Xylophones, drums and dancing: Parks with dance floors

Various local parks, including Future Garden, Gorky Park, the Bazhov Public Garden and Chapayevsky Park, have their own facilities where people can play musical instruments and also dance. Many of them were laid out under the My District programme. This mos.ru story deals with these and other similar playgrounds.

Bells, xylophones and drums

Most often, it’s xylophones, bells and drums that can be found at the musical playgrounds and mallets as well as drumsticks are available for people to use.

Druzhba (Friendship) Park has one of the largest areas filled with metal xylophones and bells. Among the seven instruments is a lyre-shaped glockenspiel with eight octaves.

With such a selection of percussion instruments it’s no wonder that a huge range of sounds can be produced going from the lower octaves right up to the higher ones. There are also xylophones whose makers were inspired by pipe-shaped bells and a Vietnamese folk instrument called the Trung consisting of multi-size bamboo reeds which can be found at the park’s playgrounds near the Bitsa River’s flood-plain and in Future Garden Park.

Future Garden Park has a drum similar to a Cuban tumbadora which can be played with or without accompaniment from other percussion instruments.

A new public garden on Dekabristov Street in Otradnoye and Novoslobodsky Park in the Tverskoi District also have the same sort of drums. The combination of the colour of the wooden bars of the xylophone and its metal frame blend nicely with its surroundings.

Two traditional, or horizontal, xylophones are located in Bazhov Public Garden in the Rostokino District. The smaller version is designed to be used by a child on their own, but the one with more octaves is more suitable for duets.

These instruments can also be found in Dubovaya Roshcha (Oak Grove) Public Garden, laid out in the Sosenskoye Rural District under the My District programme. It also has a Trung style xylophone and futuristic-looking timpani that like most such percussion produces a different tone depending on where one strikes it.

A band can be put together in the landscape park in Yuzhnoye Butovo due to the musical playground having five xylophones and interactive touch boards that can produce such sounds as a piano, a guitar and also drums.

Dancing

The Lyublino Museum-Estate has its own dance floor, with an interactive arch. There are a whole lot of features which can be tried out including non-stop dance music.

There are some other interesting musical systems at the largest playground in Gorky Park’s Salyut Town. The Kaleidoscope Zone has sounds produced by dancing on nine bronze plates.

Interactive dance floors were developed in the 20^th century. All people have to do is walk on them to produce dance music. Another musical system, located in the same zone, functions along similar lines. It consists of musical pads sounding like multi-rod Pan flutes. People simply have to jump up and down on them.

Unusual music box

Other kinds of musical fun and games are available for children who detest playing musical instruments and dancing. A Children’s Park in the Cherkizovo District has a playground with an unusual-looking object that resembles a ball with a handle. This improvised music box’s handle can be rotated clockwise or anticlockwise, and the contraption plays songs for children in English. A playground for toddlers in the Khoroshovsky District’s Chapayevsky Park has a similar ball.