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The Didgeridoo – Earths Oldest Instrument

The didgeridoo is possibly the oldest instrument in the world with many experts believing it to have been played for at least the last 40,000 years. Across the top of Australia Aborigines have been playing the didgeridoo at ceremonies and corroborees for thousands of years, and there are even cave drawings showing didgeridoos being played that are somewhere around 2,000 years old. It is believed that the playing of the didgeridoo keeps them in touch with their shamanistic beliefs through the induction of an alpha state.

The traditional Aborigine didgeridoo is made from eucalyptus branches that have been hollowed out by termites. A didgeridoo produced in this manner is a process that can take up to a year and a skilled maker can tell if a branch is ready from just tapping on it with their fingers. The branch walls need to be a certain thickness to produce the correct sound and it is the length of the log that determines its key, with longer lengths giving a lower pitch.

An Aboriginal legend that tells us how the first didgeridoo was created starts with three men sitting aroung a dying fire on a cold night. One of the men gathered up a eucalyptus branch so that he could throw it onto the fire for extra warmth but hesitated when he felt how light to the touch it was. He made a closer inspection of the log and noticed that it was covered in termites. He did not want to kill the termites but his friends were complaining of the cold so he scooped them up and placed them inside the hollow log. He then put his lips to one end and blew them out. The termites blown into the night sky became the stars and the first didgeridoo was created.

Playing a didgeridoo is different to other wind instruments. You breathe down the tube while your lips remain loose making a vibration that will echo as it travels down the tube. At the other end, it comes out as an amplified drone. The instrument that it is most like to play is a Tuba, the main difference being that your lips have to be more relaxed. If you are unsure how to create loose lips, think of what it is like to blow a “raspberry”. Once you have mastered the drone, you can practice making other sounds by moving your tongue or cheeks while blowing into the instrument.

Getting the hang of a simple drone may be fairly easy but if you want to make the desired non stop drone then you will have to master to circular breathe and that takes a lot more practice and patience. You have to inhale air through the nose while simultaneously releasing it from the mouth. If you want to be able to make a non stop drone like a professional then there is no two ways about it, you are going to have to learn to circular breathe.

Today termites are not a necessity and a number of other materials have been found to make excellent modern didgeridoos. Very popular at the moment is the bamboo didgeridoo whilst teak is known to have excellent sound quality and even synthetic didgeridoos have became the number one choice by many in recent years.

Should you take the time to learn the didgeridoo, then you could find that there are some unexpected upsides. In a Swiss study they measured what effects playing the didgeridoo might have on the conditions of sleep apnea and snoring. The study following people who are learning to play has found that those mastering the art are, after a few months, experiencing fewer incidences of these conditions. It is thought that the breathing required to play the didgeridoo is actually training the upper airways to function better.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 4:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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