Thursday, April 19, 2007

know your percussive keyboard instruments

I was walking across a pedestrian walkway on my way to the Hung Hom KCR station the other day, when I saw this interesting sight:



It's pretty normal to see people busking on this particular walkway, but this was definitely something new. Besides being impressed with this musician's skills, I was also quite impressed by the logistics of him lugging this large percussion instrument around town.

So, what is this large, percussion instrument, you might ask? Well, it might seem obvious to some, but it took a little bit of looking into for me to be certain (thank goodness for dictionaries!). My initial thought was "glockenspiel." I considered the fact that it could be that trusty old x-entry in all children's alphabet books -- the xylophone -- but that just seemed too obvious. Then I showed the video to my mom, and she was certain it was a marimba. Were either of us correct? Check the comments to find out.

2 comments:

michelle said...

It's in fact a xylophone!

Glockenspiels are similar, but made of metal, not wood.

Marimbas are made of wood, but have resonating pipes suspended below each bar.

Anonymous said...

NERD alert!