Using Gourds as Music Instruments

Gourds have another strong point, they are a wood-like substance, but without the grain giving them a special type of resonance making gourd instruments a popular item in all cultures. The best speaker cabinets are made of strong particle board or plywood, and this is for a reason. Wood grain causes sound to travel at different speeds depending on if the sound is traveling with the wood or against the wood.

This causes harmonics and the wood will add a tone of its own to the sound, similar to how a tin can adds it's own tone, only the wood creates a hollow pitched sound. This is why Xylophones use wooden keys. Anyway, by using particle board or plywood, the sound resonance is broken up so the speaker cabinet does not blare when its own tone is hit. The gourd is a wooden type substance with the same ability to resonate like wood, with one exception. Gourds are grown round and hollow, in one season, therefore there is no grain, just a beautiful resonance box. From the smallest gourd to the largest, the sounds and resonance of gourds have been discovered by cultures from the most primitive, to the most modern. Even today many people experiment with the gourds ability to enhance the sound of a skin, string, metal, or other origin of sound.

Some of the many different gourd music instruments include but are not limited to: drums, Ipu Heke the Hawaiian drum, skin covered drums as well as inverted drums, shakeree's, rattles, guirro's, carracha's, etc. They have been used to make flutes, mouth organs or pan flutes, the Indians made snake charmer flutes out of them, ocharinas, didgeridoos, a gourd harp, (a very large instrument), assorted other stringed instruments including the original banjo, and many banjos are made today from gourds, guitars, thumb piano's and more. I even made a hollow resonator out of the bowl of a Hyakunari gourd for my Harmonica, and although I do not play well, it really had a big effect on the tone.