The CCCCCCCCC is an organization dedicated to the regulation of the what is and is not a clave-class instrument, a musical instrument of similar complexity to the clave. This classification is important due to the following postulate, the brain-fruit of a highly esteemed percussionist.
If a percussionist is assigned to play claves, he or she is a bad percussionist.
From this basic kernel of truth, a system of logical conclusions is ascertained, determining which other instruments are basic enough to warrant similar classification to the claves. While a lack of “complexity of sound” and “complexity of performance” has been deemed to be the bar for clave-classification, what exactly this means is not inherently clear. To ensure that this standard is applied fairly to all instruments, the following criteria have been determined to be the point at which an instrument is of the clave-class. All points must be met to officially ascertain this certification:
- The instrument is percussion based and is ordinarily played by striking.
- The instrument is an idiophone.
- The instrument is not designed to form one or many specific musical interval(s).
- The instrument is not played in conjunction with other substantially different instruments by a percussionist simultaneously (e.g., a single temple block is clave-class, though a set of such blocks of varying pitches which is being played at the same time is not).
- The instrument, while in normal operation, produces sounds which do not differ so majorly in pitch, length, or timbre so as to seriously differentiate one sound from another to the layman. (That is, the instrument, in normal operation, is only distinguished by its ability to play rhythms out of a single sort of “beat” at varying levels of amplitude.)
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