Tabor (instrument)

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Tabor
Luttrellpsaltertaborer.png
Pipe and tabor player, c. 1325–1335
Classification Unpitched percussion instrument
Related instruments

Tabor or tabret (Welsh: Tabwrdd) refers to a portable snare drum played with one hand. The word "tabor" is simply an English variant of a Latin-derived word meaning "drum"—cf. French: tambour, Italian: tamburo[1] It has been used in the military as a marching instrument, and has been used as accompaniment in parades and processions.

Valencian tabor player

A tabor has a cylindrical wood shell, two skin heads tightened by rope tension, a leather strap, and an adjustable gut snare. Each tabor has a pitch range of about an octave: the larger the tabor, the lower the pitch. It is played by just one stick, which usually strikes the snare head. The tabor is suspended by a strap from the forearm, somewhere between the elbow and wrist. When played, the shell is virtually parallel with the ground.[1]

The tabor is most widely known as accompaniment for the pipe and other small flutes, and most famously as the percussive element in the "pipe and tabor" one-man band configuration.[1] The tabor is beaten on the snare side.

In Spain, a deep drum is used for a tabor by pipe and taborers, and in England a shallow tom tom is sometimes used, although medieval icons of pipe and tabor usually display a large shallow tabor similar in shape to a bodhrán.

Georges Bizet scored for the tabor drum in his L'Arlesienne Suite No. 2, and Aaron Copland calls for it in his Appalachian Spring and El Salón México.

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