| Eleanor Newell Memorial
-- 7
Family friend and former Monterey Peninsula
resident Shawn Folsom brought
his phenomenal musical talent to Eleanor's Memorial.
| Best known as a bagpiper, with a collection
of pipes from many countries of the world, Shawn also collects and plays
other unusual musical instruments.
Here he is on the bizarre "Hurdy-Gurdy",
a traditional instrument popularized in Donovan's song "Hurdy-Gurdy Man". |
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 |
Shawn plays ANOTHER of his Hurdy-Gurdys.
This guy is amazing. |
| "The hurdy-gurdy is a stringed instrument
in which the strings are rubbed by a rosined wheel instead of a bow.
The wheel is turned by the player's right hand, while the left hand plays
the tune on the keys in the keybox. Two of the strings (usually), called
the chanters or melody strings, run though the keybox and their vibrating
length is shortened by the key pressing against it.
Several drone strings are outside the
keybox, and so sound the same note all the time. For this reason the hurdy-gurdy
sounds similar to a bagpipe. A small movable bridge on one of the
drones can be made to vibrate rhythmically by cranking the wheel harder,
and this buzzing is used for a rhythmic accompaniment to the tune."
(From Alden and
Cali Hackmann's Hurdy-Gurdy Site) |
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Newell Memorial -- 8
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