castañetas - Galician castanets.

Castanhetas - Portuguese castanets.

Castanholas - Portuguese castanets.

Castañuelas - Spanish castanets.

Catacá - Brazilian wooden blocks.

Caval - Bulgarian wind instrument. Its size varies from 50 to 80cm long, with different tunings.

Cavaquinho - a small 4-stringed instrument from Portugal and the Portuguese-speaking countries, widely used in samba music. It was the inspiration for the Hawaiian ukulele.

Caxambú - Brazilian conga drum

Caxixi

Cejilla - a device that can be moved to adapt the pitch of the flamenco guitar. 

Celempung - large plucked zither used in the Javanese gamelans.

Cello - In the violin family, the tenor instrument, played while held between the knees.

Celtic Harp – a small instrument of 24 to 34 strings, around 1 meter tall, with curved neck and pillar.

Cembali- 1. Italian harpsichord. 2. Small Italian cymbals.

Cembalom - See cimbalom.

Cencerro - A Spanish and Spanish American cowbell (with the clapper removed), struck with a wooden stick.

Centa - a two-headed cylindrical stick drum from Indonesia.

Cetera - Romanian term for violin.

Cetvorka - Croatian quadruple flute, with four pipes.

Chabreta - bagpipe from Lemosin (France).  

Chácaras - castanets from the Canary Islands (Spain).

Chalumeaux - a predecessor of the modern clarinet.

Champara - Kosovar Albanian small metallic finger cymbals

Chamrieng - Cambodian vocals

Chan-chiki - see atarigane.

Chanter - the reed pipe in a bagpipe with finger holes on which the melody is played.  

Chanz- Mongolian long-necked spiked lute with an oval wooden frame and snakeskin covering stretched over both faces. The three strings are fixed to a bar, which is inserted in the body. The instrument is struck or plucked with a plectrum made of horn or with the fingers. As the tones do not echo, every note is struck several times.

Chanzy - three-stringed Tuvan bowed string instrument.

Charango - The mini-guitar from South America made from armadillo shells. Read more about the charango.   

Chékere - A beaded gourd instrument of African origin used in Cuban music.

Chenda - a drum from the state of Kerala (India) beaten with two sticks.

Cheng - 1) smallest and highest-pitched of Chinese zithers, related to the ch'in and the Japanese koto  2) Chinese gong.

Chhing - Cambodian finger cymbals.

Chico - Afro-Uruguayan candombe drum.

Chichas - Colombian maracas.

Chieuve - bagpipe from Berry (France).

Chiftelia - A Kosovar Albanian three-stringed instrument from the same family as the saz.

Chigovia - wind instrument similar to the ocarina (Mozambique).

Chicahuaztli - Mexican rain stick of Nahuatl origin.

Chiflo - Spanish three hole flute from Aragon.

Chililihtli -  large Pre-Hispanic Mexican flute.  

Chimta - a percussion instrument from India. It consists of a long strip with jingles.

Ch'in - long narrow Chinese zither with very smooth top surface.Traditionally the most honored of Chinese instruments.

Chin Chin - Chinese 4 string banjo with aluminum body.

Ching - Cambodian finger cymbals.

Ching-hu - smallest of Chinese bowed lutes.

Chitarra batente - guitar from Calabria (southern Italy), also known as Renaissance guitar. The body is made from walnut or chestnut wood. It has four or five metal strings.

Chirimía - 1. Spanish reed instrument. 2. Guatemalan wind instrument.

Chocalho -  an Angolan shaker made of either many small cymbal like metal pieces or large metal cans filled with rocks, sand or other materials.  

Ch'ojok - Korean grass flute, made from blades of grass.

Cholaho - a large tube shaker from Brazil, filled with small pellets. Most are made out of metal and some are multiple tubes attached together. 

Chongouri - See chonguri.

Chonguri - long four-stringed fretted lute from Georgia.

Cho'or - Kyrgyz end blown flute.

Chordophone - class of instruments comprising strings stretched between fixed points. divided into zithers, which includes sets of strings stretched parallel to the board; lutes (lute, violin, guitar, etc), with strings stretched across a fingerboard and its attached resonator; and harps.

Chruti - Indian bagpipe

Chu – Burmese jingle.

Chu-daiko - general term for a medium sized Japanese drum.

Chüeh-hu - Chinese bowed lute with a fingerboard.

Chulluchullos - Bolivian percussion instrument made from dozens of flattened tin can covers.

Chum Nhac - a small Vietnamese modern bell tree used to produce percussion effects (Courtesy of Khac Chi).

Chunggum - medium-sized Korean bamboo flute.

Ciaramella- an Italian double-reed instrument, similar to an oboe, that comes with 7 to 8 holes. It is usually played along with the Neapolitan zampogna (bagpipe).

Cifte Nagara - Turkish kettle drums.

Cifte -  Turkish double reed pipe.

Cimbalom-  Hungarian box zither with forty-eight strings, which are stretched over a large sounding board and sounded with small hammers.

Cirrampala – a wooden stick with a rope tied to it. The mouth is used as the resonance box, vibrating the rope with fingers Colombia).  

Cistro - Spanish cittern.

Citara - Spanish and Latvian zither.

Cittern – a fretted instrument similar to a mandolin, played with a pick. It usually has 10 strings in 5 courses.

Clapper - a percussion instrument formed by two or more elements that are joined together and are struck together to make a percussive sound.

Clarsach - Scottish folk harp, with 25 to 34 strings.

Claríno - Greek term for clarinet.

Claves - Two round, polished sticks which are struck one against the other. Used in Cuban music.

Cobla - traditional Catalan brass orchestra.

Cobsa - a short-necked lute of Romania. It is pear-shaped.

Cobza  - a short Moldavian short lute related to the cobsa and derived from the kopuz.

Coco - South American wooden block.

Concertina - Small accordion (free reed) instrument from England, usually hexagonal in shape.

Conga

Contra -  Transylvanian (Romanian) three-stringed viola.

Controller - A MIDI synthesizer with a piano keyboard. It can be used to   control other synthesizers, called tone generators, which do not have a piano keyboard.

Cordas -  strings in Portuguese.

Cornas de cabra - goat horn. Ancient Galician instrument used by shepherds.

Cornemuse - mouth blown bagpipe with chanter and small drone in one stock, and a separate large drone, from the Bourbonnais region of France.

Corneta china – Chinese bugle. Another name for the trompeta china, or "Chinese trumpet,"used in Cuban comparsas for carnaval.  

Craar - See krar.Croatian musical instruments - Visit http://scena.hgu.hr/stjepan-veckovic

Cromorno - Spanish crumhorn.

Crumhorn - medieval reed instrument.

Crwth - old-style Welsh harp.

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Cuatro -  1. Creole guitar of South America and the West Indies, made out of pine or cedar wood, with four nylon strings. The cuatro is usually strummed rather than plucked. Derived from the Spanish guitar. 2. Puerto Rican guitar used in country music. Originally the Puerto Rican cuatro had only four strings. Around 1875 it was changed to five sets of double strings. Derived from the Spanish guitar.

• Cuatros. A great resource site for Puerto Rican cuatro fans: store, classes, history, artist biographies, etc.
• Puerto Rican cuatro site. In Spanish

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Cuban sticks - see claves.

Cuban tom toms – bongos.

Cucharas - spoons used in Cuban rumba to play the clave patterns.

Cugenao - Chinese leaf reed.

Cuica - Brazilian friction drum with a stick attached to the middle of the drumhead, which is rubbed by the player with a piece of damp cloth or cotton. The friction on the stick causes the head of the cuica to vibrate and "squeak". The pitch of the squeak can be changed by applying pressure to the drum head and changing the tension.

Cümbüs - Turkish banjo-like lute.

Cununú -  Colombian jungle drum.

Cura - smallest of the Turkish saz family, about 75 cm long.   

Cymbalom – See cimbalom.

Last Updated Sunday, August 07 2005 @ 06:08 PM EDT|23,884 Hits