Invention / discovery of instruments

Subject: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Feb 22 - 08:59 AM

There was a fascinating thing in NPR I can't find to make a blicky, but one thing they said was that the saxophone was the most-recently invented instrument.

The show was about, among other ideas, how you can't make really new music, as all instruments are old.

That got me thinking... I mean, we've had wind instruments since an ape blew into a hollow bone or a big conch shell, and percussion since an ape beat on a log, so I think of those as discoveries, but string instruments had to await the invention of string, and brass, brass.

Then along came Moog.

Are there new instruments yet to be inventer or discovered? Or isnew music going to use what we have, which is considerable?

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 08 Feb 22 - 10:31 AM

Stylophone? Bowed psaltery? Theremin?

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: leeneia
Date: 08 Feb 22 - 02:07 PM

I went to YouTube and searched for "new musical instrument" and found quite a few. Some of them even look practical.

And I remember one instrument which consisted of pipes of different lengths mounted at the seaside. The pipes made notes when the waves hit them. Another was an set of wooden bars set up on a hillside in a Japanese forest, and they played "Jesus Joy" when a ball skipped downhill onto them.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Feb 22 - 10:08 AM

The tin whistle is a few years younger than the sax, the harmonica is about the same (it was a spinoff from the melodeon, invented originally as a test rig) and the ocarina is from 1853, about ten years younger than the sax.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: DaveRo
Date: 09 Feb 22 - 11:03 AM

... instrument which consisted of pipes of different lengths mounted at the seaside.

There are a few of these. The Blackpool High Tide Organ (in England) was in the news last year because the designer wanted it demolished - and I see it now has been.

There's also a Wave Organ in San Francisco and the Sea Organ in Croatia. I expect these things don't last long!

(That last link, to oddmusic.com has some weird stuff.)

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: G-Force
Date: 09 Feb 22 - 11:31 AM

And who could forget the Trunch blowpipe?

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Feb 22 - 11:36 AM

The Zadar sea organ isn't very dramatic - any storm big enough to really get it going would make the pier a nasty place to be. The light sculpture a few yards away works better.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 09 Feb 22 - 01:44 PM

The Triforium - a six story-tall, sixty-ton public artwork in the heart of downtown Los Angeles - was designed by the artist Joseph Young in 1974 as a monumental musical instrument, one designed to synchronize sound and light into a new "polyphonoptic" art form.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

unveiled in 1975 in a ceremony featuring Burl Ives and Eddy Arnold. The funding for the sculpture had ballooned from its original $330,000 budget to $925,000, causing one city councilman to denigrate the Triforium as "the million dollar firefly."

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Feb 22 - 09:59 PM

So wind, string, pervussion...

And?

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: leeneia
Date: 09 Feb 22 - 11:12 PM

brass

I watched a documentary once about a Paleolithic cave with cave art, etc. It was called "Cave of Forgotten Dreams." Archeologists found a flute in it, and one of them played "The Star Spangled Banner" on a replica. I believe it was 40,000 years old.

I read about a dumbek found in Czechia which was 26,000 years old. I think ancient dumbeks have been found elsewhere.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Feb 22 - 10:27 PM

The tin whistle I thought ancient and Celtic?

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 10 Feb 22 - 10:56 PM

c.1930s: Steelpan

Big orchestral hit with North American and British school systems for some reason. Heard a local one in Maine, of all places.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: reggie miles
Date: 12 Feb 22 - 12:44 AM

Well, I've been creating my own original percussion instruments that I call Gadgets. They are each of unique design but are primarily percussion oriented, with a few curve balls thrown in the mix. They follow the long tradition of musical Folk Art percussion instruments started more than 100 years ago in various kitchen bands of using what you have to make music and later became popular in the Jug Band scene. In some of these designs, I began to add instruments of my own invention. I've toyed with the notion of creating a way to enhance the sound of a harmonica. The idea was inspired by something Hohner made about 100 years ago, called a Trumpet Call. Hohner's design had no actual enhancement of their harmonica. In fact, it actively limited a harmonica's sound but it made you look fancy while playing. So, it was primarily decorative in nature. I crafted a couple of my own designs that would actually improve the sound's focus. I call my two prototypes a Vacusonica and a Vacuvasonica. Mine not only make you looking weirdly strange but work as intended to focus sound. However, they rely upon the use of trumpet-like belled shapes to do so. So, the notion is merely an innovation not 100% invention.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Feb 22 - 03:04 PM

Trumpet-like shapes suggests the phonofiddle (Stroh violin) invented around 1900.

The washboard dates from about the same time.

Resonator guitars are from the 1920s. So is the cümbüs and its relatives.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Feb 22 - 04:37 PM

Is brass a subset of wind?

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: reggie miles
Date: 12 Feb 22 - 04:54 PM

Jack, I was surprised to see... "A "fluted" metal washboard was patented in the United States by Stephen Rust in 1833. Zinc washboards were manufactured in the United States from the middle of the 19th century." (Wiki) I was further floored to learn that "trumpet-like instruments have historically been used as signaling devices in battle or hunting, with examples dating back to at least 1500 BC. They began to be used as musical instruments only in the late 14th or early 15th century." (Wiki) My junk art mechanically amplified Nobro guitar designs include my own hybridization of previous design aspects employed by the two primary forms that have been around for the last 100 years, as well as my own unique ideas about the concept. I've been taking some time to work on my fourth build, my Newbro, for the last few days. It pushes farther away from any previous notions created, into the unknown land of invention but even this latest build has its basis rooted in the notions about resophonic guitar designs first created around 100 years ago. My guitars are just my unique spin of the concept of mechanical amplification.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: leeneia
Date: 16 Feb 22 - 09:51 PM

Here's a youtube video about the dulcimer, and at 3 minutes you'll see a new instrument that seems to produce the banjo sound without all the work. I like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UurHbXwVo04

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 16 Feb 22 - 11:54 PM

While I don't doubt that it's easy to get a sound out of a dulcimer or pick out a tune on it, I think there's big difference between that and learning how to play one well, especially if you play things that aren't necessarily in the key of the dulcimer and you have more than three chords and not just triads.

I have a concert zither and the discant strings (with frets) are built according to the same idea as a dulcimer, and are, in fact, often played in a similar way for short passages. It has a different (standard) tuning, though: It's tuned like a viola with an extra A string, C-G-D-A-A, low to high. It's certainly no easier to play than a banjo or a guitar.

This instrument is actually the one I find most challenging of all of my instruments, but because of the bass strings, which are tuned in 5ths, moving away from the player, ignoring the pitch. That is, it goes E-flat, B-flat, F, C ... but up and down in pitch.

Like all western instruments designed to make things easy for amateur musicians, it ends up making things harder, once you go beyond simple music with three-chord harmonies. It's real mental exercise to play it. Enjoyable, though. The sound is great and it seems to me that there are more techniques available than with the guitar, mandolin and banjo.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 16 Feb 22 - 11:59 PM

> Like all western instruments designed to make things easy for amateur musicians, it ends up making things harder, once you go beyond simple music with three-chord harmonies.

This is why I always found my blues harmonicas, with the missing notes in the lower octave, extremely frustrating.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 17 Feb 22 - 12:01 AM

I think I should say that not all music with three chord harmonies (or even 1 chord "harmonies") is simple. What some blues harmonica players do is just amazing and you don't need harmony for complex music.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Piers Plowman
Date: 17 Feb 22 - 01:58 AM

> There was a fascinating thing in NPR I can't find to make a blicky, but one thing they said was that the saxophone was the most-recently invented instrument.

I think this has been effectively refuted above.

> The show was about, among other ideas, how you can't make really new music, as all instruments are old.

I would guess that the author didn't get a good grades in their high school logic classes. It may well have been an interesting program but from what you report, the proportion of BS seems to be pretty high.

> That got me thinking... I mean, we've had wind instruments since an ape blew into a hollow bone or a big conch shell, and percussion since an ape beat on a log, so I think of those as discoveries, but string instruments had to await the invention of string, and brass, brass.

Well, strings were originally gut and the musical bow must go back pretty far.

> Then along came Moog.

Before there was Moog, there were other electronic instruments. From Wikipedia:

"Bebe Barron (June 16, 1925 – April 20, 2008 (aged 82)) and Louis Barron (April 23, 1920 – November 1, 1989 (aged 69)) were two American pioneers in the field of electronic music. They are credited with writing the first electronic music for magnetic tape composed in the United States, and the first entirely electronic film score for the MGM movie Forbidden Planet (1956)."

That's not to say they were the first. This is quite an interesting subject, if anyone cares to pursue it.

Last year, I bought an electric guitar and started accumulating effect pedals (an expensive addiction) with the intention of putting together an arsenal with the typical kinds of circuits used in synthesizers. There aren't that many and it doesn't seem like new ones come along very often. In other words, it seems like most of the possibilities were discovered early on. However, you never know what someone might discover.

I have the book "Guitar Gadgets" by Craig Anderton from 1983. To give an idea of the state of technology back then, the book includes a vinyl sheet at the front with sound samples to play with a Victrola (grammophone? phonograph? record player? stereo?). Not too much has changed since then, except that a lot of effects are now implemented with digital instead of analog circuitry.

Overdubbing is also a technique with a lot of possible unused potential. I think it's very interesting that one of the first people to use overdubbing, maybe even the first, I don't know, namely Les Paul, did amazing things with equipment that seems very primitive by today's standards. In fact, I can't think of anything anyone's done that's better.

> Are there new instruments yet to be inventer or discovered?

My crystal ball says "yes".

> Or is new music going to use what we have, which is considerable?

This too.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Feb 22 - 03:46 AM

Varese's "Deserts" was earlier, the electronic bits added in 1952 when he first got the use of a good tape recorder.

Finding new principles for acoustic sound production is hard. One that comes to mind is those clicker toys with a pressed metal shell shaped like a frog or a bug and a spring steel tongue you press with your thumb to drive the grown-ups nuts. No reason why you couldn't make an mbira-like instrument that way.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Feb 22 - 07:43 AM

The mouth bow from Neanderthal times according to some musicologists.

Subject: RE: Invention / discovery of instruments
From: GUEST,saulgoldie
Date: 17 Feb 22 - 07:51 AM

Chapman Stick??