Sheng (Mouth organ), (unisonoric)
♫ video youtube
(Collection Oriwohl, Nr. B-48)
The Chinese mouth organ Sheng has been known as a musical instrument for at least 4.500 years. The sheng is still played in China today. Traditionally, the tone set was always diatonic, but in more recent times chromatic instruments have also been found.
The Sheng shown here consists of 17 bamboo pipes with brass reeds and a windchest. A similar instrument called Sho is also played in Japan.
Towards the end of the 18th century, Western Europeans got to know the instrument with its resounding reeds at performances in St. Petersburg and initially adopted this principle of tone production as an addition to organ building.
In the case of pipes with a free reed, only the sound intensity changes with changing wind pressure, but in the case of conventional organ pipes with hitting on reed, the pitch also changes.
Height of the pipes from 20.5 to 52.5cm
The reeds produce the same tone when inhaling and exhaling.
The pipe foot in profile
Chords can also be played with the Sheng, which is usually not possible with other traditional Chinese instruments.
The free reed can vibrate freely (strike through) in the vibration channel surrounding it.
The reed and the channel are made of one piece of piece of sheet brass.
The picture shows the direction of movement of the tongue (with help of a paper clip) caused by the wind pressure when exhaling.
As soon as the tongue opens, the pressure on the tongue decreases and it moves back to its original disposition. After the channel is closed and the airflow is interrupted, pressure builds up again, and so on.
When inhaling, on the other hand air is drawn from the pipe into the windchest and the reed is pushed in the other direction.
