DronaCrafts

Marble Handicraft
Whether you are decorating your home and office or looking for traditional and attractive gifts collection, we have some unique collections in marble handicrafts of your interest. These decorative marble handicraft items can create a unique and traditional look to your house and it will stand out for its grace and beauty.

Marble painting: Here you can find exotic range of handmade marble painting on real marble. Embossed and golden foil worked marble painting is available in beautifully carved figures including art, god painting, animals painting, birds painting, lady designed painting, instrumental painting, village painting and many more. Marble paintings are adorned with Meenakari, embossed and kundan work. This type of marvelous handmade marble painting enhances the beauty of your interiors, allowing you decorate you working and living area.

Marble utility item: Many carved utility items are available here. Utility marble handicrafts in India for home and office use as well as for decoration purpose like marble mobile holder, pen holder, clock, wall clock, pillar clock, pooja thali, kumkum boxes, jewelry boxes, napkin holder, marble pot, key holder, tray, lamp, chowki, glass and many more. All these marble utility items decorated with colorful designs, embossed work, stones and beads work are made using high grade Makarana marbles.

Christmas is the annual Christian festival celebrating Christ's birth, held on December 25 in the Western Church. The traditional date of December 25 goes back as far as A.D. 273. Two pagan festivals honoring the sun were also celebrated on that day and it is possible that December 25 was chosen to counteract the influence of paganism. To this day some people feel uncomfortable with Christmas because they think it is somehow tainted by the pagan festivals held on that day. But Christians have long believed that the gospel not only transcends culture, it also transforms it. In A.D. 320 one theologian answered this criticism by noting, “We hold this day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the sun, but because of him who made it.

The Dates of Christmas
Why do we celebrate on December 25th?
There are two specific theories for why we use the date of December 25th for Christmas.
First, people and religions of the day celebrated some sort of holiday around that time. From Jewish Chanukah to Pagan Winter Solstice to Germanic Yule to Roman Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (Birth of the Unconquered Sun); the sheer number of celebration days with trees, decorations, yule logs, mistletoe and feasts seem to point to a season of celebration to which Christians added the birth of Jesus as a counter-cultural event and possibly even an escape from the pagan holidays for early believers.

December 25th was the Saturnalia Festival of emancipation, gift giving and the triumph of light after the longest night. The Christian sees the truth implicit in this pagan tradition that reflects: Christ the Light of the world, His triumph over the night of sin in Luke 1:78-79:

"...Because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven 79 to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

The second theory centers around the date “accepted” by the Western Church of March 25 as the Annunciation or Immaculate Conception of Jesus in Mary’s womb. December 25 is 9 months later and thus celebrated as the birthday of Jesus. Regardless of the possible reasons for the date, the church calendar was set in the West during Constantine’s reign while the Eastern Church held onto the date of January 6 for some time.

The Origin of Christmas Eve
For centuries, Christmas was celebrated not as a single day, but as a whole season in parts of the world, beginning with this day, December 24, Christmas Eve. Perhaps the practice of celebrating the evening before the big day is an echo from ancient Jewish reckoning. Among earlier Jews, a day began at six in the evening and ran until six the following evening. Had not Moses written: "An evening and a morning were the first day"?

Christmas means "Christ-mass." Although the date is a guess, the tradition of observing it goes back to at least the fourth century. Under the influence of the church, Christian traditions replaced pagan solstice festivals throughout Europe. Often the more innocent pagan practices (such as bringing in a Yule log, decorating with holly and the like) were carried over into the Christmas observance, transfigured with new meaning.

The Kalimba is an African musical instrument consisting of a wooden board with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs. The Kalimba is usually classified as part of the lamellaphone family and part of the idiophone family of musical instruments.Members of this broad family of instruments are known by a wide variety of names. The Kalimba is also known as marímbula and mbira in the Caribbean Islands.
Both Joseph H. Howard, owner of the largest collection of drums and ancillary folk instruments in the Americas, and Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji argue that the Kalimba is thoroughly African, being found only in areas populated by Africans or their descendants. In Eastern and Southern Africa, there are many kinds of Kalimba, often accompanied by the hosho, a percussion instrument. The Kalimba was reported to be used in Okpuje, Nsukka area of the south eastern part of Nigeria in the early 1900s. It is a particularly common musical instrument of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Shona people of Zimbabwe. It is also often an important instrument to be played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and other social gatherings.

Kalimba came to prominence after the worldwide stage performance and recordings of Thomas Mapfumo on the 1980s, whose music is based on and includes the Kalimba; the work of Dumisani Maraire, who brought marimba and karimba music to the American Pacific Northwest; Ephat Mujuru, who was one of the pioneer teachers of mbira in the US; as well as the writings and recordings of Zimbabwean musicians made by Paul Berliner. Commercially produced Kalimbas were exported from South Africa by ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey from the 1950s onward, popularizing the instrument outside Africa.

This elaborately constructed instrument of the size of a massage table has 50 strings and more, especially manufactured and carefully tuned. The vibrational transference of the proportionally designed resonator opens a complete new gate of perception of the healing and harmonizing dimension of pure sound. The Sound Healing Bed has been successfully introduced in Healing-,Yoga- and Wellness centers, spas and theme hotels and counselling set-ups where trained therapists, yoga teachers and wellness instructors offer treatment and sound experience sessions to visitors, clients and patients. A sound treatment - administered with care and individual attention - has a deep harmonizing effect and leaves the recipient without exception in a state of deep relaxation, awe and gratitude. The Sound Healing Bed is available in prototype form and can be manufactured only through direct contact and special customized order and agreement.

After initial preparations for an appropriate 'tune-in', the receiving person lies on the upper surface of the resonating box. While the strings attached to the bottom are gently played, the magic of the sound - in its rich spectrum of overtones- unfolds and envelops and penetrates, as it seems, every cell of the body. The inherent vibrational nature of our organism is tapped and set in motion. The experience of this 'altered state' of an intensified awareness refreshes and nurtures the whole system of the mental-emotional-physical constitution, releases blockades and traumas, regenerates and leaves an imprint of harmony and well-being.

The shekere is a handmade rattle. It consists of a hollow gourd or calabash, covered on the outside with a net of seeds, beads, shells, or any available material. Although its origins are West African, today it is found in the Americas and Caribbean as well.
The calabash or gourd (as it's commonly known in the United States) is a functional creation of nature with a wide variety of uses and traditions in cultures around the world. A fruit of varied shape and size, it commonly grows on a vine not unlike the squash, but there are also varieties that grow on bushes and trees. In so-called "third world" countries the calabash was historically used as a container for water, and still is an essential utensil in many parts of the world. In rural areas of the U.S., they are often used as birdhouses. Throughout Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean and the Americas, gourds are used as resonators for musical instruments.

"Shekere" is a general name to describe the beaded gourd rattle. It comes in many shapes and sizes, is played in a variety of styles, and has many different names. In Africa it is found primarily, but not exclusively, in the countries of Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Benin, Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire (there are many parts of Africa where you will not hear this instrument). Different language groups in each country often have their own names, styles, techniques, and traditions associated with the shekere.

In Nigeria, the very large beaded calabash is called an "agbe", and traditionally is owned and played only by professional musicians (Olatunji, Music in African Life). It is a personal instrument and never loaned of shared, even with family members. However, a son who is a professional musician may inherit his father's agbe. Shekeres among the Yeruba of Nigeria are often connected with religion, given great respect, and play a very important role in certain traditional musical forms.

Throughout West Africa you will also a smaller gourd, covered with a woven net which is tied off at the bottom, leaving a tail of loose strings. In Ghana and Togo among the Ewe language group it is known as the "axatse" and is often used to accompany a drum or bell orchestra on important occasions. In Sierra Leone you will find a similar type of shekere with a very loose net an long tail, often called a "shake-shake" or "shaburay".

When African slaves were taken to the "New World," they carried with them many of these rich musical traditions, which took root in varying degrees in different parts of the Americas and the Caribbean. In Cuba, Youruba religious traditions using drums and shekeres are found almost completely intact - with similar rhythmic patterns, names of instruments and accompanying chants. Brazilians sometimes use a beaded (with seeds) coconut called "afuxe" similar in name and style to the Ghanian "axatse". In the United States the shekere and other African related instruments continue to grown in popularity and are rapidly becoming part of our contemporary musical expression.

 It is used for rhythmic accompaniment. This instrument has one head that is resonated by plucking the string that is attached to it. Dating some 500 years back, the khamak originally had a single string but was later modified and now contains two strings. The player holds the body of the instrument under his left arm while his left hand pulls the small brass drum, jerking it slightly, almost unnoticeably. This controls the tension on the strings and sets the fundamental tone of the melody when the strings are plucked....the performer plucks them briskly with the plectrum held in his right hand. However, the fundamental tone produced does not remain fixed and completely depends on the tension applied to the strings.

See Article History
Stringed instrument, any musical instrument that produces sound by the vibration of stretched strings, which may be made of vegetable fibre, metal, animal gut, silk, or artificial materials such as plastic or nylon. In nearly all stringed instruments the sound of the vibrating string is amplified by the use of a resonating chamber or soundboard. The string may be struck, plucked, rubbed (bowed), or, occasionally, blown (by the wind); in each case the effect is to displace the string from its normal position of rest and to cause it to vibrate in complex patterns.

Because most stringed instruments are made from wood or other easily perishable materials, their history before written documentation is almost unknown, and contemporary knowledge of “early” instruments is limited to the ancient cultures of East Asia and South Asia, the Mediterranean, Egypt, and Mesopotamia; but even for these places historians must depend largely on iconographic (pictorial) sources rather than surviving specimens.

Stringed instruments seem to have spread rapidly from one society to another across the length and breadth of Eurasia by means of great population shifts, invasions and counterinvasions, trade, and, presumably, sheer cultural curiosity. In the Middle Ages the Crusades (late 11th through the late 13th century) stimulated Europe to adopt a whole set of new instruments; similarly, the Chinese adopted many new instruments from their Central Asian neighbours as Buddhism spread eastward and as the Han Chinese expanded their influence across the region (roughly, the 3rd century BCE to the 10th century CE). Indeed, the only world area that did not echo to the sound of strings was the pre-Columbian Americas.

No system of classification can adequately categorize the interactions of natural material, craftsmanship, and exuberant imagination that produced an endless variety of stringed instruments. In the West the most widely accepted system of classification is that developed by E.M. von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, a method based on the type of material that is set into vibration to produce the original sound. Thus, stringed instruments are identified as chordophones—that is to say, instruments in which the sound is produced by the vibration of chords, or strings. This main category is then further divided into four subtypes—lutes, zithers, lyres, and harps—according to the manner in which the strings are positioned in relation to the body of the instrument. Within these categories, the descriptive nomenclature of an instrument is given in terms of parts of the body: for example, the belly (front; soundboard), back, sides, and neck. Instruments are not necessarily related only to others in the same classification. Transformations continually occur, and “hybrids,” according to the Sachs-Hornbostel system, may in fact represent altogether viable subtypes of their own.

The Production Of Sound
The ear, because of its own structure, adds to and subtracts from the outside sound. It is, for instance, relatively insensitive to low-frequency sound pressure but is extremely sensitive to fine degrees of pitch change. At the same time, it can accept a great number of pitch and tuning systems. On a worldwide basis, there are a large and varied number of tonal systems, the most ancient stemming from China. The oldest known of these in the West is the so-called Pythagorean system, articulated by the famed 7th-century Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras; others include meantone temperament, just intonation, and the equal-tempered system, methods of tuning calculation that vary slightly in the exact size they assign to the intervals within an octave. All of these systems represent theoretical mathematical concepts to some degree, and their origins must be sought in arcane numerological systems rather than in practical musicianship. Thus, “tuning” and “playing in tune” do not necessarily refer to the same thing; players and tuners make constant adjustments to any basic mathematically determined framework according to their judgment and experience. In other words, even though a given “scientific” tuning system outlines scales and modes, the instrumentalist who plays an instrument with great pitch flexibility (the violin, for instance) spends much time in the spaces between the notes assigned in the given scale. The Japanese zither (koto), for example, can be tuned according to a number of fixed systems; nevertheless, its player produces many microtonal (using intervals that differ from the equally spaced semitones of Western music) variations on these fixed pitches by manipulation of the strings. The person who plays the Vietnamese dan bau monochord creates all pitches and nuances on its metal string by pulling in the flexible bamboo stem to which it is attached. In Western musical tradition, moreover, piano tuners would not think of tuning altogether according to the dictates of a well-tempered system; rather, they use a so-called stretched tuning, in which they imperceptibly sharpen (raise) pitches as they ascend and thus make the highest notes relatively sharper than the lowest ones. Investigation has disclosed that string players tend to play in the Pythagorean rather than the well-tempered system.


Inconsistencies, then, are inherent in all tuning systems; makers of fretted lutes—such as the guitar and the Greek laouto (a type of lute with moveable frets), for example—operate according to a combination of ear and rule of thumb when they insert or adjust frets (note-position markers—e.g., of gut or wire) in the fingerboard. Such instruments are fretted according to the “rule of the eighteenth,” in which the first fret is placed at one-eighteenth of the distance from the top to the bottom of the string, the second, one-eighteenth of the distance from the first fret to the bottom, and so on. Even if this method produced an acoustically perfect scale (which it does not), the player would not be able to reproduce this exactly, for as he presses the string to the fingerboard, the string is stretched and is thus slightly lengthened. That is why the act of stopping a string at its exact centre gives a note slightly sharper than the expected octave above the open string. Despite all of this, the search for an acoustically perfect tuning system goes on.

Though constructional methods differ widely from one area and instrument to another, there are a limited number of basic problems to be overcome by the maker of stringed instruments. The very principle that makes it possible for chordophones to sound is string tension; at the same time, tension is destructive to the instrument, since it tends literally to pull it apart. So the body of an instrument must be made of strong material; it must be reinforced, and, at the same time, it must not be so rigid that it cannot easily resonate—i.e., produce a supplementary vibration intensifying that of the string. The challenge of reconciling these opposite needs is the central one for the chordophone maker. Climate too has a marked effect on musical instruments: humidity expands a wooden instrument, and dryness contracts it. Of these factors, dryness is the most harmful, since the contraction of the wood actually pulls the instrument apart. Much energy has been expended over the centuries in investigations of various varnishes, shellacs, glues, and sealers. Many makers prefer to make their instruments in dry conditions, for the expansion caused by humidity is unlikely to prove as harmful as the contraction caused by dryness.

Aside from a family of Southeast Asian instruments known as boat lutes—which, by definition, are hewn from a single block of wood—and a few other chordophones, including the Japanese biwa (a lute), portions of the koto (a zither), and often the Puerto Rican cuatro (a lute)—the bodies of most wooden instruments are constructed from multiple pieces of wood. The instruments are built up of many pieces of wood glued together; the shaping of curved pieces is accomplished by gouging and planing (as in the belly of the violin) or by heating and pressing in a frame (the sides of the violin or guitar). Soundboards, the most important part of the resonance system of stringed instruments, are carefully planed to close tolerances. Mass-production methods are unsuitable for the production of high-quality chordophones because no two pieces of wood are precisely alike in their acoustical qualities; each piece of wood requires special judgment and treatment. Ideally, therefore, stringed instruments of the highest quality must be individually made. Piano manufacture is a partial exception to this rule, but even in a piano factory, individual treatment and craftsmanship are allowed full sway. The modern piano is a product of several different factories. The cast-iron frames are made by specialized foundries, and the steel strings, the keyboards, and the actions (mechanisms for striking the strings) are produced by specialized firms. Each of these processes requires an experienced artisan, and the work of assembly, polishing, tuning, and tone regulation calls for hours of individual attention to each instrument.

The construction and maintenance of Western stringed instruments generally have been complicated over the centuries by a continual rise in standard pitch, requiring strings to be tightened. Older instruments (such as a Stradivari violin) have been subjected to additional physical strain and therefore needed heavier bass-bars (braces under the belly).

As already stated, the methods of sound production on a stringed instrument include plucking, striking, bowing, and blowing. A string vibrates in a complex way: the entire string vibrates in one segment (producing the fundamental pitch), and various segments at the same time vibrate independently to produce overtones. The resulting sound is weak indeed unless the instrument is provided with a resonator to amplify the sound. The shape of the resonator varies greatly. It has been influenced by the materials, tools, and technology available in the society, the symbolic meaning of the shape, and the sound desired by the culture. The last factor seems to be governed by the first three; that is to say, the prescribed shape of the resonator affects the overtone structure of the instrument, producing a certain timbre (characteristic tone colour), which the society in question then defines as attractive-sounding.


One of the clearest illustrations of the basic importance of the shape of the resonator to a musical instrument is the African mouth bow (a musical bow that the player partially inserts in his mouth). By varying the size and shape of the oral cavity while striking or plucking the single, unfingered string, the player produces a clearly perceptible, if quiet, melody that exists only because the changes in the mouth emphasize various overtones. On stringed instruments with permanently fixed resonators, the size, dimensions, shape of apertures, thickness, and bracing of the resonating surfaces largely determine which overtones will be emphasized and thus what the instrument will sound like. On a well-made violin, for example, the resonances of the body of air enclosed in the body of the instrument and of the belly should be close in pitch to the two strings A and D, thus amplifying and colouring these pitches and their overtones. The sound quality of a stringed instrument is also influenced by the thickness and material of the strings; primarily, however, it is the size and shape of the resonating body and especially the material, density, and thickness of the soundboard that determine the sound of an instrument. A well-known Spanish guitar maker, in a successful attempt to prove the importance of the belly of the guitar, once constructed an instrument—an excellent one—from papier-mâché (an acoustically dead material), except for a carefully chosen and wrought wooden soundboard. Makers, then, devote a large part of their skill and knowledge to the choice of material for the soundboard; the maker of wood-bellied instruments prefers old wood because it is dry and well seasoned. Thus, some guitar makers find the soundboards of discarded pianos unusually suitable for their purposes; makers of the classical Chinese zither, or qin, preferred old coffins or well-seasoned wood from old trees.

The timbre of a struck or plucked stringed instrument is also affected by the manner of setting the string into motion. A string plucked with a sharp point (the player’s fingernail or a plastic plectrum) emphasizes the higher overtones, thus creating a “bright” tone quality. By contrast, a soft pad, such as that on a piano hammer, emphasizes the fundamental pitch. The relative hardness of the hammer on the piano is thus of critical importance to the sound of the instrument and plays a central role in the final process in piano manufacture: voicing. To voice a piano, a skilled worker adjusts the timbre of the instrument by the simple expedient of pricking the felt hammers with needles until a unified quality has been achieved throughout the range of the instrument. The tone of an instrument is also markedly affected by the place where the string is struck. The permanently fixed striking place on keyboard instruments has to be chosen with concern for both the timbre and the mechanical requirements of the instrument. On nearly all other stringed instruments the player varies the tone quality by choosing to pluck, strike, or bow at various places along the length of the string. The exception here is the Aeolian harp, which has no player; its strings are set into vibration by the wind.

Another way in which musicians and musical instrument makers influence the sound of their instruments is by the use of sympathetically vibrating strings. On the piano, for example, when the so-called damper pedal is raised, thus leaving all the strings free to vibrate, the act of striking one note causes all closely related pitches to vibrate in sympathy, thus modifying the loudness and tone of the struck note. This effect (which is encountered also on the zither and harp) is not a central feature of these instruments, but there are numerous Eurasian chordophones on which the principle is of fundamental importance. The plucked instruments of Hindustani music, the sarod and the sitar, possess numerous sympathetic strings tuned according to the notes of the mode being played. The South Asian fiddle, sarangi, has some two to three dozen sympathetic strings; the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle (Hardingfele) has four or five sympathetic strings; and the viola d’amore typically has seven. Sympathetic strings are generally made of thin brass or steel, and their vibration reinforces the upper harmonics, thus producing a bright, silvery sound.