All these adult learners (congratulations to you all!) got me thinking...

I don't honestly have a burning desire to do amazing things in music. There are other skills which I do or would enjoy more. Yet having a kid who listens to, sings, and plays a lot of music has left a dent in even my ears.

Then it hit me that a person like me could get a lot out of combining music with storytelling, something that I enjoy, get asked to do, and also something that I could probably do at home without neighbours ringing the animal welfare officers.

In Japan, I could go in for lute accompaniment to epic narrations of the Heike battles. But maybe not - though there are one-stringed "ichigenkin" zithers and tonkori strummed or plucked with unstopped (open strings). More about tonkori

But what about other portable, easily playable instruments for storytelling? Has anybody tried this, or heard something inspiring? My kids enjoyed the Ods Bodkin CD of The Odyssey in a way that I don't think they would have enjoyed a straight narration.

What instruments do you associate with quiet accompaniment to narration, or sound effects etc? Guitar, small hand-drums, dulcimers, zithers, small harps, etc???

What an interesting idea. The possibilities are endless! There are so many small cheap percussion instruments that you can buy (or make!). Have a rummage at your local music shop - toyshops good source of noises too! eg rainmaker, egg shakers are quite gentle soft sounds. There are all sorts of fun ones eg vibraslap, swanee whistle, cabbasa

Yu don't just have to go for comedy effects: if you're doing ghost stories you can have an insistemnt drumbeat, that sort of thing...

Are there any songs within the stories? You could always sing those parts... Or you could do the stories part-sung, part-told (we recited "The Highwayman" like that - not the Loreena McKennitt version - and did all the sound effects: wind, hoofbeats etc.)

It depends whether you want sound effects or music, really...
Sound effects can include drums, kazoos, rainmakers etc....

Or you could make them yourself - like "the owl noise" you can make with cupped hands, that sort of thing.

Sounds really interesting!

Oh yes, some stories have songs in them. Not that I shine in that area .

Although it's very interesting to consider different instruments/implements for different purposes, I'm quite drawn to the idea of versatile use of one or at most two instruments, and also something that runs along in the background, coming to the fore with louder or different sounds as needed.

I like flamenco guitar's use of percussive noises as well as plucking/strumming for that reason, and think that guitar is a great storyteller's aid - that's why I'm interested in exploring the tonkori.

Japanese lute plectrums are sometimes huge, and so they create quite a lot of "noises" as well as plucking melodies.

I really do enjoy comedy, though the idea of ghost stories is a good one.

While I think we go for slow-fast alternation in western music or drama, "classical" Japanese dance, music, and drama often uses a three-part "slow - break/change - fast". Since the "break" part is usually quite a rapid transition, it lends itself to the unusual and the non-melodic - in Japanese drama, that would be the sudden crack of a small hand-drum struck with a wooden thimble-type thing, followed by a crazed, high-pitched flute melody over a fast drum accompaniment.

One of those things that look like small wooden washboards or graters, usually rubbed with a stick, would go well as a basic rhythm, and then you could give it a sharp rap with the stick for emphasis. I'm going to experiment as soon as this cold wears off and I get my voice back!

Solo comics in Japan traditionally kneel on the stage, and use a fan as their only prop - they also rap it to gain attention or to create a tension-building rhythm. Maybe I could make a story-telling aunt character with an umbrella or something else that could be used similarly?

But what about THIS thing - absolute gift to a storyteller - Nevel Harp

Want to inspire me with any favourite stories, poems, folktales etc that you have told or heard told well?

I think that this is a great idea. A story told to a gentle drum accompaniment would work well I think. I tend to make the sound effects with my voice when I tell stories. A swanee whistle might be very useful for comic effects too.

I think voice/hand sound effects are better than having a stack of stuff with you - if only because you'd have to take your eyes off your audience to find which one you want!

Whatever I settle on has to be small and very simple, since there is no extra mental energy to spare for complex accompaniments or even tuning when narrating things - reading a story well out of a book while alternating gaze rapidly between book and audience is enough of a challenge when I'm doing it in Japanese!

A small pentatonic lyre (like a children's lyre) with a nice serrated edge for scraping, and a little tambourine without bells for tapping or rapping. Or a lyre and a good, solid umbrella!

But I am certainly going to take a look at the interesting possibilites that SueHM mentioned, and take a quick peek at a music shop where I've seen such things before. Whistles etc - since I (used to) play flute, I have a quena, a few pan-pipes and about 3 sizes of 12-holed ocarina, but I think I'd prefer natural whistling and maybe my biggest ocarina, which has a very mellow, wistful sound that I love (maybe more even than my keyless flute ).

One query: when reading/telling stories with songs or rhymes in them to children, I usually use something very simple and often slow, so that children can pick up and predict fast enough to join in.

I've found that if I exaggerate the last few notes, even the shyest children eventually join in happily at that point. And anticipating the next repetition of something seems to be very enjoyable for them (and me!).

Sort of on topic - for a really good example of story telling with musical accompaniment (especially if you're a mummer or a morris man).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/worldmusic/feature_mummers.shtml

At work (I work in a library) I have been involved in a series of projects run by the charity Live Music Now http://www.livemusicnow.org/?pageID=139 Young musicians come into libraries and organise story telling sessions with nursery and reception age children which involve music. They have used all sorts of instruments - the sessions I have seen have included guitar, flute, harp, piano, saxophone and clarinet, and the musicians have incorporated music into the storytelling in different ways, sometimes writing their own music and sometimes using existing pieces to fit the stories. They have encouraged the children to touch the instruments, shown them how they fit together, and also let the children join in themselves using percussion instruments.

When I tell stories myself I sometimes use a collection of wooden animals that I bought in France to illustrate the stories - I have a frog, a pig, an owl, a duck and an elephant. We also have a collection of percussion instruments in our library that the children use when we sing songs and rhymes.

Sounds a wonderful idea!

Pushpull, thanks for the link - I was originally studying folk drama and its morph into classical comedy here in Japan, so that's a fascinating area for me.

For some reason, the extreme stylization of this kind of traditional drama invariably invites performers to add in a little ad-libbing or sly contemporary references, and I think that "double strand" is the life and soul of storytelling too.

Adding accomplished musicians into library book circle time is a stroke of genius!

Living in Cheshire close to the Lancs and Yorks borders I'm lucky to be able to see lots of folk plays around Christmas and Easter - Mumming, Pace Egging, Guising. Also the Morris side I dance with do mumming. It's always amusing to see how a particular group "adjust" the dialogue. There's also a lot of "cross-fertilisation" gone on over the years. I recently came across some photos of Irish, Shetland and Scandanavian Guisers and the costumes (especially headwear) were almost identical.

Oh and take a look at http://www.folkplay.info/ too.

...I feel a sudden desire to visit the UK! Thank you!