Obscure Instruments

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A place to share musical oddities.

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Bianqing (www.youtube.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Technically this doesn't really count as an obscure instrument where I live, but I suspect there are very few people outside of here who know it. These are stone chimes that date back to "scary-antiquity" times (at least 2500 years and likely more). The set being played is a reproduction of the set found in the tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng currently sitting on display in the Hubei Provincial Museum.

As is usual when describing some of the odder musical instruments here, I use the "it's like … but" formulation.

It's like a xylophone, but arranged sideways, and also suspended on wires or thin ropes (depending on which era), oh, yeah, and the sounding plates are made of stone.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That sounds pretty. It seems like there is a huge variety of similar instruments around the world.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, lithophones of various kinds are actually incredibly ancient and almost universal.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Does that category named include instruments with wooden or metal blocks, like a Marimba?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Lithophones are specifically stone in origin. (Not all lithophones are made of stone anymore, of course, like not all woodwinds are made of wood: flutes I'm looking at you here.) The more general category that would include wooden, etc. sounding are "idiophones" IIRC.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Hey, who are you calling an idiotphone?

That's neat. Thank you for explaining!