Your Custom Text Here
Can you get a Handel on what this week’s word might be?
Word of the week: It's an obscure, archaic 19th-century word with a definition almost as strangely obvious and clear as what it describes isn't – poor, illegible handwriting, and bad spelling and grammar
Read more
Guitar crossed with cello? Arpeggione models created by luthier Philippe Berne
Word of the week: It is neither guitar nor cello, but fretted and tuned like the former, and bowed like the latter. Read on to find out more with musical examples, as well as instances where guitarists have decided to take a bow …
Read more
Oh what a carillon … in Bruges, Belgium
Word of the week: The bells! The bells! Struck by metal clappers connected to baton keys, this beautiful sounding word – and a-peeling historic instrument – comprises, by definition, a minimum of 23 cast bronze, cup-shaped bells played melodically or in chords
Read more
The esraj is a four-string version of the older dilruba
Word of the Week: It has a beautifully eerily, emotional sound that echoes the human voice, that comes not from vocal chords, but from bowed strings in this instrument from southern Asia – mainly music in Sikh, Punjab and eastern Bengal culture
Read more
Like a trumpet, but not a trumpet …
Word of the week: It’s similar to a trumpet, but isn’t. What’s the difference, who plays it, and on what songs and pieces. All is revealed here in a blow-by-blow account, featuring artists including Miles Davis, Bruce Springsteen and The Pogues
Read more
Have you ‘herd’ this before?
Word of the week: It's a beautiful, haunting Scandinavian high-pitched, very musical vocal style, designed to resonantly call in herds of cows or goats from high pastures and long distances, sung out particularly by women
Read more
A 16-string chromatic nyckelharpa
Word of the week: It's a traditional Swedish instrument that sounds similar to and is bowed like the violin, but with greater resonance, has 16 strings and as many as 37 wooden keys that fret the strings to make particular note
Read more
Plenty of puff: Monsieur le Curé and his Ophicleide
Word of the week: It's an obscure hybrid of tuba and saxophone and evolved from the serpent, this rich-toned keyed brass instrument has a mouthpiece that makes it part of the bugle family
Read more
Rebecs
Word of the week: Most popular in the 13th-16th centuries, then largely replaced by the viol and violin, yet this beautiful wooden gut- and nylon-stringed instrument has a distinctive sound and still appears in some music today
Read more
Ukeke maker and player Mahi La Pierre
Word of the week: Unlike the ukelele, which was introduced by European sailors, this is the only true indigenous Hawaiian stringed instrument, evolving from hunting bow into one with plucked strings that becomes a mouth harp
Read more
The xylorimba has a bigger range than either the xylophone or marimba
Word of the week: This week’s strikingly unusual instrument combines the higher range of the four-octave xylophone and lower notes of marimba, using similar wooden bars set out like a piano keyboard that resonate when hit
Read more
The yangqin, a Chinese dulcumer, also known in other cultures and forms variously as santur, cymbalom and zither
Word of the week: We return with a sweet sounding instrument thats a big hit in, and particularly associated with China, part of the hammered dulcimer family played in music across the Far and Middle East, India, Iran, Pakistan and Eastern Europe
Read more
A typical zambomba, cuíca or friction drum
Word of the week: The evocative Spanish name for a friction drum, similar to Brazilian samba’s cuíca, it is used around the world in ceremonious or celebratory music, working as a sound box via rubbing with stick, hand or wet cloth
Read more
Egrets? We have a few …
Word of the week: They are from the heron family of water-fishing birds, various in size and colour but mostly white, elegant, angular and thin, and are beautiful to watch, but how is this unusual word used in song lyrics?
Read more
Kissed and met: Elvis Presley’s endless 1960s movie destiny
Word of the week: It’s originally from an Arabic word, qisma, meaning portion or lot, and taken from Turkey in the 19th century, meaning fate, but where has in turned up in song lyrics since the 20th century?
Read more
The days are getting longer …
Word of the week: It’s not all doom and gloom right now. With the winter solstice just gone by, days will slowly lengthen, allowing us to perceive more lux, that unit of illuminance and luminous flux. It’s a beautiful word, but where does it appear in lyrics?
Read more
Gregor Fisher as the photo booth man in the 1986 Hamlet advertisement
Word of the week: It’s a long, slender cigar, derived from the Spanish panatela, for a long thin biscuit, and the Italian panatello for small loaf, but where does it appear in songs, and also a famous set of TV advertisements?
Read more
Scaramooche, scaramooche …
Word of the week: With an appropriately flamboyant sound and rhythm it’s a word best known for the title of Freddie Mercury’s epic Bohemian Queen song, and several major classical works, but where is it used in song lyrics?
Read more