| Name | Image | Tradition | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gong Chime |  | Thailand | A gong chime is a generic term for a set of small, high-pitched bossed pot gongs. The gongs are ordinarily placed in order of pitch, placed upright with the boss upward on cords held in a low wooden frame, often in order of ascending pitch. The frames can be rectangular or circular (the latter are sometimes called "gong circles"), and may have one or two rows of gongs. They are an important instrument in a large number of Southeast Asian musical ensembles. |
| Gourd Mouth Organ |  | Vietnam | A gourd mouth organ is a traditional wind instrument found in many nations of East and Southeast Asia. It is a free reed mouth organ similar to the Chinese sheng but with a windchest made from a dried bottle gourd rather than metal or wood. Its pipes (often five in number) are made of bamboo and it has free reeds that may be made of bamboo or metal. In China, gourd mouth organs are referred to by the generic name hulusheng. Similar instruments are found in Thailand (where it is called naw among the Lahu, lachi among the Akha, and fulu among the Lisu), Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Vietnam (where it is called đing nam or m'buot), and Borneo. |
| Grand Piano |  | Japan | Grand pianos have the frame and strings placed horizontally, with the strings extending away from the keyboard. This makes the grand piano a large instrument, for which the ideal setting is a spacious room with high ceilings for proper resonance. There are several sizes of grand piano. Manufacturers and models vary, but a rough generalization distinguishes the "concert grand", (between about 2.2 m to 3 m long) from the "parlor grand" (about 1.7 m to 2.2 m) and the smaller "baby grand" (which may be shorter than it is wide). All else being equal, longer pianos with longer strings have better sound and lower inharmonicity of the strings. The image shows the inside of a Yamaha grand piano. |
| Greek Baglama |  | Greece | The Greek baglama is a half-sized version of the bouzouki. It has a small body, with a bowl, that is either made from staves or carved from solid wood. The neck is fretted, with the fret spacing corresponding to the notes of Western music. It has three pairs of strings, of which the higher two pairs are tuned in unison to D and A, and an octave pair tuned to D. The high pitched sound of the baglama is often very prominent in Pireas style Rembetika. |
| Guacharaca |  | Colombia | Guacharaca is a musical percussion instrument usually made out of the cane-like trunk of a small palm tree. The guacharaca itself consists of a tube with ridges carved into its outer surface with part of its interior hollowed out, giving it the appearance of a tiny, notched canoe. It is played with a fork composed of hard wire fixed into a wooden handle. The 'guacharaquero' (guacharaca player) scrapes the fork along the instrument's surface to create its characteristic scratching sound. A typical guacharaca is about as thick as a broomstick and as long as a violin. |
| Guan |  | China | The guan (管; literally "pipe" or "tube") where northern China version is called guanzi (管子) or bili (traditional: 篳篥) and the Cantonese version is called houguan (喉管). It is classified as a bamboo instrument in the Ba Yin (ancient Chinese instrument classification) system. The guan is a Chinese double reed wind instrument. Unlike instruments in the shawm family, such as the Western oboe or Chinese suona, the guan has a cylindrical bore, giving it a clarinet-like tone. |
| Gudok |  | Russia | A gudok (also hudok)(Russian and Ukrainian - гудок) is an ancient Eastern Slavic string musical instrument, which was played with a bow. A gudok usually had three strings, with two of them were tuned in unison, and the third tuned a fifth higher. All three strings were in the same plane at the bridge, so that a bow could make them all sound simultaneously (unlike a violin, where only 2 strings can be played at once). Sometimes the gudok also had several sympathetic strings (up to eight) under the soundboard. These made the gudok's sound warm and rich. The player held the gudok on his lap, like a cello or viola da gamba. It was also possible to play the gudok while standing and even while dancing, which made it popular among skomorokhs. |
| Gudugudu |  | Nigeria | Gudugudu is a traditional drum used by the Yoruba ethnic group of Nigeria. It is a smaller, rounded, and melodic batá drum that is beaten with two thin and flexible "spatulas" made of a cow's hide or skin. In fact, this drum so melodic and danceable that it perhaps does not need an accompaniment. It can be seen and experienced in today's sekere, fuji, apala and possibly juju. |
| Güira |  | Dominican Republic | A güira is a percussion instrument from the Dominican Republic, generally used in merengue, bachata, and its subgenres, that sounds like a maraca or hi-hat but in fact is a sheet of metal-- in practice, often from a five gallon oil can-- evenly perforated with a nail, shaped into a cylinder or torpedo-like shape, and played with a stiff brush, similar to the Cuban güiro, but more serrated. In merengue, the güira is brushed steadily on the downbeat with a "and-a" thrown in at certain points, or played in more complex patterns that generally mark the time. Modern cumbia also sometimes features a güira. |
| Güiro |  | Cuba | The güiro is a percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a wooden stick along the notches to produce a ratchet-like sound. The güiro is commonly used in Latin-American music, and plays a key role in the typical cumbia rhythm section. |
| Guitar Zither |  | United States | The guitar zither (or harp zither) is a musical instrument consisting of a soundbox, with two sets of unstopped strings. One set of strings is tuned to the diatonic scale and the other set is tuned to make the various chords in the key of the diatonic strings. The guitar zither came into use in the 19th Century, and was widely mass-produced in the United States and in Germany. A form of psaltery, the guitar zither is closely related to the Autoharp. It differs from the concert zither in not having a fret board. The name guitar zither is apparently derived from its sound, as the concert zither is more closely related to the guitar, in performance method, and in physical form, than is the guitar zither. The image shows a fretless Musima guitar zither with 21 melody strings and 24 chord strings. |
| Guitarro |  | Spain | The Guitarro is a small, five-stringed guitar from Aragon, an autonomous community in the centre of north-eastern Spain. It is slightly larger than the requinto or cavaquinho. The instrument is also found in other regions of Spain, such as Andalusia, La Mancha, and Murcia. |
| Guitarrón |  | Mexico | The guitarrón (literally "large guitar" in Spanish) is a very large, deep-bodied Mexican 6-string acoustic bass played in mariachi bands. Although obviously similar to the guitar, it is not a derivative of that instrument, but was independently developed from the sixteenth-century Spanish bajo de uña. It achieves audibility by its great size, and does not require electric amplification for performances in small venues. The guitarrón is fretless, the strings are heavy gauge, and the action is high, so that quite a bit of left hand strength is required. |
| Guqin |  | China | Guqin (Chinese: 古琴) is a plucked seven-string long narrow Chinese zither with very smooth top surface. It has been played since ancient times. It is sometimes referred to by the Chinese as 「國樂之父/国乐之父」, meaning "the father of Chinese music" or 「聖人之噐/圣人之器」, meaning "the instrument of the sages." It can also be called qixianqin (七絃琴, meaning "seven-stringed instrument"). The guqin is not to be confused with the guzheng, another Chinese long zither also without frets, but with moveable bridges under each string. The image shows the famous painting "Ting Qin Tu" (聽琴圖, Listening to the Qin), by the Song emperor Huizong (1082–1135). |
| Gusle |  | Serbia | Gusle, or gusla, is a Serbian national stringed instrument usually made of maple wood. It is a single-stringed musical instrument used in the Balkans and on the Dinarides area. The gusle is typically used to accompany the voice of a player (called a guslar) telling and/or singing an epic story or legend. The image shows a part of monument dedicated to solders of Battle of Kosovo which was made by Djordje Jovanovic in 1904, located in Krusevac, Serbia. |
| Gusli |  | Russia | The Gusli (Russian: гусли, Ukrainian: гуслі, husli) is an ancient generic Slavic term for a stringed musical instrument. The term and its derivatives is used for either a plucked psaltery or zither-like instrument or for the violin or bowed equivalents. Originally the instrument had gut strings made from pig entrails. In recent times concert versions of the instrument have steel strings. |
| Guzheng |  | China | The guzheng, or gu zheng (Chinese: 古箏) or zheng (箏) (gu-, 古 means "ancient") is a traditional Chinese musical instrument. It belongs to the zither family of string instruments. The guzheng is the parent instrument of the Japanese koto, the Mongolian yatga, the Korean gayageum, and the Vietnamese đàn tranh. The guzheng should not to be confused with the guqin, another ancient Chinese zither but without bridges. The modern-day guzheng is a plucked, half-tube zither with movable bridges and 21 strings, although it can have anywhere from 15 to 25 strings (a customized version exists with more than 44 strings). The image shows a modern guzheng. |
| Gyaling |  | Tibet | The gyaling (also spelled gya ling, gya-ling, jahlin, jah-lin, jahling, jah-ling,Rgya-gling etc.) is a double reed shawm traditional to Tibet. It is used specifically in Tibetan monasteries during puja (chanting and prayer) and to welcome lamas and rinpoches. The player uses cyclic breathing technique to provide a continuous sound. |
| Gyil |  | Ghana | The gyil is a xylophone-like instrument made of wood and gourds. It is a pentatonic percussion instrument, common to Ghana, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire. It is the primary traditional musical instrument used by the Dagara, an African ethnic group. The instrument is made with a wooden frame, calabash gourds with spider web silk covering small holes in the gourds to produce a buzzing sound, antelope sinew and leather for the fastenings and a red hardwood called liga for the keys. |
Prev Top Next |
