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TimbreRhythmArticulation MarksTambourineBangu (Peking-opera drum)Daluo (great gong)Bronze drumElephant-foot drum

The dap is the only drum on this site that hangs entirely in the hands.

No handle, no cord, no stand — the drum rests on the webbing of two hands alone. The Qing court record describes it with a phrase worth keeping: "shaped like a hand drum, but without a handle."

It has no beater either — everything a beater would do belongs to the hands: where to strike (centre · edge · rim), how to strike (finger · palm · palm-heel · "cuo" · "tan" · roll). And inside the frame hangs a ring of small iron rings: shake it, and there is another sound.

It gives the fullest answer yet to the question left by the pengling:

⚠️ When pitch is not needed at all, how many sounds can one skin hold? The traditional technique gives six named strokes: centre tone · edge tone · palm tone · finger tone · "cuo" tone · "tan" tone. Line the six names up and something shows (an observation of this site) — they come from three different dimensions: named by position (centre · edge) · by hand part (palm · fingers) · by motion (cuo · tan). ⭐⭐ Rule ㉗: pitched instruments arrange their notes in a line; an unpitched instrument arranges its timbres as a map — and the coordinates on this map have names. Named things can be taught, learned, and grown into schools — which is why an instrument "without pitch" can still be a solo instrument.

Structure: one skin, one frame, and a ring of iron hidden inside

Three points:

1. One skin and one frame. The frame is turned from mulberry wood into a flattened round hoop (regional woods differ: Dolan daps glue up elm or Russian olive), with a single skin — from sheep, pony or donkey hide to the python skin that became common after the 1950s, said to be the best-sounding choice. ⚠️ It is single-headed: the back is open, unlike a two-headed barrel drum such as the tanggu — every sound it makes leaves through this one skin. 2. It has no handle. "Shaped like a hand drum, without a handle" — no handle means nothing ties it to the player's body. The nearest exception is an Uzbek cord loop (the right thumb tied to the frame) — already the most "attached" this family ever gets. 3. A ring of iron hangs inside the frame. Small hooks are driven into the inner wall, holding some thirty small iron rings. They take no part in the skin's vibration — they are a sound reserved for shaking. ⭐ Compare the tambourine: to add a metal layer to a frame drum, the tambourine sets little cymbals into slots in the hoop; the dap hangs rings inside it.

A map on one skin

This figure is the heart of the page.

Back to the opening question: how many sounds does one skin hold? The sources are strikingly plain: "because the fingers strike different parts of the head with different force, the sounds vary — dong and da — with a thousand changes of colour and enormous expressive range."

In other words — the sense of high and low comes from *place and force*, not from a scale. A museum record puts it even more precisely: it "produces different pitches and colours according to the part and the force".

And the six traditional techniques are precisely the "place names" of these variables:

⭐ Two further practices extend the map:

• Rolling on the rim: the dap placed between the two legs, both hands rolling on the rim, giving a sound "like a bell" — at that moment it is a flat table, not a drum held in the air.
• Shaking the frame: no skin involved at all — the iron rings against the frame.

⚠️ The boundary of the sources: how "cuo" and "tan" are actually played, the sources do not explain — they left only the names. (As with any "the bigger the X, the lower the Y" claim: no source, no detail supplied on its behalf.)

⭐ And the fact that the strokes have names is itself worth recording: a skin's positions have no note names — but they do have place names. Named things can be taught, learned, recorded — which is why an instrument "without pitch" can hold solo pieces (Harvest) and grow regional styles and schools.

"Soul" and lead

For its role in the band the sources reach for three heavy words: "soul", "conductor", "lead".

• It is "hailed as the soul of the Uyghur band"; also called "the player of souls."
• "It unifies rhythm and tempo — a veritable conductor."
• "It is constantly used as a leading instrument, balancing high, middle and low, unifying the rhythm."

⭐ And one folk saying that beats every adjective:

"The dap can cover what the other instruments lack." — it carries everyone.

Its way into the great suites is equally concrete: it is the main time-keeping instrument of the Uyghur muqam, "almost indispensable" there. And it does not merely accompany: there are solo pieces such as *Harvest*, and famous players such as Abliz Akhsh.

⭐ Set beside this batch's bangu, two ways of "conducting" appear: the bangu works by a radius of attention (an effective sounding area of 5–10 cm commanding a whole opera troupe — it gives orders); the dap works by rhythm and tempo themselves (it sets the pace and carries the rest). Neither works by volume; both work by position.

Three sizes, three posts

The sources offer two slightly different sets of measurements, but the division of duties is identical:

⭐ This site's observation: for the same three sizes, the elephant-foot drum divides by tone (large = majestic, medium = excited, small = bright); the dap divides by post — one instrument grows different sizes because it serves different social roles.

And carried across a mountain, it keeps changing:

• Dolan dap (Bachu, Makit): many drums together, played in unison, "no free improvisation" — a school that puts individual display away; it accompanies Dolan sanam and Turpan's milis.
• The Tajik dap: a wide frame (often cut from an old poplar sieve), wolf or cow hide; no iron rings, sometimes three pairs of small cymbals instead; a deep, thick sound. ⭐ And the players differ too: "the Tajik dap is played almost entirely by women" — the reverse of the Uyghur and Uzbek rule that it is usually played by men. (Rule ㉒ said an instrument divides along "whose hands work it" — the dap gives the plainest case yet: cross a mountain, and the player's gender changes.)
• The Uzbek dap: form, making and playing similar to the Uyghur (held in the left hand, struck with the right).

⭐ And a final piece of evidence for how central it is: it can accompany a dance alone — and the dance is named after it. "Dap ussuli", that is, "the hand-drum dance." (Rule ㉑ said what a genre is named for shows what it considers essential — here the version is: a dance simply took the drum's name.)

The name "dap"

One name, three lineages:

⭐ History of names, item ⑩: a name can travel the Silk Road with its instrument. The nine entries before this one were all about how an instrument gets named at home; the dap adds the cross-cultural one: when the instrument travels, the name travels with it. (And the muqam it accompanies is distributed across 19 countries and regions of Central, South and West Asia and North Africa, with Xinjiang at the far east — one name and one music sharing the same line on the map (this site's observation).)

⚠️ And a wink inside the legend: flaying the python to make drums — the legend happens to explain why the dap "sounds best with python skin" and why python became "widely used after the 1950s." Legend and craft meet here.

⚠️ One more naming trap to clear up: in Chinese writing the word "shougu" (hand drum) is not used consistently — this site's tambourine page already flags "hand drum" as a misnomer; and the Uyghurs also have a smaller jingled hand drum (called "nägmän dap", "the hand drum for singing", closer in form to a Western tambourine). This page is about the most typical one: no cymbals, no handle, iron rings inside the frame. (Amusingly, the dap and the tambourine share one cell in Hornbostel–Sachs — 211.311, single-skin frame drums, whose given example is the tambourine — two answers in the same cell.)

History

⭐ Two details in the Qing record are worth pausing on:

• "shaped like a hand drum, without a handle" — by the Qing, "hand drum" had become a *shape description*: an instrument defined as "like a hand drum, but handleless."
• "painted with coloured lions, lacquered yellow" — the court dap was a painted ceremonial object; the same instrument is a sheepskin and rings in the village and painted regalia in the palace.

⚠️ The conversion is a modern approximation: the Qing measure (1 *chi* 3 *cun* 6 *fen* 5 *li*) comes to about 44 cm at 1 *chi* ≈ 32 cm — matching the modern large size.

Common misconceptions

• "The hand drum *is* the tambourine." ⚠️ No. They are of one family — both single-skin frame drums (H-S 211.311, whose example is the tambourine) — but the dap has no handle, hangs iron rings inside, and is played by two bare hands; the tambourine mounts jingles, has a grip, and its hallmark is the thumb roll. Two answers in one cell. (This site's tambourine page already flags "hand drum" as a misnomer.)
• "No pitch, so nothing to play." ⚠️ The reverse: solo pieces such as *Harvest* exist, the techniques have six formal names, and regional styles and schools have formed. No pitch is not no content — the content moved elsewhere: position, hand, rings, rhythm.
• "The rings are decoration." They are a second voice: without touching the skin, shaking the frame sets them against it; the Tajik variant swaps them for three pairs of small cymbals. Compare the tambourine's jingles in slots — three ways of adding a metal layer to a frame drum.
• "It belongs to the Uyghurs alone." The Uzbeks and Tajiks share it (Uzbek playing is much the same; the Tajik form differs and is played almost entirely by women), and it has been taken into Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tatar bands.
• "Is it pitched?" No definite pitch. But note what that means here: not "it cannot produce definite sounds" but "there is no unified pitch standard" — different parts and forces change the sense of height (dong, da). (The bronze drum page has already set out this wording.)
• "It must be slung on the body to be played." ⚠️ The reverse — no handle, no strap: the drum hangs in the hands. This completes the batch's "carrying" line in three ways: carried (the luo on its cord, the cymbals struck while walking, the elephant-foot drum slung) · held (the pengling, one goblet in each hand) · ⭐ simply cradled (the dap).

Timbre, and how to hear it

Four cues:

1. Bright. "A crisp, ringing tone," with "a wide range of dynamics" — it can work the space between whisper and thunder (which is why it is called the soul). 2. Two layers, one source. The skin (struck: dong / da) and the rings (shaken: a jingle) belong to one instrument — a single motion can fire both, and a shake can fire the second alone. 3. The skin *is* the tone design. "Python skin sounds best"; a python head is "bright and ringing." Change the skin, change the instrument. 4. Material follows the place. From mulberry, rosewood and apricot to Dolan glued elm or Russian olive, to the Tajik poplar sieve frame — a folk instrument has no "standard material", only "the best material at hand."

The family

⭐ The last column is the point: of all the drums here, the dap has the least attachment — it uses nothing at all. Which is the weight of that Qing phrase: no handle, so the whole drum can belong to the hands.

Next

The percussion line closes here — fifteen instruments.

The materials have come full circle: bronze (bianzhong · bronze drum) · stone (bianqing) · hide (tanggu · bangu · paigu · elephant-foot drum · the dap) · metal (daluo · xiaoluo · yunluo · cymbals · pengling) · wood (wooden fish · bangzi).

And the last instrument in this class is the plainest thing on the whole site: no skin, no metal, no resonator — only a few slats of wood. Yet the entire rhythmic system of Chinese opera is named after it:

the "board" of "board and eye" — it is the paiban, the clappers. :::

Sources

• ⭐ 名称与意译：「达甫亦称手鼓，也译为达卜」；「因直接以手敲打而意译为『手鼓』」；另有通行解释：「达卜是以其音响命名 —— 因敲击时发出『达』『卜』两种音响而得名」依通行乐器资料
• ⭐ 丝路同名：丝绸之路乐器展的展品清单里，「达卜 Dap」是维吾尔族一件 20 世纪 80 年代的藏品（鼓面直径 41 厘米 · 厚 5 厘米）；同清单中伊朗 · 阿塞拜疆的展品标为「达卜 Daf」，亚美尼亚 1938 年藏品亦标「daf-达卜」—— 同名近亲遍布丝路依丝绸之路乐器专题展览资料
• ⭐ 形制：「鼓框用桑木制作，呈扁圆形」；「单面蒙以羊皮 · 小马皮或驴皮」；「鼓框内侧缀有三十余枚小铁环」；「自本世纪 50 年代以后，达卜还多用蟒皮蒙面，使发音清脆响亮」；另有「鼓架内侧钉有小挂钩若干，挂上圆形小铁环」；「其中以蟒皮音色最好」依通行乐器资料
• ⭐ 规格两套口径：通行资料「大者鼓面直径 44–52 厘米 · 鼓框高 5–5.5；中者 32–40 · 4–4.5；小者 20–28 · 3–3.5」；地方标准记「大型直径 45 厘米 · 中型 40 厘米 · 小型 27 厘米，小型达卜也称乃额曼达卜」；两套口径并列，此处不裁断依通行资料与新疆地方标准资料
• ⭐ 演奏（维吾尔）：「双手虎口托持鼓框，重心在左手上，除拇指外，其余各指均可用于击鼓」；「手指敲击鼓面的不同部位和力度有别，便可发出音响各异的『咚』『哒』之声」；「摇动鼓身，使小铁环撞击鼓框，也能发出『沙沙』的音响」；另有记法「左手掌托住鼓身、拇指扣住鼓架，其余四指击打鼓边；右手五指连掌心一起击打鼓中」依通行乐器资料
• ⭐ 六大传统技巧：「传统的演奏技巧主要有鼓心音 · 鼓边音 · 掌音 · 指音 · 挫音和弹音等，奏出的音响高低顿挫，形成丰富的音乐语言」；另一路记法「有击心 · 敲边 · 滚 · 弹 · 拍等演奏方法」；「也可将达卜置于两腿之间，双手滚奏鼓边，发出如铃的声音」依通行乐器资料
• ⚠️ 音高：本站按无固定音高归类 —— 通行资料对维吾尔手鼓类的表述为「没有固定音高」；另有典藏资料（中国台湾 · 国立传统艺术中心藏「手鼓（大）」）记其「会随着部位和力道不同而发出不同的音高 · 音色」，即音高感随位置与力度而变、不构成确定音级 —— 与站内堂鼓同一口径依通行资料与典藏记录
• ⭐ 乐队岗位：「被誉为维吾尔乐队中的『灵魂』」；「在乐队中起着统一节奏和速度的作用，是名副其实的总指挥」；「经常作为领奏乐器使用，并起着协调乐队高 · 中 · 低音和统一节奏的指挥作用」；民间说法「达卜能遮其它乐器不足之处」；「除可合奏或伴奏外，还能进行独奏，独奏曲有《丰收》等，著名演奏家有阿布力孜·阿克希」；「为各种维吾尔木卡姆主要的击节乐器，在木卡姆中几乎不可或缺」依通行乐器资料与新疆地方标准资料
• ⭐ 三种尺寸＝三个岗位：「一种是为民间职业歌唱家所用，专为民间歌舞木卡姆和多郎赛乃姆伴奏的小手鼓；一种是为一般农民和市民所使用、常为舞台歌舞伴奏的中型手鼓；一种则专为民间巫师用以『驱鬼』治病的大手鼓」；另有「大型达普主要为民间巫师『巴克希』作法和塔吉克族民间演奏舞曲时所用」依通行乐器资料
• ⭐ 变体：「多朗达卜，音韵坚实声响洪亮，以多鼓入乐，多鼓齐奏，演奏不随意发挥」（伴奏多朗赛乃姆与吐鲁番「米利丝」）；「塔吉克族的达卜，鼓框宽大，形制别具一格。民间多使用白杨木制的旧筛子边框作鼓框，蒙以狼皮 · 牛皮 · 小马皮或驴皮。鼓框内侧不缀小铁环，有的只在鼓框中装以 3 副小铁钹」；「尤为独特的是，塔吉克族的达卜，几乎全由女子演奏」；「乌孜别克族的达卜，在外形 · 制作和奏法上，都与维吾尔族的达卜相似」；「不论在维吾尔族，还是在乌孜别克族，达卜通常都是由男子演奏」依通行乐器资料
• ⭐ 手鼓舞：「也可以单独为舞蹈伴奏（这种舞蹈因此而被称作『达普乌苏里』，即『手鼓舞』）」；「一般乐队和手鼓舞伴奏常用中型鼓」依通行乐器资料
• ⭐ 传说：南疆叶尔羌河畔传说：青年猎手达卜以松枝弯成圆圈、蒙羊皮做成单面皮鼓，击鼓引蟒出洞并除之，「人们为了表达达甫为民除害的功绩……剥蟒皮做鼓，取名为『达甫鼓』」依民间传说
• ⭐ 历史：「最早见于四至六世纪敦煌北魏壁画」；「达卜早在 1400 年前的南北朝时就已出现，隋唐时期随西域歌舞传入内地」；「1759 年以后，达卜列入清代的回部乐」依通行乐器资料
• ⭐⭐ 清代文献原文：清《皇朝礼器图式》（卷九）：「钦定宴飨设回部乐。达卜，木匡，上冒以革，形如手鼓而无柄。径一尺三寸六分五厘，厚二寸二分七厘五毫……以二手击之。」《清史稿》（卷一百一十）：「达卜，木框冒革，形如手鼓而无柄，有大小二制，一面径一尺三寸六分五厘二毫，一面径一尺二寸二分四厘，皆髹黄漆，面绘彩狮，以手击之。」⚠️ 清尺换算按清营造尺 1 尺约 32 厘米计，径一尺三寸六分五厘约合 44 厘米 —— 为现代近似值依清代文献与度量衡资料
• ⭐ 木卡姆：「中国新疆维吾尔木卡姆艺术」2005 年 11 月 25 日入选联合国教科文组织第三批「人类口头和非物质遗产代表作」，以「十二木卡姆」为代表；木卡姆「集歌 · 舞 · 乐于一体」，「音乐现象分布在中亚 · 南亚 · 西亚 · 北非 19 个国家和地区，新疆处于这些国家和地区的最东端」依联合国教科文组织与文化和旅游部资料
• ⭐ 名称消歧：汉文资料中「手鼓」一词所指并不总是一致 —— 本站铃鼓条目已将「手鼓」标为误称；维吾尔族另有一种装小钹的小型手鼓（资料称「纳格曼达卜」，意为「歌唱用的手鼓」，与西洋铃鼓形制相近）；本页写的是最典型的一件：无钹 · 无柄 · 框内挂铁环的维吾尔达卜依通行乐器资料
• ⭐ HS 归类：单面框鼓在 Hornbostel–Sachs 修订版中为 211.31（无柄框鼓）→ 211.311（单面框鼓），该格所举示例正是铃鼓 —— 达卜为单面框鼓，与铃鼓同格依 Hornbostel–Sachs 分类修订版（MIMO 版本）
• 「达卜属于八音中的革」依通行资料

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.