Guiros Percussion Instruments Wooden Frog 3 Piece Set of 4 Inch, 3 Inch, 2.75 Inch, Wooden Frog Musical Instrument (Brown/Black/Natural Color)

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a b c d Mark., Brill (2011). Music of Latin America and the Caribbean. Boston, MA: Prentice Hall. ISBN 9780131839441. OCLC 653122923.

Solís, Ted (1995). "Jíbaro Image and the Ecology of Hawai'i Puerto Rican Musical Instruments". Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana. 16 (2): 123–153. doi: 10.2307/780370. JSTOR 780370.The güiro is commonly used in Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other forms of Latin American music, and plays a key role in the typical rhythm section of important genres like son, trova and salsa. Playing the güiro usually requires both long and short sounds, made by scraping up and down in long or short strokes. [1] The frog galvanoscope, and other experiments with frogs, played a part in the dispute between Galvani and Alessandro Volta over the nature of electricity. The instrument is extremely sensitive and continued to be used well into the nineteenth century, even after electromechanical meters came into use. Keithley, Joseph F., The Story of Electrical and Magnetic Measurements: From 500 BC to the 1940s, IEEE Press, 1999 ISBN 0780311930.

Many notable musicians also use it to produce classical orchestras, Bomba, reggae, and plena music. How to Play Guiro Instrument The frog galvanoscope was a sensitive electrical instrument used to detect voltage [1] in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It consists of a skinned frog's leg with electrical connections to a nerve. The instrument was invented by Luigi Galvani and improved by Carlo Matteucci. Clarke, Edwin; Jacyna, L. S., Nineteenth-Century Origins of Neuroscientific Concepts, University of California Press, 1992 ISBN 0520078799. The güiro, like the maracas, is often played by a singer. It is closely related to the Cuban guayo, Dominican güira, and Haitian graj which are made of metal. Other instruments similar to the güiro are the Colombian guacharaca, the Brazilian reco-reco, the quijada (cow jawbone) and the frottoir (French) or fwotwa (French Creole) ( washboard). [1] Etymology [ edit ] The guiro is a scrapper idiophone musical instrumentcommon in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Columbia, Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Ecuador. Guiro is a popular percussion instrument in dance music, including salsa.Wasserman, Mark (2012). The Mexican Revolution: A Brief History With Documents. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin's. pp.11, 12, 63, 69, 112, 121. The frog galvanoscope can be used to detect the direction of electric current. A frog's leg that has been somewhat desensitised is needed for this. The sensitivity of the instrument is greatest with a freshly prepared leg and then falls off with time, so an older leg is best for this. The response of the leg is greater to currents in one direction than the other and with a suitably desensitised leg it may only respond to currents in one direction. For a current going into the leg from the nerve, the leg will twitch on making the circuit. For a current passing out of the leg, it will twitch on breaking the circuit. [21] The güiro was adapted from an instrument which might have originated in either South America or Africa. [1] The Aztecs produced an early cousin to the güiro, called the omitzicahuastli, which was created from a small bone with serrated notches and was played in the same manner as the güiro. [6] The Taíno people of the Caribbean have been credited with the origins of the güiro. [7] The Taínos of Puerto Rico developed the güajey, a long gourd or animal bone with notches, an antecedent of the modern day güiro. [8]

This is one mean snappy crocodile, stunningly carved, and works well as an ornament! Whilst the one in the photo is natural wood, it does also come in green and is just as snappy! 2. Croaking Frog In the Arawakan language, a language of the indigenous people of Latin America and spread throughout the Caribbean spoken by groups such as the Taíno, güiro referred to fruit of the güira and an instrument made from fruit of the güira. [2] Construction and design [ edit ] a b c Shepherd, John, ed. (2003). Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume II: Performance and Production. London, UK: Continuum. pp.372–373. ISBN 9780826463227.The traditional guiro is only a hollowed gourd with notches on the side. Its design makes it difficult for players to hold and get a firm grip for consistent scrapping. Because of these limitations, the modern guiro has ridges on the surfaces and provision for holes where players can give it a firm grip. Matteucci used the frog galvanoscope to study the relationship of electricity to muscles, including in freshly amputated human limbs. Matteucci concluded from his measurements that there was an electric current continually flowing from the interior, to the exterior of all muscles. [14] Matteucci's idea was widely accepted by his contemporaries, but this is no longer believed and his results are now explained in terms of injury potential. [15] Construction [ edit ] When the frog's leg is connected to a circuit with an electric potential, the muscles will contract and the leg will twitch briefly. It will twitch again when the circuit is broken. [16] The instrument is capable of detecting extremely small voltages, and could far surpass other instruments available in the first half of the nineteenth century, including the electromagnetic galvanometer and the gold-leaf electroscope. For this reason, it remained popular long after other instruments became available. The galvanometer was made possible in 1820 by the discovery by Hans Christian Ørsted that electric currents would deflect a compass needle, and the gold-leaf electroscope was even earlier ( Abraham Bennet, 1786). [19] Yet Golding Bird could still write in 1848 that "the irritable muscles of a frog's legs were no less than 56,000 times more delicate a test of electricity than the most sensitive condensing electrometer." [20] The word condenser used by Bird here means a coil, so named by Johann Poggendorff by analogy with Volta's term for a capacitor. [2]

Fun Fact: There are other gourd-based percussion instruments, which include the shekere. What Kind of Music Is the Guiro Used For? Fun Fact:Different notches sizes and textured surfaces make distinct characteristic sounds of the instrument. It is also not unusual to find a guiro shaped like a frog. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, the güiro can be found in a variety of traditional, folk dance music and used in dance ensembles and religious festivals. [5] In the Yucatán Peninsula, the güiro is used in two Mayan dances, the mayapax and the jarana. [7] In Cuba, the güiro is used in the genre danzón. [7] In Puerto Rico, the güiro often associated with the music of the jíbaro and is used in the musical genres of the plena, the seis, and the danza. [8] [12] In the Caribbean coast, the güiro was used in traditional, folk dance cumbia music and is still used in modern cumbia music. [7] In Panama, the güiro can be found in folk dances such as the merjorana and cumbia. [5] Use in classical music [ edit ] Blench, Roger. 2021. The musical instruments of the Berom of Central Nigeria. Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.

Luigi Galvani, a lecturer at the University of Bologna, was researching the nervous system of frogs from around 1780. This research included the muscular response to opiates and static electricity, for which experiments the spinal cord and rear legs of a frog were dissected out together and the skin removed. In 1781, [5] an observation was made while a frog was being so dissected. An electric machine discharged just at the moment one of Galvani's assistants touched the crural nerve of a dissected frog with a scalpel. The frog's legs twitched as the discharge happened. [6] Galvani found that he could make the prepared leg of a frog (see the Construction section) twitch by connecting a metal circuit from a nerve to a muscle, thus inventing the first frog galvanoscope. [7] Galvani published these results in 1791 in De viribus electricitatis. [8] Guiros vary in material and size but they typically fall between 25 and 40 cm long. Traditional gourd guiros with wooden scrapers are still popular all over the world, but there are many different types of these instruments that produce a wide variety of distinct sounds. The vossa-satl, also known as the frog-pipes, [1] are a musical instrument of Argonian make found predominately in Murkmire. It resembles a polished wooden clam shell with a series of valves along the top; within each segment of the shell is a small, hollow compartment with a mouth like a bugle. Blench, Roger. 2009. A guide to the musical instruments of Cameroun: classification, distribution, history and vernacular names. Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation. The traditional way of making guiros is by using the hollowed-out gourd fruit from the higüero plant, a native tree in Puerto Rico. You can also use gourds from other trees found in Latin and Central America.