Four ways to make a string or a bar sing

The kora comes from West Africa: Mali, Senegal and The Gambia. It has twenty-one strings over a large gourd covered in cow skin, and the player plucks them with the thumb and first finger of both hands. Its players, the jali, are also the keepers of family histories, so a kora song is often a story about real people.

The erhu comes from China. It has two strings and no fingerboard, and the hair of the bow runs between the two strings, so the bow can never be taken off. The player's fingers press the strings in the air, which lets a note slide up or down like a voice.

The đàn tranh comes from Vietnam. It is a long zither with sixteen or more strings, each on its own movable bridge. The right hand plucks; the left hand presses the string on the other side of the bridge to bend the note, which is where its sighing sound comes from.

A gamelan comes from Java and Bali in Indonesia. It is not one instrument but a whole set, mostly bronze bars and gongs struck with mallets, made and tuned together. Two gamelans rarely match exactly, so the players learn their own set.

BandPals sorts its instruments the same way children do: by what you do to make the sound. Pluck, bow, hit, blow or shake.