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Yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting percussion instrument:

(Instrument at 3:28 of the video)

The instrument takes the form of an oblong wooden block with 12 small round holes (6 at each far end, spaced evenly along the smaller width) connected by some sort of cut-out-trenches in a more or less aestethic manner. It seems to be played the same way a xylophon is played, the trenches/barriers likely modifying the way vibrations propagate, thus modulating the eventual sound.

quick screen-grab...

enter image description here

Dom
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dot_Sp0T
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  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because instrument identification questions are off-topic. – Dom Mar 20 '20 at 22:13
  • Oh wow. Did the rules change? – dot_Sp0T Mar 21 '20 at 08:42
  • If someone asked me why this is "off-topic", I couldn't explain them. – piiperi Reinstate Monica Mar 21 '20 at 11:37
  • @dot_Sp0T it's always been off topic as per the FAQ https://music.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic – Dom Mar 21 '20 at 16:23
  • @Dom that's the thing. I'm pretty sure I checked the faq when asking the question. Probably even additionally tried to raise someone on the general chat to ask for advice with the new stack. But either way I got an answer and it was good. – dot_Sp0T Mar 21 '20 at 17:26

1 Answers1

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It's a tongue drum, slit (slot?) drum, sometimes called a log drum. Not particularly Japanese, maybe U.S. I think.

Probably one of the oldest instruments used by Man. Originally made from hollowed out logs - hence log drum, used for sending messages (jungle drums?) and can be made from metal, in a way resembling steel pans, but with vibrating tines instead. It belongs to the idiophone family.

Made from wenge wood for the top (tines), and padouk for the sides and bottom, as resonators. Often tuned in pentatonic - so could be construed as 'Japanese', possibly. Usually an octave and a half/ two octaves, C and F seem to be common, but some just produce a more percussive than pitched sound.

Tim
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