Karl Peinkofer and Fritz Tannigel, Handbook of Percussion Instruments (Mainz, Germany: Schott, 1976), 154. Examples of compositions including a güiro are Uirapuru by Heitor Villa-Lobos (though the score specifies reco-reco), Latin-American Symphonette by Morton Gould and The Rite of Spring ( Le Sacre du printemps) by Stravinsky. [13] Gallery [ edit ] a b c d Mark., Brill (2011). Music of Latin America and the Caribbean. Boston, MA: Prentice Hall. ISBN 9780131839441. OCLC 653122923.

The frog galvanoscope was a sensitive electrical instrument used to detect voltage [1] in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It consists of a skinned frog's leg with electrical connections to a nerve. The instrument was invented by Luigi Galvani and improved by Carlo Matteucci. The güiro, like the maracas, is often played by a singer. It is closely related to the Cuban guayo, Dominican güira, and Haitian graj which are made of metal. Other instruments similar to the güiro are the Colombian guacharaca, the Brazilian reco-reco, the quijada (cow jawbone) and the frottoir (French) or fwotwa (French Creole) ( washboard). [1] Etymology [ edit ] These guiros are most commonly found in school KS3 music classes, in fact this is the first one that I ever played and it was in school. They are perfectly suited for smaller hands, and the medium sized instrument is best suited for a beginner. Reviewers said that the instrument had a pleasing sound that was groovy and delivered a great tone. 7. Kids Guiro The guiro is a scrapper idiophone musical instrumentcommon in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Columbia, Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Ecuador. Guiro is a popular percussion instrument in dance music, including salsa. Luigi Galvani, a lecturer at the University of Bologna, was researching the nervous system of frogs from around 1780. This research included the muscular response to opiates and static electricity, for which experiments the spinal cord and rear legs of a frog were dissected out together and the skin removed. In 1781, [5] an observation was made while a frog was being so dissected. An electric machine discharged just at the moment one of Galvani's assistants touched the crural nerve of a dissected frog with a scalpel. The frog's legs twitched as the discharge happened. [6] Galvani found that he could make the prepared leg of a frog (see the Construction section) twitch by connecting a metal circuit from a nerve to a muscle, thus inventing the first frog galvanoscope. [7] Galvani published these results in 1791 in De viribus electricitatis. [8]Clarke, Edwin; Jacyna, L. S., Nineteenth-Century Origins of Neuroscientific Concepts, University of California Press, 1992 ISBN 0520078799. a b Ríos, Kristof (2014). "Puerto Rico". In Stavans, Ilan (ed.). Latin Music: Musicians, Genres, and Themes. Santa Barbara: Greenwood. Russell, Craig (1998). "Music: Mesoamerica Through Seventeenth Century". Encyclopedia of Mexico: History, Society & Culture.

The güiro is commonly used in Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other forms of Latin American music, and plays a key role in the typical rhythm section of important genres like son, trova and salsa. Playing the güiro usually requires both long and short sounds, made by scraping up and down in long or short strokes. [1] An entire frog's hind leg is removed from the frog's body with the sciatic nerve still attached, and possibly also a portion of the spinal cord. The leg is skinned, and two electrical connections are made. These may be made to the nerve and the foot of the frog's leg by wrapping them with metal wire or foil, [16] but a more convenient instrument is Matteucci's arrangement shown in the image. The leg is placed in a glass tube with just the nerve protruding. Connection is made to two different points on the nerve. [17]Fun Fact:Different notches sizes and textured surfaces make distinct characteristic sounds of the instrument. It is also not unusual to find a guiro shaped like a frog. Learn about tree frogs of American tropical rainforests. Adhesive disks on their feet help them walk on slippery leaves without sliding, and they lay eggs; within the egg mass, embryos can be seen twitching. The tree frog with a translucent underside is called a glass frog (family Centrolenidae). (42 sec; 7 MB) (more) See all videos for this article Blench, Roger. 2009. A guide to the musical instruments of Cameroun: classification, distribution, history and vernacular names. Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.

Fun Fact: There are other gourd-based percussion instruments, which include the shekere. What Kind of Music Is the Guiro Used For? The vossa-satl, also known as the frog-pipes, [1] are a musical instrument of Argonian make found predominately in Murkmire. It resembles a polished wooden clam shell with a series of valves along the top; within each segment of the shell is a small, hollow compartment with a mouth like a bugle. The güiro was adapted from an instrument which might have originated in either South America or Africa. [1] The Aztecs produced an early cousin to the güiro, called the omitzicahuastli, which was created from a small bone with serrated notches and was played in the same manner as the güiro. [6] The Taíno people of the Caribbean have been credited with the origins of the güiro. [7] The Taínos of Puerto Rico developed the güajey, a long gourd or animal bone with notches, an antecedent of the modern day güiro. [8] The frog galvanoscope, and other experiments with frogs, played a part in the dispute between Galvani and Alessandro Volta over the nature of electricity. The instrument is extremely sensitive and continued to be used well into the nineteenth century, even after electromechanical meters came into use.When the frog's leg is connected to a circuit with an electric potential, the muscles will contract and the leg will twitch briefly. It will twitch again when the circuit is broken. [16] The instrument is capable of detecting extremely small voltages, and could far surpass other instruments available in the first half of the nineteenth century, including the electromagnetic galvanometer and the gold-leaf electroscope. For this reason, it remained popular long after other instruments became available. The galvanometer was made possible in 1820 by the discovery by Hans Christian Ørsted that electric currents would deflect a compass needle, and the gold-leaf electroscope was even earlier ( Abraham Bennet, 1786). [19] Yet Golding Bird could still write in 1848 that "the irritable muscles of a frog's legs were no less than 56,000 times more delicate a test of electricity than the most sensitive condensing electrometer." [20] The word condenser used by Bird here means a coil, so named by Johann Poggendorff by analogy with Volta's term for a capacitor. [2] The güiro is used in classical music both to add Latin American flavor, and also purely for its instrumental qualities. The frog galvanoscope can be used to detect the direction of electric current. A frog's leg that has been somewhat desensitised is needed for this. The sensitivity of the instrument is greatest with a freshly prepared leg and then falls off with time, so an older leg is best for this. The response of the leg is greater to currents in one direction than the other and with a suitably desensitised leg it may only respond to currents in one direction. For a current going into the leg from the nerve, the leg will twitch on making the circuit. For a current passing out of the leg, it will twitch on breaking the circuit. [21] Generally, the luthier creates a hollow in the gourd and carves parallel notches on its shell. The gourd is then dried and decorated with paintings or carvings. On the other hand, modern guiros are made of fiberglass, wood, bamboo, plastics, or metal. These materials are more durable and have consistent sounds than traditional guiros. Newer versions of guiro don’t rely on scrapping but on fillings or shakings to produce sound.