Wood Block
A woodblock is essentially a small piece of slit drum made from a single piece of wood and used as a percussion instrument. It is struck with a stick, making a characteristically percussive sound.
East Asian musics use a variety of wood blocks ranging from small hand-held instruments to enormous (often immovable) temple blocks which may be sounded by swinging a large log against them. Log drums made from hollowed logs, and slit drums made from bamboo, are used in Africa and the Pacific Islands.
The muyu (simplified Chinese: 木鱼; traditional Chinese: 木魚; pinyin: mùyú) is a rounded woodblock carved in the shape of a fish and struck with a wooden stick. It is made in various sizes and is often used in Buddhist chanting, in China as well as in other Asian nations including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Also in China, a small, rectangular, high-pitched wood block called bangzi (梆子) is used. In Vietnam, a slit drum called song lang is widely used.
The orchestral wood-block instrument of the West is generally made from teak or another hardwood. The dimensions of this instrument vary considerably, although it is always a rectangular block of wood with one or sometimes two longitudinal cavities. It is played by striking it with a stick.
In a drum kit, a woodblock was traditionally mounted on a clamp fixed to the top of the rear rim of the bass drum. More recently it is most commonly mounted on an auxiliary boom attached to a cymbal stand.
Read more about Wood Block: Wood Blocks in Commercial Music
Famous quotes containing the words wood and/or block:
“He will not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before nightfall in the short days of winter; but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood; and so will the strokes of that scholar’s pen, which at evening record the story of the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the reader, long after the echoes of his axe have died away.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Dug from the tomb of taste-refining time,
Each form is exquisite, each block sublime.
Or good, or bad,—disfigur’d, or deprav’d,—
All art, is at its resurrection sav’d;
All crown’d with glory in the critic’s heav’n,
Each merit magnified, each fault forgiven.”
—Martin Archer, Sir Shee (1769–1850)