Skrabalai
Encyclopedia
The skrabalai is a Lithuanian
folk tuned percussion instrument consisting of wooden bells. Trapezoid
-shaped wooden troughs of various sizes in several vertical rows with one or two wooden or metal small clappers hanging inside them. It is played with two wooden sticks. When the skrabalai is moved a clapper knocks at the wall of the trough. The pitch of the sound depends on the size of the wooden trough.
The skrabalai is gouged from a piece of hard wood – oak
or ash. The size of the troughs varies from small ones (7–12 cm. long, 5– cm. wide, 6–7 cm. high), to larger ones. The walls are 2–3 cm. thick.
The skrabalai was used by shepherds from ancient times. They used to tie a wooden bell of this kind on a cow's neck, thus making it easier to find the animals in a forest if they strayed from the herd.
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
folk tuned percussion instrument consisting of wooden bells. Trapezoid
Trapezoid
In Euclidean geometry, a convex quadrilateral with one pair of parallel sides is referred to as a trapezoid in American English and as a trapezium in English outside North America. A trapezoid with vertices ABCD is denoted...
-shaped wooden troughs of various sizes in several vertical rows with one or two wooden or metal small clappers hanging inside them. It is played with two wooden sticks. When the skrabalai is moved a clapper knocks at the wall of the trough. The pitch of the sound depends on the size of the wooden trough.
The skrabalai is gouged from a piece of hard wood – oak
Oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...
or ash. The size of the troughs varies from small ones (7–12 cm. long, 5– cm. wide, 6–7 cm. high), to larger ones. The walls are 2–3 cm. thick.
The skrabalai was used by shepherds from ancient times. They used to tie a wooden bell of this kind on a cow's neck, thus making it easier to find the animals in a forest if they strayed from the herd.