A thongophone is a

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person ...

classified as a

percussion instrument A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

and a plosive aerophone. Playing the thongophone is somewhat rare in Western music for solo performance, but was brought to prominence by the music of

Yanni Yiannis Chryssomallis (; born November 14, 1954), known professionally as Yanni ( ), is a Greek composer, keyboardist, pianist, and music producer. Yanni continues to use the musical shorthand that he developed as a child, blending jazz, clas ...

and

Blue Man Group Blue Man Group is an American performance art company formed in New York City in 1987. It is known for its stage productions that incorporate many kinds of music and art, both popular and obscure. Its performers, known as Blue Men, have their ...

(who play many original variants including the tubulum), among others. Thongophones are found in rural

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. The thongophone produces sound by striking a rubber clapper, usually a

thong The thong is a Clothing, garment generally used as either underwear or in some countries, as a swimsuit. It may also be worn for traditional Ceremony, ceremonies or Sport, competitions. Viewed from the front, the thong typically resembles a b ...

(flip-flop), hence its namesake, against the opening of one of many

PVC Polyvinyl chloride (alternatively: poly(vinyl chloride), colloquial: vinyl or polyvinyl; abbreviated: PVC) is the world's third-most widely produced synthetic polymer of plastic (after polyethylene and polypropylene). About 40 million tons o ...

pipes of varying length. Vibrations are transmitted through the hollow pipes, each one resonating to a preset pitch. The tubing system that allows the instrument to generate its sounds, resembles a

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a Musical keyboard, keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single tone and pitch, the pipes are provide ...

, which works on the same principle; however, the resonance is generated using a more direct method. In standard thongophones, there is a standard pitch designated for each tube; however the variable pitch thongophone, or drumbone, was made widely known due to its use by

, as seen in the

Intel Pentium 4 Pentium 4 is a series of single-core CPUs for desktops, laptops and entry-level servers manufactured by Intel. The processors were shipped from November 20, 2000 until August 8, 2008. All Pentium 4 CPUs are based on the NetBurst microarchitect ...

commercials. The thongophone can also be played with the use of drumsticks, or virtually any other solid stick-like object to create resonance in the tube. On the instrument, one end of each pipe is set up to resemble the layout of a standard

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

in that the natural notes are at the front, C, D, E, F, G, A, B and so on, with the Accidental notes, C♯/D♭, E♭/D♯, F♯/G♭, G♯/A♭ and B♭/A♯ above them in groups of 2 and 3, just as in a piano or a

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...

References

Keyboard percussion instruments Percussion idiophones Papua New Guinean musical instruments {{Idiophone-instrument-stub