Geophone (musical instrument) Geophone (musical instrument) The geophone is a percussion instrument, invented by the French composer Olivier Messiaen for use in his large composition for piano and orchestra entitled "Des canyons aux étoiles…" ("From the canyons to the stars…"). It consists of a drum filled with thousands of small lead pellets, and is played by swirling it around slowly so that the noise of the pellets resembles the sound of dry shifting earth. Messiaen commissioned a Parisian instrument maker to construct one to his design, and he carried this instrument worldwide to early performances of the piece (which was given its first
English terms with diacritical marks associated with specific fields (especially cooking or musical terms) are less likely to lose their accents (such as the French "soupçon", "façade" and "entrée"). Some Spanish words with the Spanish letter "ñ" have been naturalised by substituting English "ny" (e.g. Spanish "cañón" is now usually English "canyon", Spanish "piñón" is now usually English "pinyon pine"). Certain words like "piñata", "jalapeño" and "quinceañera" are usually kept intact. In many instances the "ñ" is replaced with the plain letter "n". In words of German origin, the letters with umlauts "ä, ö, ü" may be written "ae, oe, ue". This could be seen