Some Most Popular Kinds of Traditional Irish Music Instruments

There are different kinds of traditional Irish music instruments like reed instruments, celtic harp, concertina, accordion, fiddle, flute and many others. Discussed here are about some of these instruments.

Celtic Harp

This is an Irish traditional instrument having a history that spans almost five thousand years. It is a very ancient instrument and it’s used in this country for over one thousand years. It symbolizes the Irish Republic.

The celtic harp actually survived the erratic doldrums of the persecution as well as social turmoil. Queen Elizabeth I at that time saw the harpers as foci of the local opposition to her regime. Her main motto was to hang the harpers wherever they are found and spoil their musical instruments. The queen was a very tough critic.

Irish wire-strung harp that were used by earliest harpers started to lose its significance out around turn of nineteenth century. The break in this tradition meant players of the contemporary reconstructions of Irish wire-strung harp making use of a technique, which would possibly have sounded unknown to their eighteenth century counterparts.

A contemporary Irish harp is basically four feet in height and has thirty-four strings in comparison to the forty-seven strings on present orchestral harp. The Neo-Irish harp that is strung with nylon or gut is quite popular. It has a soft tone like water being dripped into the crystal bowl. In comparison with this is the fuzzily, penetrating deep bell-like tunes of wire-strung harp.

Reed Instruments

The reed is generally a thin, narrow piece of plastic, wood or metal, which starts to vibrate when air actually blows past it. This kind of instrument includes saxophone oboe, clarinet, and harmonica. The wind instruments, which don’t use any reed, include recorder, flute, trumpet and whistle. Basically, there are two kinds of reed instruments-dry reed and wet reed instruments. The wet reed is usually moistened by breath of musician. The ones that use other means to move air rather than musician’s breath is called dry reeds. Most of the reeded wind musical instruments that are used in the Irish music happen to be the dry ones.

Concertina

In early nineteenth century, Charles Wheatstone invented symphonium, which is a brass-reeded musical instrument-the prosecutor of harmonica. Wheatstone in 1844, made some modifications to it so that air, which powered the instrument was provided by bellows and it was then that Irish concertina made its appearance. It was a popular instrument in nineteenth century and has been defined as a folk music instrument since then. There is also another instrument like concertina that work on the same principle. It is the accordions. Both of them are used in Irish music.