The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #76680   Message #4136426
Posted By: Jack Campin
13-Feb-22 - 07:37 AM
Thread Name: What Is the Best First Instrument?
Subject: RE: What Is the Best First Instrument?
Reggie’s Gadgets - no rules, get whatever noise you can out of them - remind me of the very Big Kid music of Helmut Lachenmann, who asks his performers to ignore what they’ve been taught about how to use their instruments and do entirely new things with them.

Laurence Picken’s book on Turkish folk instruments is an eyeopener because it’s entirely written around the Sachs-Hornbostel classification - instruments are grouped according to the physics of their sound production. Turns out that most of the space of possibilities is taken up with things classed as children’s toys. I particularly liked the one where you form a bubble of potter’s clay and smack it so it pops.