Lark in the Morning
Making Gourd Musical Instruments
Making Gourd Musical Instruments
SKU:bok707
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Over 60 string, wind and percussion instruments and how to play them.
Take a gourd, cut it open, and clean it out - and you've already got a frame for a drum, the body of a banjo or zither, or a tube for a flute without any complicated techniques or tools.
Ginger Summit and Jim Widess have scoured the earth to find a collection of wonderful and unusual gourd instruments to pluck, blow, bang and hit. There are African kalimbas, a Brazilian berimbau, a Greek lyre, maracas from Costa Rica, a Hawaiian uli'uli, and hunter's harp from Mali. a Chinese kite flute and so much more.
Along with instructions for making these, you'll get hints for playing tem and a wealth of fascinating background information.
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I was looking for the right equipment for my Camac Isolde Celtic harp. I did NOT want to install the Dusty Strings pick-ups- seemed like way too much to add. This little gizmo was easy to install with the little pictures on placement- like, less than five minutes easy. I plugged the pickup into my new Roland Mobile Cube and it’s perfect! I don’t hear any sound distortion, and I think this will be just right when playing background music for noisier environments. Super happy with this!

I was excited to receive this kit. I do have several banjos already; however, I did not have a mountain banjo. I have built gourd banjos and ekontings (I went to Gambia in 2004 and 2007 to learn how to play and make them) from scratch, so I am not a beginner in terms of making instruments. I had a lot of fun putting the kit together. I do have a few observations regarding tips or slight modifications in the instruction manual, if interested.
Thanks!
Paul Sedgwick

I am very happy with the quality of the instrument. I am of Puerto Rican decent and it reminds me of my childhood, watching the musicians and learning to play myself. It is a beautiful guiro and sounds amazing.

It's great to be able to buy a hurdy gurdy in the US without having to wait for 6 months to a year or more. The Aplo is a quality entry level instrument that produces beautiful sound. It resonates very well and there are no buzzes or squeaks. Workmanship is very good. I got mine cottoned, rosined and tuned in a half hour. The transaction was easy and it arrived within a week.
I've been able to play some tunes on it with only a few hours of practice. It's going to be a lot of fun.

I love it, the entonation is really very good (sorry for my bat english).
Regards!