Ganassi Recorders   Whistle in D

Recorders and whistle - The Ganassi recorder is named after Sylvestro Ganassi, the author of the 1535 publication Opera Intitulata Fontegara - A Treatise on the Art of Playing the Recorder and of Free Ornamentation. This is a manual teaching the art of diminutions (improvisation) on the recorder, with fingering charts and notes on technique and style. It describes techniques and pitch ranges well beyond the musical capabilities of what, through most of the twentieth century, was assumed of Renaissance recorder practice. Ganassi's text, and the musical capabilities it describes, inspired a number of recorder makers in the 1970s to investigate the construction of new instruments that could meet these capabilities. In the USA, Bob Marvin researched and published some possible internal bore dimensions of such an instrument, and the Australian recorder maker Fred Morgan combined Marvin's dimensions with the exterior based on a surviving European instrument of the era, to create the first "Ganassi".
The Ganassi recorders that Racheal plays are made by Australian instrument maker Michael Grinter. The low whistle in D was also made and developed by Michael Grinter. The treble recorder is made by Moeck.

Tabla - This quintessential percussion instrument from North Indian classical music is made up of a pair of drums, known individually as tabla and bayan. Tony's tabla was made in Kolkata.

Udu - A clay pot drum of Nigerian origin. It bears a certain physical resemblance to the South Indian clay pot drum known as ghatam, although the playing techniques are quite different. Tony has developed his own technique for the udu which is a hybrid of ghatam and tabla techniques, with other techniques of his own invention. Tony's udu was made on the Central Coast of New South Wales by Hildegard Anstice.

Tombak (zarb) - The principal drum of Persian classical music. The tombak is a small barrel-shaped cylinder, usually carved from Mulberry wood, with a single goat skin on the playing head and a narrow-throated foot at the other end. A section of the body is ringed with small rib-like corrugations which allow the player to scrape a fingernail or thumbnail across them, giving a sound that resembles that of the Latin American guiro. Tony uses this particular feature in Skopianos at the end of each four-bar cycle. Tony's tombak was made in Iran.

Frame drums - Frame drums are a culturally ubiquitous instrument with many regional variations in dimension and shape, materials of manufacture, supplementary features and playing techniques. All adhere to the central notion of what constitutes a frame drum - a membrane attached to a frame, with no body as such to the drum. Frames are usually made of wood but may also be made of metal or plastic; skins could be made from calf, goat, fish, plastic, or theoretically any material at all. The most common supplementary feature to frame drums is a ring of bells or circular jingles around the frame, which vibrate when played so as to add an extra dimension, or accent, to the sound. In some cultures these bells are small, in some non-existent, but in others the jingles are almost as big as the drum frame itself. In some instances the jingles have become the principal feature of the instrument, such that the skin has been done away with altogether - as in the western European tambourine. Tony plays three frame drums of different sizes in Kalamatianos. Two of these are large and medium sized drums without jingles. Tony plays them with techniques resembling those of the Turkish bendir and the Persian daf. The third drum is an Egyptian riq, a small, high-pitched instrument with comparatively large jingles. With this instrument the player's fingers are used to strike these jingles in between strikes on the playing head, so as to create another voice in rhythmic antiphony, as it were, to the voice of the skin.

Llama - This is a small rattle made from the toenails of its namesake animal. This instrument of South American origin binds around 40 llama toenails to a small ring of fabric, which is then traditionally used, for example, by a drummer or other instrumentalist. Tony uses the llama here together with the udu, in Two Azeri and Absence. He grasps the llama with his toes and plays a simple rhythmic counterpoint to the complex rhythms of the udu.

Miscellaneous percussion - Tony plays a range of miscellaneous instruments here, many of them in Nanourisma. In this piece he creates a textural backdrop with 2 gongs of different size from Wuhan in central China. He also uses a small Korean gong, a Nepalese temple bowl, or singing bowl, and two small brass cowbells from Indonesia, tuned approximately a fifth apart. In Kalamatianos, Tony supports the recorder improvisation with small Turkish finger cymbals, or zils.