The Everything Musical Instrument

July 22, 2022 5:56 AM

What kind of instrument would a type designer invent? The Daxophone is a bowed instrument that can seemingly conjure up any noise. This is probably an exaggeration, but when you listen to kazuhisa uchihashi recent album Singing Daxophone, you certainly do get that sense.

It was invented by Hans Reichel (previously, previouslyer, previouslyestest, almost certain all links broken in those posts). Mr. Reichel designed fonts, notably FF DAX, a supremely sleek font that dominated the 90s, and found notable uses in the 00s, and still holds its own.

It's not a very common instrument, but if these links have inspired you, you have options:
You can buy a Daxophone
and then learn to daxophone.

posted by svenni (18 comments total)

For a very long time, I knew about a musician named Hans Reichel, and a typographer by the same name. I thought he was two separate people.
posted by The Half Language Plant at 6:31 AM on July 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

I had to look it up on YouTube to make sure those sounds I was hearing were actually from a daxophone, and yes -- it really does sound like a human person making funny noises with their mouth. What a beautiful instrument.
posted by a car full of lions at 6:34 AM on July 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

I think that I heard it on a record entitled
Gravikords Whirlies and pyrophones - it's true that it sounds eerily close to the humain voice.
posted by nicolin at 7:27 AM on July 22, 2022 [6 favorites]

I didn't know Oneohtrix Point Never was a Daxophone player as well as making vaguely hypnagogic, not-quite-(chill/vapor)wave electronica.
posted by acb at 7:30 AM on July 22, 2022

The music falls a bit into the "uncanny valley" for me, but it's certainly a cool idea & a fun post. (Interestingly, I don't have the same slightly squicked out reaction to talkbox guitar ala Peter Frampton. )
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 8:03 AM on July 22, 2022

Reminds me of a turkey call that's played with a chalk 'bow' rubbing a box of wood that makes fascinating sound depending on how you hold it and strike it. Wish I I had thought to borrow somebody's string instrument's horsehair bow, would have been fun.
posted by zengargoyle at 8:20 AM on July 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

The phrase "the greatest musical innovation in the history of the world" has been bandied about a lot as of late...
posted by ba at 8:27 AM on July 22, 2022

Gravikords Whirlies and pyrophones

I have that record too! Though I don’t still have the book it came with. Time to go dig the CD out of storage…
posted by ejs at 8:44 AM on July 22, 2022

As an owner of Hans Reichel's music, I will no doubt have to buy this. I'm sure it'll get a hearty "thank you please make it stop" from ms scruss, just like the other daxophone albums did. But "I Feel Good" is an utter delight!

I was terribly sad when Hans died, and sadder again when Flash went away and rendered his website useless. But thanks to the ruffle Flash Player emulator, you can make the erdmännchen sing again!

(no I will not attempt to make a 3d-printed daxophone no no stop it adhd engineer's brain aagh ...)
posted by scruss at 9:59 AM on July 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

The daxophone demonstrations I heard first had me thinking of it as an instrument of torture, but this delights me. Possibly swing.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:34 AM on July 22, 2022 [4 favorites]

I would probably never have listened to Uchihashi's Singing Daxophone without this. Thanks.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 10:44 AM on July 22, 2022

Saw one of these at a Jean Derome concert. Everyone was saying "what is that thing that looks like a duck's head?"
posted by ovvl at 10:53 AM on July 22, 2022

I want to hear a duet with a theremin, for the full uncanny glory.

This reminds me of that tendency for us to find human faces in everything.
posted by Comet Bug at 11:37 AM on July 22, 2022 [2 favorites]

I regret that making the dax is going to require me to get a fixed sander so that I can keep the curve absolutely straight. But there'll be a Stew-Mac order for fret wire soon anyway, so....

But, yes, of course I had to go find an archived version of Hans Reichel's "Some information on the daxophone" off of Samuel Burt's daxophone page. Now I need to learn enough about bows to know if the $20 cheap one is good enough for my purposes....
posted by straw at 3:33 PM on July 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Gravikords Whirlies and Pyrophones was put together by Bart Hopkin. The book/album was kind of a best of the newsletter Experimental Musical Instruments.

EMI is an amazing resource for anyone interested in well... experimental musical instruments. Check out the archive at archive.org. It is extremely well indexed complete with abstracts and synopses.

In addition to putting together EMI, Bart Hopkin is also a prolific instrument builder.

Kind of a serious genius in my opinion.
posted by alikins at 5:35 PM on July 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

My DIY one day daxophone build: Day 22 2017 Instrument-A-Day: Daxophone

Part of my attempt at a month long "Instrument-A-Day" directly inspired by mefi's own moonmilk
posted by alikins at 5:38 PM on July 22, 2022 [6 favorites]

At around the same time, I thought Andy Gill the musician and Andy Gill the music critic were the same person, and I was wrong about that.
posted by The Half Language Plant at 9:25 AM on July 23, 2022

Just to note one of the ways that Reichel worked: he published his entire library to daxophone tongues as a font: Daxoph.ttf. This is referenced in his (large, PDF, zipped) DaxInfo.pdf.zip on how to build the instrument
posted by scruss at 12:30 PM on July 29, 2022