1 post tagged “didgeridoo”

  Well you knew it would happen some time or an other... if you haven't noticed by now I like to pick the musicale instruments that are the loudest for example, The Skins (Drums), Bagpipes, Tin Whistles, which are in my opinion, no offence, the Best. So now it is time for yet another of THE coolest and oldest instruments in the whole world! The Didgeridoo! Okay so I only bought it today BUT!!! That doesn’t mean I just went out and bought a piece of Junk… I learned my lesson with those bagpipes from Pakistan… will noo, its time for you to learn about,  The Didgeridoo…

Etymology

Didgeridoo is not actually a word derived from Australian! it is actually thought to be Irish. dúdaire or dúidire meaning trumpeter; constant smoker, puffer; long-necked person, eavesdropper; hummer, crooner and dubh Meaning black. One theory says that a British army officer was 'Down Under' and saw a Australian playing the Didgeridoo and he turned to his Gaelic aid and asked him "I say what is that flipin' native chap doing, what?" and the aid looked at the man who caught the officer's attention and said "Well um... its uh... dúdaire dubh!" (meaning black piper) But this is most likely not so because in Irish the word for 'Black Person' is fear gorm which actually means 'Blue Man' but in my opinion it might have some thing to do with the Welsh language, Dudh meaning 'black' in welsh although some think it is actually an Onomatopoeia which is a word that is actually a sound, like 'buzz' and 'ring'
 There are so many differing tribes with there own names for this instrument that I am not even going to try and list some of the names! not to offend any one but if you would like to leave a name and the tribe it comes from for this instrument please feel free. For the ease of reading (and writing) I am going to refer to this instrument as a Didge or a Didgeridoo.

Making of a Didgeridoo

     We begin our story thousands of years ago in northern Australia in the 'Out Back' three Australians where out hunting and they where sitting around the fire on a very cold night and two of the men (sorry I didn't make the story up) looked over to there buddy and told him to go get a log for the fire because the fire was dieing down and, did I mention it was cold out? so the hunter got up and went to find a good log for the fire, well in the desert if he could find A log would be a find! He found a log of good size so he picked it up, but it was very light for it's size for some reason so he looked down and he saw it was a tube because termites had been eating there way throughout the center of the log, but beggars can't be choosers! so he brought it back to the fire and his palls said "Good now toss it on the fire we're cold!" but he didn't want to kill all those termites, so he pushed all of them to the end of the tube and blew in to the log spewing all the termites into the sky making the stars and the first didgeridoo. Even to this day some didgeridoos are still made from certain eucalyptus trees and saplings that have been hollowed out by termites! an instrument made by an insect! if that's not cool I don't know what is. now once you have harvested your tube you want it to be able to achieve the right tone, not too thick, not too thin. and if you want to you can coat the inside with bee's wax to make it air tight or you can make a bee's wax mouth piece for comfort.

Playing the Didgeridoo

     Now Musicologists have classified the Didgeridoo as a aerophone which I quote from Wikipedia,
"An aerophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes, and without the vibration of the instrument itself adding considerably to the sound. It is one of the five main classes (class 4) of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification." Now to play the didge you must first have... the lips to play the didge. This means you must train your lips to vibrate at the right frequency to create the 'Drone' now I will tell you if you rely want to Know how to play the didge I would say go to http://www.didgeridoostore.com/ and click on the link at the top of the page titled "How to play didgeridoo" and that will give you the correct technique for playing the didge which, I can't even begin to teach you because I don't have the sounds you will kneed to know how to play properly. Now I must say the didge can be easy to learn on your own especially with the web site above, its pretty simple and it has been perfected over a course of thousands of years!

Well I guess that's all I can say with didgeridostore.com and wikipedia who needs this post?! so any way that's all for now

     Health,
Dreagon Scribe

Here are some picks,

Didge

My Didgeridoo

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P.S.