Musical Instruments

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Instruments I play

• Keyboards
• Percussion
  • Drums
  • Shakers
  • Wood
  • Metal
  • Sound effects
  • Other percussion
• Other Instruments

(It's becoming increasingly tricky to keep this list up to date, but here goes... :)

Keyboards

• Rogers Eungblut upright piano
• Roland Jupiter 6 analogue polysynth
• Roland JX-3P analogue polysynth with PG200 programmer
• Waldorf MicroWave rackmount wavetable synthesiser
• Ensoniq SQ80 CrossWave synthesizer
• Casio VZ1 Interactive Phase Distortion digital polysynth
• Casio CZ101 Phase Distortion digital polysynth (highly underrated)
• Yamaha CX5M music computer - this is what I originally began producing music with, in the Olde Days when Real Men spent days typing in musical notes in step time, saving data to cassette and hoping the data would load back in again... I even played a concert with this machine once! It is now long since retired.
• Pedal harmonium - this lovely instrument was used on my debut album Tone Control while I was living in the loft of Michael's Folly.
• Hohner Organetta 3 electric reed organ
• Melodica (mouth piano)

Percussion

Drums

• 4 x Guinean dun duns: two kenkeni, one sangban, one dununba
• 2 x Kambala KDO160 tiny kenkeni - (highly recommended)
• Professional Guinean soloist's djembe
• Gambian djembe
• African tall djembe
• 2 x Senegalese djembes
• African mama djembe
• African baby djembe
• 2 x Gambian baby djembe
• African samba drum
• Ghanaian gome drum
• 3 x Ghanaian kpanlogo
• 2 x Senegalese bougarabou tuned to E and A
• Senegalese seourouba
• Moroccan boran drum
• Syrian daf
• 2 x Indian tabla
• 3 x African lollipop drums
• Pair of Caribbean bongos
• Natal 11" conga on stand
• LP 11" Compact Conga
• 2 x Remo Tubanos (10" and 14")
• Remo snare drum
• Premier drumkit (2 toms, floor tom, kick, snare - currently cymbal-less)

Shakers

• 9 x Remo fruit shakes (boxed)
• 3 x LP RhythMix Box Shakers
• 2 x Rhythm Tech Eggz shakers
• 2 x plastic castanets
• 2 x Meinl black plastic maracas
• 2 x Meinl caxixi (basket shakers)
• 2 x giant African caxixi
• 3 x medium African caxixi
• 4 x small African caxixi
• 2 x African double basket shakers
• African shell shakers
• 3 x African gourd shekeres
• 5 x Gambian seed pod shakers (huge 40cm dried mangetout that I plucked from African trees!)
• 6 x Gambian ratatak gourd rattles
• 15 x stalk shakers
• 2 x Ghanaian coconut shakers
• Indonesian shaker (labelled 'Kerincing pangi putih')
• Ping-pong ball cluster merakas
• Assorted jars of seeds, rice, lentils, etc.

Wood

• Guinean balafon - two chromatic octaves in E
• 1.5m rainstick
• Meinl wooden Vibraslap
• Pair of Aboriginal clapsticks
• 2 x pairs of claves
• 2 x Percussion Plus wooden fish guiro
• 3 x Cambodian wooden frogs (croak!)

Metal

• Rhythmtech pro tambourine
• Sleigh Bells
• LP Agogo Bell
• 2 x LP Jam Bells pitched in E and C
• LP Flex-A-Tone
• LP Salsa Cha-Cha cowbell
• Triple cowbell
• 3 x Ghanaian pod bells
• 4 x Ghanaian banana gongs (apitua/slit bells) - large, medium and small
• 4 x Guinean cowbells
• 2 x African double bell
• 3 x Ghanaian atelogo - 50cm gong with natural rubber/wood beater
• Vietnamese bell ring
• Assorted other bells
• 2 x pairs of ankle bells
• 22 x metal bowls
• 42(!) x Tibetan singing bowls
• 11 x pairs of tingshaw (Tibetan finger cymbals)
• Pair of curved finger-cymbals tuned in A and D
• Pair of mini-cymbals
• 2 x Tibetan gongs (58cm in A2 and 36cm in Eb3)
• Pair of small Bhutanese bowl gongs (15.5cm)
• Dan moi - Vietnamese jaw harp made from a bullet cartridge
• 2 x tuning forks (A4=440Hz and E4=329.6Hz)
• Californian Energy Chimes
• TreeWorks chimes - looks almost the same as that one; the tuning is very cosmic
• Miniature chimes set
• 5 x metal poles, 1m-2m long, marked with harmonic points
• Toy steel drum

Sound effects

• 32(!) x Whirly tubes :-)
• Remo thunder tube 4" x 10"
• Remo spring drum 4" x 10"
• Octagonal ocean drum
• Assorted chains, drill bits, coins, metal foil
• Breaking glass :-)

Other percussion

• 5 x flowerpots
• 3 x earthenware pots
• Various beaters, sticks and mallets, soft and hard
• Cello bow for bowing cymbals, bowls

Other Instruments

• Arabic oud
• African mbira (thumb piano)
• African kalimba
• 2 x Tanzanian Zawose kalimba
• 2 x African wooden flutes
• Native American novice flute
• North Indian bansri flutes
• Chromatic metal flute
• Indonesian flute
• Bamboo flute
• 3 x ocarinas
• 'The Hohner Band' vintage harmonica in C Major
• Lee Oskar Diatonic harmonica in D Major

You might also like to check out some links about Drumming and Instruments.

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© copyright Malcolm Smith 2005-06-27 - last updated 2010-03-25 - links verified 2004-05-26