Keyboards Back from the Dead

January 31, 2008 4:46 PM

Dead musical instruments... brought back to life by YouTube? Check out this mellotron demo film, a rare trautonium keyboard in some guy's garage, trautonium music by composer Oskar Sala, an original Ondes Martenot, a documentary on the telharmonium (parts 1, 2, and 3), and the Sonovox (used to funny but not-suitable-for-work effect in this parody of Sparky's Magic Piano). Meanwhile, avant-gardists have revived the art of prepared piano, but more mainstream acts such as Tori Amos and Ferrante & Teicher have also experimented with it. Last but not least, another performer of prepared piano is Margaret Leng Tan, but I think she should get more accolades as the best virtuoso of the toy piano since Schroeder from Peanuts.
posted by jonp72 (14 comments total)

Thanks for this. Margaret Leng Tan is awesome (and new to me).
posted by retronic at 4:55 PM on January 31, 2008

I call your attention to a post I made on the Ondes Martenot in December of last year, which in fact includes the same YouTube clip you've linked to here. Not calling this FPP out as a double, though: you've got lots of other links here, and I look forward to exploring them.

Otherwise, jonp72, a suggestion: add the musicalinstrument tag, and join the ever-expanding legion of users of this handy signifier!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:00 PM on January 31, 2008

Those were great, thanks!
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 5:10 PM on January 31, 2008

Mellotrons are awesome. While they're completely archaic at this point -- Mellotron samples are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing and plenty more reliable -- they're still being made... in Calgary, of all places.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:13 PM on January 31, 2008

Otherwise, jonp72, a suggestion: add the musicalinstrument tag, and join the ever-expanding legion of users of this handy signifier!

Thanks for the tip. I had a post up ages ago with some bizarre mechanical instruments such as the piatarbajo and cloud-chamber bowls, but that was pre-You Tube and the Metafilter Era B.T. (before tags).
posted by jonp72 at 5:27 PM on January 31, 2008

Nice post, jonp72. Here's the link to his piatarbajo post (I once had a long one man band post that I gave up on, so I had the link saved).

If any of you can find it, I highly recommend Heavenly Sounds in Hi-Fi by Ferrante and Teicher (I used to see it occasionally in thrift stores). It's full of prepared piano, minor-key renditions of standards, and, overall, enough psychedelic flourishes to make it one of my favorite albums.
posted by sleepy pete at 7:26 PM on January 31, 2008

Hey, wow, that Telharmonium documentary is really interesting, and very charmingly put together. So glad you discovered abd posted it, jonp72. I kind of can't believe I'd never heard of this crazy thing til now!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:00 PM on January 31, 2008

Wonderful post!

No Videos found for 'heckelphone'

Really? I didn't think they were that obscure.

Quite a few nice glass harmonica performances, though.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:08 PM on January 31, 2008

There's a nice list of instruments at obsolete.com's 120 years of electronic music, with info on and sometimes mp3s and video of a lot of instruments.

Also, for cortex, here's a stylophone version of "Popcorn".
posted by sleepy pete at 8:44 PM on January 31, 2008

Glee!
posted by cortex at 8:48 PM on January 31, 2008

Did someone say "glass harmonica"? Let Flapjax Industries take care of all your glass (h)armonica needs!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:11 PM on January 31, 2008

Also, since I don't know if it's been here in awhile, here's a link to Audio Playground's Virtual Drum Machine page (the article about synths I linked to earlier is also linked there), with a few links to some keyboards at the bottom. It includes the one keyboard I always loved having, but never used it more than once a year: the Rheem Kee Bass. They aren't necessarily dead, but it's fun to play them just the same.

You will need a flash plugin to get these to work, just in case you were wondering.
posted by sleepy pete at 11:02 PM on January 31, 2008

Speaking of Stylophones, I've got a mint-in-box, never used Stylophone (including instructional phonograph record!) that I'll be breaking in once I can assemble enough batteries to power it.

Also, a friend of mine's got a line on never-used Stylophones, if anybody's interested....
posted by retronic at 12:37 AM on February 1, 2008

Just don't get the rare trautonium keyboard anywhere near the anti-trautonium banjo.
posted by XMLicious at 4:19 AM on February 1, 2008