BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments

Subject: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 04:50 AM

Have you ever found, made, or played a musical instrument in a dream you were having, that (when you woke up) you realized was not an instrument that exists at all?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Crowhugger
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 04:59 AM

Yes. But all I get is frowns or snickers when I mention it. You first...

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 05:51 AM

No, but in my dreams is the only time I play any instrument!
['Spaw, seems it was a good idea to open the new wing...]
RtS

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: GUEST,Harpo
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 07:17 AM

Yes. At least two that I can recall. in one I dreamt that I was visiting some sort of conference at my old high school and I ended up off in some isolated side room where only a few people were attending a session. Two very old Chinese men were demonstrating their instruments, which I had never seen before. Upon awaking, I sketched them out and since have done a little research on the history of musical instruments, and still have not come across any like them. Is there a way to post a picture here, like an attachment?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Callie
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 07:22 AM

In my waking hours I dream of a cordless laptop computer in the shape of a slender music book. You can open it up and place it on a music stand, and store thousands of tunes on it (to replace carrying/storing 100 books). There is a foot pedal you can press to scroll to the next page. Callie

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Willie-O
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 08:28 AM

Once when I had a slow-moving forestry mapping summer job, I learned to play tunes on the dimmer switch of a fluorescent light table...

there are tons of unrecognized instruments already out there!

W-O

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 09:20 AM

Maybe you're just caught up in the "Hundred Year Crazies."

PREPARE MANY ROOMS AT "THE NEIL YOUNG CENTER FOR THE TERMINALLY SCREWED."

If you look back over time, it seems that at about the turn of each new century (give or take a bit), there is an interest in "new" instruments. Some of these, although seeming a bit different, enter the musical world and are successful. Many are not. They aren't because they are some of the screwiest ideas imaginable. Invariably, they all develop a following who sing the praises of their wondrous new creation, but after a time are left as particular bits of nuttiness admired by only a few. Such is the way of invention. The last century brought us the Autoharp, a variant on the chorded zither, along with a boatload of wacky creations mainly lost in obscurity or now prized for their uniqueness rather than any true musicality.

Personally, I think I'll take a Sousaphone bell and attach it to a bagpipe chanter, split the airstream with a bassoon reed so that half is directed across 48 strings which are strung across the bell and tuned pentatonically, but in 8 different keys. A banjorine suspended from the bottom, free swinging and untuned, can then slam into bodhrans affixed to soprano recorders on either side of the bell and attached to a timing mechanism that shoots a Ukelin into the audience every 43 beats. Gotta' call it some sort of harp to assure its success. Blattofartublialharp...Yeah, that's good.

.....or maybe an Ass Blown Possum........... Nah, that's too stupid.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Willie-O
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 09:23 AM

Spaw please let us know when the prototype is ready...I believe Ashley MacIsaac could use something like that...

W-O

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Amos
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 09:31 AM

Do they come in bass and tenor models, 'Spaw?

The ass-blown possum is a promising idea!

Put a reed in it!

A sort of sexophone...

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Crowhugger
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 09:42 AM

Spaw,

Now I understand how a fiddley-necked banjo would be too easy for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 09:43 AM

I was thinking maybe CarrotTop could use it.

And with trumpet, Flugelhorn, trombone, Euphonium and sousaphone bells, a full series of oprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass models would be available.

....Cleigh already has a "reed" ... so to speak.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: GUEST,T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird)
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 01:01 PM

Workaday life is sometimes stranger than the dreamworld:

Check out this musical umbrella.

Here is Harvey Reid's essay on the Six-string banjo.

T.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 01:24 PM

Okie, I am somewhat stopped cold by the concept in the essay you blue clickied, the "essence of "banjo-ness" -- as our home is already imbued with more essence of banjo-ness than the incense permeating a high-church Anglican on Christmas Eve. Both conditions in fact describe my husband and if anyone tells him another string is possible I must seek an alternative to marriage. Just kidding.

I dreamed instruments several times while dreamsttrolling through vast storehouses of antiques. Each room held an incredible detail of fascinating items, floor to ceiling, and many of the items were instruments. In these dreams I played them all, each one being the sort you could just pick up and instantly know what to do with it.

One dream focused on different things that would play like Hammered Dulcimers, but be ergonomincally geared to some physical problems I have. One was a cube shaped hassock frame, strung in all dimensions with beaded glistening strings which responded to the slightest movement of air in its direction. Another was a large U-shaped vibraphone or marimba sort of thing. The player would step into the bend of the U and be surrounded with concentric rows and rows of tubes of all pitches and tone colors. These would be struck with mallets. Some of the tubes were crystal and someone told me once it sounded like a glass harmonica; I've never seen one.

That whole night was a series of turning a corner, finding an unexpected beautiful, unique, hammered sort of instrument that I could actually play easily, and then moving on to contiunue strolling through the place. With a sense of unhurried delight, being able to return to any instrument if I decided upon one. I can't remember most of them. I often have these storehouse dreams, and I'd love to have instruments in them all.

Any more stories?

Spaw, Cleigh looks scary. Can I clicky him into some other messages?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 01:29 PM

Geeziz Praise...........Can I have some of whatever it is you're snorting before you have these dreams?

As to Cleigh.......He's a Mudcat Icon and you may use him as you wish. Be gentle.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 01:33 PM

Spaw, And that was before Mudcat. Oh my. I am afraid to sleep now!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Amos
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 02:34 PM

My dreams have changed a great deal since I came to the Mudcat forum. For one thing they are peopled by a better class of folk. They unfold in more entertaining locations, like the Trading Post (qv) or the Mudcat Island, where even now my schooner is calling, or The Gentlemen's Club about which fair Aine and I built a properly feminist tune with the strong hand of LEJ.

For another thing, I am afraid to say, they have taken over daytime broadcasting and sometimes surround me walking to the coffee pot at work; Cleigh's bottom, the Mudcat schooner, Caitrin's cookies and Aine's Challenges haunt my cubicle and the Mudcat calls me more loudly than my ordinary work...risky business, but it pleases my heart!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Marymac90
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 04:11 PM

In my dreams, I sing, and people come over and LISTEN, instead of having to go to the bathroom, bar, or elsewhere just then.

Mary McCaffrey

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Ely
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 04:39 PM

Never dreamed I was playing an instrument, but a friend of mine once built a folding guitar, which is something I would never have though of (even in my dreams, which tend to be pretty weird).

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 06:27 PM

I posted a link awhile back about an inflatable guitar...

and a friend of mine,who has since died, once claimed he had almost worked out the plans for an autoharp with a piano(or accordian) keyboard, where the felt stoppers came up from below...he wanted ANY chord available at all times...

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 06:30 PM

Bill D,

I play autoharp now, since there was never a hammered instrument that actually existed which I could physically play. The one you describe is scary!! Think of the roadies we'd need to go out and play!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Little Neophyte
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 09:44 PM

A very close friend of mine Alex, once told me he had a dream where he heard symphony music playing sounds he had never heard before. The music had such power and beauty it went beyond any earthly experience he ever had. He noticed this celestial orchestra was coming from one man playing a piano. The man's back was turned to my friend until the very end of the dream when the pianist stops playing, turns around and smiles at my friend.
It was Alex who had been playing the piano.

Little Neo

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Amos
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 10:12 PM

That's the self to be true to, the guy behind the curtain, the Thou who talks through your dreams, the other side of the endless You... nice dream, Alex

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: BK
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 10:22 PM

No Tipple dreams?? What, is this a Tipple I see before me, the tuners toward my fingers??? IS this the Mudcat & no Tipples? Alas!! So soon we forget!!

Cheers, BK

ps I "dreamed up" the ideal Travel Guitar; I wish someone like Taylor or Martin would make it, 'n I could not only help develop it, but also have the prototypes..

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Troll
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 10:33 PM

I have often dreamed of a violin-sized case which holds a full-sized guitar.Some sort of 5th dimensional shift or something. But it's a recurring dream. Must mean something.Or not.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Chet W.
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 10:38 PM

You know there actually was (and I suppose they are around somewhere) an autoharp-like thing with a keyboard. It was called a dulceola and was notably played by the Rev. Washington Philips (recording still available) to accompany his singing. I build unusual instruments. Some work, some not too good. Not quite as far out as Mr. Spock's bicycle wheel on the Star Trek hippie episode, but I try to make things that don't sound the least bit out of place in traditional music gatherings. Got to follow that dream. I am reminded of a new-age music catalog a friend of mine gave me a few years ago. It was left behind by a girlfriend that wore a ruby in her navel. It described music with "tonescapes" with the sounds of "crystal waterfalls" in a "cathedral of light" and on and on. One of my favorites was an album called "Antarctica" with a snowy picture of a wolf on the cover. Nobody has paid attention in science class for a while now.

Chet

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 11:26 PM

Chet,

Hi!

I'm new here, are you?

I guess we'll all come over to your place to get our dreamt instruments made. Maybe you could give us your phone number so we can call you while we're asleep to describe them!!!!! Yeah!!! OK???? I'll pass the word!

No?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 11:30 PM

Chet,

Hi!

I'm new here, are you?

I guess we'll all come over to your place to get our dreamt instruments made. Maybe you could give us your phone number so we can call you while we're asleep to describe them!!!!! Yeah!!! OK???? I'll pass the word!

No?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 Feb 00 - 11:42 PM

Nah Praise....Chet's been around a long while and is another curmudgeonly old poop much like myself. He's a South Carolina boy which may explain things a bit, but then again, as I think of Chet, that goes absoutely nowhere. His sense of humor is quite wicked and sharp, not to mention as dry as a scirroccan wind.

How's the banjeurine thing going?

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Crowhugger
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 01:14 AM

Chet,

Will a South Carolina-made wooden instrument survive the brutal vagaries of central heating in the Great White North?

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 01:25 AM

Spaw, I fear what may become of some of the F'Rollickers at the Festival, I am only glad to know my dream instruments are safe here wrapped up in this Thread.

Hey, Mr. Banjeurine Man, squeeze a song for me, I'm not creepy and my thread's to filled for wanderin'

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Mbo
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 10:42 AM

Well, my instruments almost finished--it'll be done on Monday. The Amazing Mudcat Guitar, who those who haven't the pleasure of knowing, is a NON-PLAYING bass guitar I'm building, in the shap of a huge catfish. It's merely built for aesthetic purpouses, and therefor not strong enough to support exactly tuned strings. But I haven't had any dreams about it....only nightmares! 4 days left!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 10:48 AM

Press on!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: MMario
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 10:59 AM

Mbo - you are going to somehow get a picture posted somewhere, aren't you? gotta see the Great MudCat Guitar!

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Mbo
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 11:06 AM

Oh most definately, Mario. I'm gonna get a picture and put it on my pic page at bbc's. But it'll have to wait a week and a half or so, after it comes down off of display.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: GUEST,Okiemockbird
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 12:25 PM

Praise, if you could put "essence of banjo-ness" in a bottle, you might make a fortune as a defence contractor.

T.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: annamill
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 12:27 PM

Chet, my Mom was from S.C. Do you know the Greenville area? Her daddy was a farmer there. Do you know the Martins?

Would everyone hate me if I pulled us into the 21st for a moment? I have problems learning to play my guitar because of time limitations. Now I HAVE to learn because I have the MOST beautiful guitar strap from our Bill/Sables.

Well, anyway, my dream instrument is a acoustic guitar with electronic memory that lights up the frets for fingering on particular songs and keeps count for strumming. I would be able to program the memory or have someone (perhaps one of my Mudcat friends) program songs on it for me. All they would have to do is set it to program and play a song.

That would be so great!

Is that cheating?

Love, annap

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 02:02 PM

I have SEEN a dulciola played!...Andy Cohen has/had one. He brought it to a house concert here, and my wife Ferrara, played it a bit,,,it is like a tiny little piano, but all the sound comes from striking the keys. The idea of a chorded autoharp is that you'd still pluck the strings with picks, but make piano like chords using some complex system inside the box...(it might be more trouble than my friend imagined!)

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 02:41 PM

I believve it was Spaw who mentioned BANJEURINE which could mean may things, Okie, perhaps I was overly caffeinated at the time and this is indeed the essence of which we are discussing. It would be the waste product eliminated by the banjo, the banje-urine, I see now my error was in expecting Spaw to speak to me with a silver tongue when it is of another sort entirely. Cost of having newbies around, you know, these little mistakes.

At any rate, urine is so effectively used as an agent of provocation by hunters and perfume makers that this product is bound to succeed. I think the testing on humans would properly be conducted at the Neil Young center. If anyone would be likely to have built up some immunity, it would have to be the residents there, so it would make sense to test the strongest formula there first: if it affects them it would be lethal in the 3-D world.

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 03:03 PM

I'm not quite up to taking commissions yet, but thanks for the interest and I'll let you know. By law, South Carolina-made instruments may not be played in other states. Nobody seems to remember the original reason for this. I lived in Greenville for four years while I went to college, at Furman University, the Harvard of the South. That's a pretty heavily populated part of the state, and I didn't know many folks around. I did have to teach myself how to tone down my coastal SC accent so that I could be understood. I've been around these parts (mudcat) awhile now. I see I've gotten myself a reputation, at least with my spiritual twin, Spaw. I think I'll go home and mudgeon a cur this afternoon.

just this side of the edge, Chet

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 06:11 PM

gee, folks,methinks truth is stranger than dreams...*big grin*.....fiddle +(patented!)

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 06:15 PM

and if THAT ain't weird enough for you...fiddle+++

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Feb 00 - 11:16 PM

BillD, I think you should let Chet announce his own work. These may represent his inductrial secrets and indeed his entire financial future. Shame on you.

UnLESS you are in cahoots with Chet, part of a cleverly orchestrated PLOT to drive up the demand and thus the prices!

But then I would have to question the wisdom of your marketing choices. I bet most of us can build these for ourselves, in our sleep! Since we are so cheap (I mean disadvantaged by a world that refuses to pay for our talent).

Perhaps that is the true source of dreamt instruments: we just can't afford to buy another single toy so we dream what cannot be had and play these all the night long...

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: Chet W.
Date: 17 Feb 00 - 06:50 AM

I had nothing to do with the musical umbrella. If you'd be interested in the toilet brush maracas let me know.

Chet

Subject: RE: BS: Dreaming Never-Made Instruments
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 Feb 00 - 09:06 AM

LOL!