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Anyone else playing strange instruments?
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Bugsy Date: 08 May 20 - 03:07 AM I used to play on the linoleum, as a child. Cheers Bugsy |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Pappy Fiddle Date: 06 May 20 - 11:17 PM I also have a vuvuzuela. A simple horn, very loud. South Africans take them to soccer games. With 20,000 people blowing them it's enough to crack your eardrums. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Pappy Fiddle Date: 06 May 20 - 11:05 PM Split Whistle. This is two whistles the kind you give children to see if they have any musical inclination. I got two, ran them thru the table saw - cut the left side off one, right side off the other - glued them together. Here's a picture of it: \/ Taping over some of the holes makes the one side the "bass" side. So I can play harmonies |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: GUEST Date: 06 May 20 - 10:44 AM I play the fool. Tradsinger |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Tattie Bogle Date: 05 May 20 - 06:31 PM My son had an ebow for Christmas one year: drove us mad with it until he moved out! Jack, I knew we could rely on you for plenty of strange instruments! |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Jack Campin Date: 05 May 20 - 04:40 PM Is it an Otamatone? I may be the only person ever to play blues on a tilinko. A tilinko in C lets you play blues in G using the open C as a subdominant. And you've got a spare hand to play the washboard with if you hold it right. I also have a Haggis Caller - it's a haggis-shaped, haggis-sized, haggis-coloured ocarina you can use as a piggy bank, but part-closing the coin slot lets you vary the pitch like closing the holes on a normal ocarina. Mine has a range of an octave from E flat in continuous whoops. I get it out on Burns Night. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: punkfolkrocker Date: 05 May 20 - 02:01 PM Ebow - had one for about 25 years.. Not strange, but very useful...!!! However, something I impulse bought late at night in an internet flash sale is more stupid than strange.. So daft, I've never even taken it out the box, or ever told anyone else before now... To be honest, I forgot I even had it... |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Mysha Date: 05 May 20 - 01:32 PM Would Melodicas fall under the heading "strange instruments", or are the just "modern", for being less than a century old. If the former, the, yes, I do play some strange instruments. I had intended to upgrade to actual fully functional specimen, but because of the lock-down I can't cycle to the other side of the province to buy one, thus for now I occasionally play 24 key Soprano and Alto melodicas. Mysha |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: gillymor Date: 03 May 20 - 09:31 AM I play some instruments strangely. I had an Ebow back the '80's and never got very far with it though I could see it had potential for for creating some interesting sounds but the guys in the blues band I was in weren't very enthusiastic about it so I traded it for an Ibanez Tube Screamer which is still going strong. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Jack Campin Date: 03 May 20 - 09:18 AM EBow Makes your guitar into an electric cello, more or less. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Mo the caller Date: 03 May 20 - 08:17 AM What is an elbow guitar? |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Jack Campin Date: 02 May 20 - 02:21 PM The Japanese version of the bulbul tarang is the taishogoto. It doesn't have much of a reputation. What's the Indian thing with a string fixed in the centre of a very small drum and held under tension by two springy strips of bamboo, so you can squeeze them as you pluck and get a glissando boing? |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Mo the caller Date: 02 May 20 - 12:51 PM Lynn, your suggestion enabled me to Google and be reminded of the name I heard. Bul bul tarang Vicky Swan visits Cheshire often enough for me to know a Nyckelharpa when I meet one. The contrabass bumfiddle won't be very portable, but please bring it to Whitby (whenever). Must see that. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Jack Campin Date: 01 May 20 - 05:34 PM We have about five Swiss exercise balls and space hoppers lying around. I have contemplated making an inflatable contrabass bumfiddle with one. The string(s) can be strimmer twine and the bridge a big funnel - not sure what to use for an upright, though. A dinghy mast would be ideal. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Jack Campin Date: 01 May 20 - 03:02 PM Some fantastic saw playing. Yeliz Bulgurcu doing classical Turkish music along with an oud and an ebow guitar. https://www.facebook.com/100000547749874/posts/3430578293637062/ |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Sarah the flute Date: 01 May 20 - 01:40 PM I play a variety of strange blowy things including the indeed wonderful nose flute which duets melodiously with the swanee slide whistle or Kazoo. I also play cornamuses and hulusi |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: GUEST,LynnH Date: 01 May 20 - 01:28 PM I've got two indian 'dulcimers' or, as the label in one says, Benjo. They have keyboards (!) - one with typewriter keys, the other with 'normal piano style'. Problems? Strings for a start and then, on the one with 'typewriter' keys, the block with the anchor pegs is rather soft wood so that the iron or steel pegs slip rather than grip. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Tattie Bogle Date: 01 May 20 - 01:05 PM Nyckelharpa? National instrument of Sweden, but gaining in popularity in the UK. It was World Nyckelharpa day last Sunday! |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Mo the caller Date: 01 May 20 - 09:29 AM Some strange instruments turn up from time to time at a session in Audlem. A trio of one string fiddles (it took rather a while tor them to master them tunefully). Or the Bum-fiddle with a balloon instead of a body. Hurdy-gurdies are commonplace, but what's that instrument that looks like an old-fashion typewriter? |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Mo the caller Date: 01 May 20 - 09:25 AM Guggle box anyone. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Jack Campin Date: 01 May 20 - 08:38 AM A great read on this sort of stuff is Laurence Picken's "Folk Music Instruments of Turkey", which organizes the whole lot using the Sachs-Horbostel classification. This has the (to me, totally unexpected) effect of showing that most of the possible design space of musical noisemakers is occupied by children's toys. I particularly liked the really odd bit of the taxonomy occupied by a big bubble of wet potter's clay that you hit to make it go plop. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Date: 02 Feb 99 - 11:21 AM Once again, as I was perusing the Robert Johnson crossroads thread, I was once again reminded of our love for the word HARP. This time in the form of the Mouth Harp, an Aerophone, which is more closely related to a bassoon than a harp. I've used it for years myself, but have you ever conjured up the mental image of someone "blowing the harp?" catspaw |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Cap't Bob Date: 01 Feb 99 - 11:33 PM Check out this homepage for some really unusal instruments that you can make for yourself. Most of them have a pretty good sound. The $20 hurdy gurdy for instance. Dennis is the fort fiddler on Mackinaw Island MI. His homepage is:http://edcen.ehhs.cmich.edu/~dhavlena/ Have fun, Cap't Bob |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Duane D. Date: 01 Feb 99 - 09:22 PM catspaw, that's nittiness no nuttiness. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Date: 01 Feb 99 - 08:53 PM I really don't know why I'm posting this, but..........Saws belong to the Idiophone family. These are instruments made of naturally resonant materials and include bells, gongs, chimes, jaw harps (again,not a harp!), sansas(thumb pianos), cymbals, washboards, stomp boards, jingles, castanets, maracas, steel drums, tap shoes, and yes,saws! They can be "played" in just about any manner to get a sound. Friction, scraped, whacked and beaten, shaken(not stirred for Mr.Bond), plucked, stamped, etc. So yes,Virginia, you CAN have bowed, hammered, or even a plucked saw. During my first week of college orientation we had a talent night, obviously to help everyone relax and adjust and to see that the faculty and administration were just average folks. Somehow it didn't strike me as particularly comforting that the Dean of Men played the saw...badly. I guess he really believed that this skill would put him in good standing with the student body. Looking back now, I can see his reasoning. Unfortunately the guy was such a stiff in every other respect that rather than making him a cool guy, it made him a horse's ass. I'm sorry Dean Orwig. If you're out there I want to say NICE TRY...but no cigar. Maybe if you hadn't worn your dark socks and wingtips with the madras shorts...... catspaw |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: gargoyle Date: 31 Jan 99 - 11:09 AM And bowed saws vs hammered saws?
Thanks to this thread I have been "playing around" with saws ---- it began in the garage...and the quest for tonation has extended to hardware stores. Wooden handled saws definatly have better tone and a metal-tack-hammer has a good ring...a circular sawblade suspended by a stick has beautiful, but uncontrolable qualities. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: catspaw49 Date: 31 Jan 99 - 02:29 AM Just amazing. Strange instruments eventually gets us to the great pigeonhole classification project. I'm waiting for the debate over whether they are folk or traditional to start soon. Just a joke group, just a joke.***smile*** The problem here is that instrument development did not happen in only one place, at only one time, in a linear fashion. Whenever the cultural crossovers occurred there would also be some wacky combinations appear. The last time this nuttiness swept upon the world was turn of the century U.S.A. Perhaps it was their form of Y2K. Over about 40 years we saw some mondo bizzarro combos. The only stringed instrument that survived the period to prosper in this century, is commonly known as the autoharp...and alas, we screwed the pooch immediately, 'cause it ain't a harp!!! It's a chorded zither. But then who in the hell would buy an autozither? Okay, possibly Duane and Bill, but for the rest of us, the word is just too weird. Alright, let me try to be serious for a moment. Everyone has touched upon some points, but the musicologist types will tell you that instruments where the sound is produced by the vibration of string(s) are called "Chordophones." Chordophones are then divided into five major categories: Bows, Lyres, Harps, Lutes, and Zithers. It is now time to break out the NoDoz cause most of us will fall asleep through all the various mutations into sub-sub-sub categories, and once again encounter zither prejudice when we find the Aeolian Harp is really a form of "long" zither. In the major categories, the relationship of string to some kind of "body" provides the class difference. A bow is a string or strings attached at each end to a curved stick. Well, duh. Moving on, a harp has strings running at some oblique angle from the soundbox to the neck. A lyre is generally 4 sided and the strings run from the soundbox, across some type of bridge, to a crossbar supported by 2 uprights. Zithers have strings running across elevated bridges for the entire length of a resonant body(doesn't have to be hollow). Lutes have strings running from somewhere near the base of a resonant body, across a bridge, over the body to the end of the neck.
The banjo is a variant on an African long necked lute. Musical tastes within a specific culture, availability of materials, cultural exploration and spread, and other factors determined the rise and fall of many instruments, stringed and otherwise. For more info on that subject, find an anthropologist who will be happy to elaborate ( if you can wake them up). Personally I'm putting myself to sleep. Next up, we stick a bagpipe chanter into the mouthpipe of a tuba and a banjo down the bell...call it a harp of some sort, of course...then we throw the works onto a busy freeway at rush hour, and save the world from another wacko, semi-musical surprise. catspaw |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Bill D Date: 30 Jan 99 - 08:42 PM sure...here's one acting like a permanent capo!.. nit.gif you can read about it here |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Banjer Date: 30 Jan 99 - 08:07 AM Picking nits, interesting concept!!! How many strings does the average nit have? Does it have a long or short neck? Is it fretted or smooth? Does anyone have a picture of a nit that they can share with us? |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Bert Date: 29 Jan 99 - 02:31 PM Jon W, Yes, the dividing line betweeen long and short is arbitrary. Such is our language. No, a fiddle doesn't HAVE to have a bow, although most of them do. And some of the one string, stick fiddles that I've seen have surprisingly long necks. I guess that something like a mountain dulcimer would be classed as a fiddle but I don't know for sure. A mandolin would be a lute. Bert. We need someone more knowledgable to step in here. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: sue Date: 29 Jan 99 - 01:15 PM Well, I do have a digeridoo (how do you spell that again?) but I don't know how to play it. The gentleman who gave it to me, however, is very skilled. No matter how many times he shows me how, and no matter how beautiful the sounds he creates, all mine ever sounds like is someone spitting into a pipe...perhaps it's broken? *grin* Regardless, it's good for a laugh, and my 7-year-old always howls with glee when mummy "plays" a song! sue:) |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Rex Rideout Date: 29 Jan 99 - 11:07 AM One odd gadget I treasure is a version of the jews/jaw harp. This one is entirely made of bamboo and is about ten inches long. I'm told it may have come from Thailand. A nice bit of carving with two thin strips of bamboo fitted in close to the twanger part. The volume it produces is astounding. Rex Rideout |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Date: 29 Jan 99 - 11:04 AM |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Jon W. Date: 29 Jan 99 - 10:58 AM Art - my banjo is a drum. It just happens to have a wooden head instead of a skin head. I got the moral authority to build it that way from an article on banjo makers of the Appalachians in a book named "Foxfire 3." While the vast majority of banjos are made with skin heads, some are from wood and some are from metal (cookie tins being preferred). Actually, the truth is I just didn't want to spring for the expensive hardware it takes to tighten a skin or plastic head, nor did I have confidence in my ability to properly stretch and shrink a rawhide head. Maybe next time. Bert - seems to me a fiddle also has to have a bow. Otherwise a mandolin would be a fiddle. Jon W, also picking nits. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Bert Date: 29 Jan 99 - 09:52 AM Art, The definitions that I once heard, a long time ago, didn't differentiate between soundbox materials. Lute. has strings parallel with the soundbox and has a long neck. (includes guitar and banjo) Fiddle. has strings parallel with the soundbox and has a short neck. Zither. has strings parallel with the soundbox and no neck. (includes autoharp, the hammered dulcimers, piano, etc.) Harp. has strings at 90 degrees to the soundbox. That's all I can remember for now, I sure we have some students out there who know more. Bert. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: cleod (in the Philippines) Date: 29 Jan 99 - 01:59 AM Nose flutes has been around forever here, played by the Ifugaos (a tribe of aborigines in the northern part of Luzon). I've got a Muslim version of the mouth bow -- it's made entirely of wood and has a mellow, twangy sound. I bought it in this shop that specializes in ethnic instruments, mostly drums (made with lizard skin!), rainsticks, some of those shakey eggs, and something that sounds like the sheep-herding tambourine mentioned earlier. If anyone ever drops by this part of the world, I'll bring you to the shop -- I've heard there's this group that uses those instruments and plays in local nightclubs... sla/n cleod |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Art Thieme Date: 28 Jan 99 - 05:22 PM Jon W, No value judgment in this at all. Please, don't think that at all 'cause it's not intended that way fer sure.I'm just a bit of a nit picker. But I do believe that your wood-topped instrument, even with a 5-string banjo's neck, would ,by definition, actually be a GUITAR. Even the "PANJO" I made from a bedpan would, technically, be a guitar and not a banjo. A guitar being: A box wityh strings.(basic definition) A banjo is: A drum with strings.(basic definition) Does this seem right to you folks out there?? Or am I wrong about this? Art |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Jon W. Date: 28 Jan 99 - 02:32 PM Great pix, Bill. I think I mentioned on an earlier thread I was building a wood-topped 5-string banjo. I finally finished it (almost) last night, enough to string it up and play. It has a great clear sound, more cutting than a guitar but with almost the same sustain. I think I'm going to really enjoy playing Irish/Celtic melodies on it. The extra sustain will add to the drone qualities of the music. Jon W. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Bill D Date: 28 Jan 99 - 01:10 PM I added a pic of a couple of my unusual instruments to the web page I have been messing with...click here to see Marxophone & Ukelin
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Art Thieme Date: 28 Jan 99 - 02:32 AM Don, (on my dulcimer) I know!! All that junk is worth a fortune now. I bought the Star Wars lunchbox for $1.50 at a Salvation Army thrift store. But I think I depreciated it some when I punched a hole in the metal to put the neck wood into the box like a dowel rod would run through the body of the banjo-head rim. (I anchor it with 2 screw-eyes going through the metal on the other side of the box and screwing 'em into the wood.) I threw the thermos bottle away to make room for the rubber chicken I always pulled out of the lunchbox when (as it always did) the kid's attention wandered. (I always said that kids and drunks in folk clubs had the same attention span!) Art |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Roger the zimmer Date: 27 Jan 99 - 10:42 AM I remember the Corries (Scottish Folk group) in the 60s/70s built many of their own instruments including a couple of twin necked beasts doubling (from memory) mandolin/lute or mandolin /guitar which the called "combolins" and featured on an LP called, I think, Strings and Things. They claimed it was to cut down on the number of instruments they carried (around a dozen) , but admitted it just added two more as the new ones had their own qualities different from the intended constituent parts. As they were self-built they were probably unique. They also featured on some records "English guitar". As they were Scottish this may have been intended as an insult! I have not seen such a description elsewhere, does anyone know what it meant? |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: phinque Date: 24 Jan 99 - 08:29 PM Washboard and spoons. The spoons are 1 piece of wood attached at the top. I saw a great spoons player who used regular spoons (2 sets) and rubberbanded them together at the top so that they didn't slip. Since then, I don't feel like I'm cheating while playing the attached o |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Guy Wolff Date: 24 Jan 99 - 07:55 PM Years ago I was lucky enough to get a mandolion body with a five sting banjo neck.Inside it says Patton aplyed for 188?....I am a heavey metle spoon player.Mine are from the kitchen at a Waterbury Ct. colledge from 1972.Years latter Lui Collins gave me another pair for my birthday but those are my back up set.I also have a great set of castanets that have taken meny a song cicle by suprise. Sorry about my spelling...I once made a sighn at my pottery shop BANGOS AND BANGO LESSONS.When someone asked what a bango was I said it was the traditional way of spelling banjo..Ah new traditions.... |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Nick G. Date: 24 Jan 99 - 07:05 PM I am in a band and all the instruments are strange to my fellow Americans. I play the "bugarija", our lead player plays the "prim" and two other guys play "brac's." They're not really strange to me since I have heard these instruments since the time I was in diapers. I hope this type of music is still around when I'm in diapers again some day. |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: DonMeixner Date: 14 Jan 99 - 11:45 PM I don't play strange instrumentsso much as I play instrument strangely. By the way Art, your Star Wars steel lunch pail with thermos in excellent condition would be worth a car payment, or plane fare to a warm place or a couple weeks worth of groceries. Don Meixner |
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Subject: This is only a test From: DonMeixner Date: 14 Jan 99 - 11:40 PM xyz |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: AliceAlice Date: 13 Jan 99 - 10:51 PM I have two instruments that are common in India, but are uncommon in the US. People always ask what the harmonium is when they see it. Harmonium and shruti drone box |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: JimBunchGutBucketeer Date: 13 Jan 99 - 10:49 PM I have been playing the gut bucket, or washtub bass, on and off since the mid 70's when I was in Undergrad at Univ. of Michigan. All my friends played "real" instruments such as the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. I added the gut bucket, jaw harp, bones etc. We busked at the Ann Arbor Art Fair for change on year and made enough for pizza at dinner. Recently, I have brought my gut bucket to the jams at the Washington Folk Fest. I had a great time though I don't know how much the other musicians liked it (Nobody asked me to leave). Anyway, If you can't read music for it, or tune it, its probably my kind of instrument. Jim in Silver Spring |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: catspaw49catspaw49 Date: 13 Jan 99 - 10:34 PM Hey Bill and Bob...If you're in need of another strange instrument in your basement......Following the dulcimer theme build a 4 player table dulcimer. Even otherwise shy people like to try it out and when you get a few people swapping around after awhile you're laughing so damn hard it doesn't matter how well anybody plays. I think I've gotten more people involved with that thing than any other method Ive tried. Kids love it, old folks love it, uptight people love it...It's raucous, hideous sounding, and no one sounds too good therefore no one sounds to bad. catspaw |
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Subject: RE: Anyone else playing strange instruments? From: Bill DBill D Date: 13 Jan 99 - 08:08 PM thanks BobBolton BobBolton..(*grin*..poor Max, this programming stuff is fraught with pitfalls) yes...when I was looking at possible ways to make that dulcimer, I saw commercial, square tins of various oils as reasonable substitutes... I am going to go back down to that library and see if the book is still there after almost 20 years...what I REALLY need is another strange instrument taking up space in my besement! But I really do appreciate the book title...will make it all much easier. |
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