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What is the rarest instrument to play?

proaudioland.com - Top 5 Strange Instruments from Across the World - ProAudioLand

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Most of today's musicians tend to go for instruments like the guitar, violin or piano. However, in addition to these common instruments, there are a few rare and strange ones that not many musicians have probably never heard of, let alone know how they sound. These rare musical instruments create beautiful and melodious sounds. Here is a list of the top 5 strange and rare instruments from different parts of the globe:

Balalaika

The Balalaika is a stringed musical instrument from Russia with a characteristic triangular body. The instrument is strung using three strings and can be played using fingers or with leather plectrums. The instrument has leg extensions for convenience and comfort while playing. There are several variations of the Balalaika including alto balalaika, prima balalaika, bass balalaika, contrabass balalaika, and secunda balalaika.

Singing Ringing Tree

Very few musicians have seen the Singing Ringing Tree instrument. This is a wind powered sculpture that resembles a tree and creates melodious sounds. The instrument is found in Lancashire, England in Europe. This 3-metre tall instrument is made using galvanized steel pipes and harnesses wind energy to create a range of penetrating choral sounds produced in several octaves. The structure of the instrument consists of a combination of specifically cut pipes that create music and a few other pipes for holding the structure as well as serving as visual elements.

Cajon

The Cajon was originally developed in Peru by African slaves. This instrument is a hexagonal (six-sided) wooden box with a hole on one side while the other sides are designed using thin plywood. This percussion instrument is played by sitting on it and slapping either the front or rear sides with brushes, mallets, bare hands, fingers or stick. The instrument is commonly used in African and South American music. However, since the recent past, the instrument is gaining popularity in jazz and contemporary flamenco music.

Hydraulophone

The hydraulophone is one of the rarest musical instruments in the world. This instrument is a sensory device that is primarily designed for low vision musicians. This tonal acoustic instrument is played by direct contact with water or other fluids. In this instrument, sound is generated and affected hydraulically. This one of a kind music is fast becoming a popular instrument in Asia as well as in other parts of the world. The best thing about this instrument is that it creates sounds that rhyme well with most music genres.

Jaw Harp

Also known as a GewGew in Europe, the jaw harp is a small instrument made from metal or bamboo. The instrument has a flexible tongue that sits inside the instrument’s frame and creates the vibrations heard when playing the instrument. The Jaw Harp is played by placing it in the mouth and plucking the device’s tongue to produce sound. The pitch of the sound produced by this instrument can be varied by moving the tongue and lips while the instrument is vibrating. There is an endless collection of strange and fascinating rare musical instruments from different parts of the world. These instruments when played artistically and professionally, can produce magical sounds and tunes that can take your music to a new level.

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Do pianists type faster?

An additional part of the study saw an amateur pianist trained over a six-month period to use the piano keyboard to type simple correspondence - resulting in the pianist being able to type sentences at 80 words per minute. The pianist could actually type emails faster at the piano than on a QWERTY keyboard.

classicfm.com - Pianists are like professional typists, says new study - Classic FM

Pianists are like professional typists, says new study

Piano players can 'play words' as quickly as professional typists can type them, a new study by the Max Planck Institute of Informatics has shown. The study created a series of musical 'sentences' that were comparable in difficulty and structure to common English words on a QWERTY keyboard, and then recorded the results of a pianist 'typing' the notes on a piano keyboard, resulting in the musical phrases being turned into English words. Antti Oulasvirta, Senior Research at the Max Planck Institute, said the results were surprising: "Without prior practice [the pianist] was able to enter text with a top speed of over 80 words per minute. This corresponds to the performance rate of a professional typist using the QWERTY keyboard." To map the QWERTY keyboard to the piano keyboard accurately, the researchers considered hundreds of common typing patterns and found the musical equivalent. For example, frequent patterns like 'th' were translated as a musical leap of a third or a fifth. Researcher Anna Feit described the technique to Phys.org: "We had to respect the note transitions and chords that occur frequently in music. No pianist can quickly play dissonant chords or very large intervals, thus our mapping had to avoid these." An additional part of the study saw an amateur pianist trained over a six-month period to use the piano keyboard to type simple correspondence - resulting in the pianist being able to type sentences at 80 words per minute. The pianist could actually type emails faster at the piano than on a QWERTY keyboard.

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