MetaFilter posts tagged with musicalInstrument

Delicious With Mayonnaise

mannequito — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:28:51 -0800

Secrets of a True Master : How To Make A Carrot Ocarina {slyt} Metafilter never ceases to amaze me - people who make carrots into instruments have been discussed not once, not twice, but thrice in the past two years. (hope I didn't miss this hiding in one of the other threads)

Long live the the Village Green - and the Mellotron

joseph conrad is fully awesome — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:55:25 -0800

The Mellotron features prominently on the 1968 album, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, more commonly referred to as The Village Green Preservation Society. The weird, eerie quality of this electronic keyboard, which uses pre-recorded tapes of individual sounds such as strings and woodwind instruments, worked well with singer/songwriter Ray Davies' nostalgic, backwards looking sensibility. For Kinks Mellotron goodness, try Sitting By The Riverside, Phenomenal Cat, All Of My Friends Were There, Animal Farm, Starstruck, and Days, the last of which was originally intended for Village Green but dropped from the final playlist. Bonus Mellotron, not on Village Green: Autumn Almanac, which "relies heavily on the MkII trombones and mixed brass". Nicky Hopkins and Ray Davies played the Mellotron on Village Green. Upon its release, reviews were favorable but the public ignored it, in no small part because it was so at odds with the cultural and rock/pop climate at the time. Village Green is now considered a godlike album and a cult favorite, prompting Ray Davies to state in the 2004 re-issue liner notes, "It's the most successful failure of all time." Previously

Oddstrument

Upton O'Good — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:36:56 -0800

Oddstrument is a blog about unusual musical instruments and other interesting acoustic technologies.

Bansuri

flapjax at midnite — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:13:34 -0800

It's the middle of August, and chances are pretty good that it's HOT where you are. Let's lend our ears, then, to some of the most cooling music around, from the Indian bansuri. Air conditioning for your soul. More info on the players heard in the linked video clips: Hariprasad Chaurasia, Prasad Bhandarkar, Harsh Wardhan. David Courtney's Bansuri and venu page is informative and packed with more embedded YouTube clips. Free online bansuri lessons, from the fine folks at Know Your Raga. Interactive bansuri fingering chart.

Chitravina

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:21:59 -0800

Ever heard a chitravina? It's a 21-stringed musical instrument from India, similar in appearance to the more widely-known veena, but with a sonic character all its own, due in large part to the fact that it's fretless, and it's played with a slide. Here's an NPR feature on the instrument's prime exponent, N. Ravikiran. [NOTE: embedded audio on that last link] Here's the Wikipedia page for the gottuvadhyam, which is another name for the chitravina (there are several names, actually). You'll note the somewhat irritating promotion (self-promotion?) included in this page, though, of the indefatigable N. Ravikiran. But hey, whaddayugunnado? Ravikiran would appear to have a virtual worldwide monopoly on this 21-stringed beast! My previous posts on Carnatic music.

Hey, one string's all you really need.

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 24 May 2008 00:09:09 -0800

One fine old day in old LA, in the year of nineteen and sixty, one Frederick Usher met Eddie "One String" Jones, heard him lay down some deep blues on his diddley bow, and was so taken with Jones' monochord masterpieces that he ran home, grabbed his tape recorder and recorded Jones in the alley. One other recording session ensued soon thereafter, which was released as an LP in 1964. By that time, however, the mysterious Eddie Jones (if that was even his real name) was long gone, and was never heard from again. [NOTE: see hoverovers for link descriptions] In case you didn't read the hoverover accompanying the released link in the FPP, I'd like to reiterate here: the Amazon.com page is linked to because of the reader comments, and one in particular, that includes a wealth of diddley bow-related links. And yes, those links are also to Amazon pages, but anyone really interested in this stuff will appreciate the pointers, I think. Eddie "One String" Jones also appears on this compilation. Here's a blog from a fellow who put the liner notes from the release One String Blues at the top position in his list of the Greatest Liner Notes Of All Time. A monochord player is part of this charming junk-instrument band in Malawi. In this clip, Alan Lomax makes mention of the African origins of the diddley bow, and takes a look at bluesman Lonnie Pitchford, another one-string plucker. Here's a fellow calls himself Seasick Steve, playing an instrument virtually identical to that of Eddie "One String" Jones, except that Steve has his running through an amp. And here you'll find One String Willie's replica of Eddie Jones' diddley bow. Here's his instructions on building a BIG diddley bow, like that made famous by Joe Willie Duncan. Finally, I should note that the man who purportedly recorded Eddie Jones, that is Mr. Frederick Usher, is shrouded in even more mystery than Jones himself. I could find absolutely nothing about him. I think he might've been a fictional character...

The veena, turned up to 11.

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:24:42 -0800

With a pickup mounted on the body of the instrument just below the strings, Revathy Krishna, KP Sarada and Sivanandam and Jayanthi Kumaresh get an unexpectedly fat sound out of their veena. Rocking! The instrument is more often amplified with a microphone, in which case it sounds more like this performance by D. Balakrishna, who, as you'll hear, ain't no slouch, neither. And here Pichumani gets his groove on, no doubt about it. So, hey, two more raags for the road, courtesy of Rajeswari Padmanabhan. The second tune on her clip, by the way, has got some deep blues in it, so I'm thinking maybe Rajeswari might've been down to the crossroads at midnight... [NOTE: see hoverovers for link descriptions] One of the legendary veena masters is S. Balachander. Here's a short documentary on him, with some fabulous reverb on that narrator! Part 1 (4:35) and 2 (4:41). Here's a performance by S. Balachander. By the way, those clay pots that you see being played as veena accompaniment in these clips are called ghatam. Pretty cool, huh? Here's a player surrounded by a set of tuned ghatam.

Are You Ready To Baroque

motty — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:33:24 -0800

In addition to violins, violas and cellos, there are also Stradivarius guitars. Two still exist: one in South Dakota and one in the Ashmolean in Oxford (see a reproduction of the Oxford one here). These are Baroque guitars, strung a little like modern ones without the low E string and with the other five strings doubled. Instructions for Baroque guitar. Courteous and friendly Reader, as thou hast seene before what my good will hath beene to pleasure thee in the practise of the Lute, so heere in this ~~booke~~ poste thou mayest perceave my endevoure continued to acquant thee likewise with the stately Orpharion...

Crank the beat. Place the beat. Glitch the beat.

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:14:11 -0800

You say you don't like drum machines? Well, here's one even the staunchest Luddite has gotta love. Or you might like some of the recent experiments in making the interfaces more physical. And surely you'll admit this one's really very charming. Wanna go non-Western? Get yer talas out with this tabla machine. It'll be only a matter of time, then, till you get into the whole classical Hindustani gitchtronica thing, which is what the cool kids are into. [NOTE: see hoverovers for link descriptions]

Mbira

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:18:16 -0800

Ever since I first heard mbira from Zimbabwe almost 30 years ago (via this record), I've been a lover of that enchanting, delicate and intricate music. It's only recently, however, that many of us who aren't actually players of the mbira could see just how the instrument is played: Holding the mbira, and scales - Lesson One - Two - Three - Four, and more and more. And here are some recommended mbira players and groups with MySpace Music pages worth checking out: Spirit Talk Mbira - Mbira Oracle - Kunzawa Mbira Group - Joel Laviolette. Special honors to Thomas Mapfumo, who, many years back, took the mbira style and spirit and adapted it to electric guitars, in an inspired and joyous fusion of the ancient and the modern. This page from All About Jazz reviews the Nonesuch label's releases of Shona mbira music. This YouTube clip features a tune from another of the Nonesuch releases, The Soul of Mbira, a collection of recordings made by ethnomusicologist and author Paul Berliner. Recommended. There'll no doubt be plenty of mbira music to be heard at Zimfest 2008, this coming July in Tacoma, Washington. Finally, here's Dangurangu. For your ears only.

If you can breathe, you can PlaRola

katillathehun — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:40:16 -0800

If you were around between the 1870s and the early 1900s, you were rocking out to the sweet tunes of the organette. Some were ornate wooden boxes played by turning a crank. Cool kids had tiny organette/harmonica hybrids called Rolmonicas that were played by mouth. Other variations included the Celestina, the Musical Casket, the Playasax, the PlaRola, and the Triola mechanical zither among others. Happen to have one? Pull it out of that yard sale! You can still find music for it.

The banjo's great great grandaddy.

flapjax at midnite — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 07:01:30 -0800

So, you hollow out piece of wood into an oblong bowl shape, and you attach a dowel to it. Stretch a dried animal skin over that, and put some strings on it. Instruments of this general construction and in a range of sizes can be found from Morrocco to Nigeria and everywhere in between. It goes by any number of local names: Malian masters like Bassekou Kou yaté and Cheick Hamala Diabaté call it ngoni. Senegalese Wolof griots like Samba Aliou Guissé call it xalam. And Morroccan gnawa musicians like Hassan Hakmoun and Hamid El Kasri get way funky on the larger version that they call the gimbri or sentir. [not: see hoverovers for link descriptions] Bonus tracks: Cheick Hamala Diabate again, but not on ngoni: this time he joins antique banjo enthusiast Bob Carlin for a duet on... antique banjos. Here's another Hassan Hakmoun clip. Audio and video are out of sync, but by exactly one beat, so it's not actually too terrible to watch! This clip features a nice groove from the Master Musicians of Jajouka. This clip is an odd mishmash of images, a combination of travel snapshots but with photos of gimbri players interspersed, but audio is a really nice Gnawa groove. And this little high-speed montage clip (it's only just over a minute long), well, you may find either kinda cool or kinda annoying: AfroBeat Banjo. There are, of course, many related instruments across West Africa: oamong them, the larger donso ngoni and the akonting. See also: MySpace Music akonting page. There's also the kora, of course, but that's a whole 'nother FPP. And finally, this incredibly exhaustive MySpace Music page, Banjo Roots packs more info, images and links onto a single page than many websites do in 20 or more. A real labor of love!

Low-bit gal from 'round Tokyo-way.

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:38:25 -0800

There is a small but very dedicated and enthusiastic group of people around the world making music with Nintendo Game Boys and other cheap electronic gadgetry. While many of them are consciously fitting their low-bit sonics into relatively straightforward and predictable dance-oriented forms, some others are taking a rather more whimsical and less predictable approach. One such favorite of mine is the utterly charming, Tokyo-based henna dress. Then there's her alter ego, beta dress. Then there's her 3rd alter ego, CAMEBOY (of GGG) . Wikipedia page for Game Boy Music

Keyboards Back from the Dead

jonp72 — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:46:49 -0800

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.

The Hammond B3

Floydd — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 20:19:08 -0800

"There are literally millions of tone qualities and endless shades of dynamic level available on the Hammond organ." Previously. Also. And. Wait! There's more!

Ondes Martenot, or, When Maurice Met Leon.

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 23:04:37 -0800

When Maurice Martenot met Lev Sergeivich Termen in the early 1920's and heard his revolutionary new musical instrument the Theremin, he was inspired to create his own electroacoustic instrument , which he christened Ondes Martenot. Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the first performance of this remarkable hybrid keyboard which, aside from its lovely and ethereal sound, is also aesthetically pleasing visually, with its handsome collection of multiple speakers. See and hear the instrument being played and explained in this video interview and demonstration by Jean Laurendeau, which closes with a lovely rendition of the theme from Star Trek. And, here's the instrument in use, live, alongside who else? Radiohead. More videos: Claude-Samuel Lévine in a performance of Messiaen's Feuillets Inedits, from Google video. And here Levine demonstrates his prowess on the Ondes Martenot as well as the Theremin in this (" He played with RADIOHEAD ! ") YouTube clip. Here's the same clip on Google video. This clip opens with a very good shot of the instrument being played, filmed from the player's perspective. Here's the English homepage of Japanese Ondes Martenot virtuoso Takashi Harada. Here's Harada serenading the shoppers at a department store. Here's a page from the Canadian Music Centre's "Electronic Frontiers" series, featuring a composition by Jacques Hétu: Concerto for Ondes Martenot. Here's an article on Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, in which he talks about his interest in the Ondes Martenot. And here's Greenwood's interview with Ondes Martenot player Jeanne Loriod. Here's a page from MusicWeb International on Thomas Bloch's album Music for Ondes Martenot, with some info on various Ondes Martenot compositions featured on the recording. Here's a new version of the instrument, from the UK's Analogue Systems, which they call the "French Connection". And... for anyone who'd like to hear more from Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore, here's her MySpace Music page. And finally, I should note that the Ondes Martenot made a brief appearance in this MeFi post previously.

I saw the light.

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:31:21 -0800

Musical saw. Musical saw. Musical saw. Musical saw. Musical saw. Musical saw. Musical saw. Musical saw. Musical saw. For those who just wanna run out now and grab a saw and start bowing it, there's lots of tutorials and info on the nets. Here's a few links: Saw. Saw. Saw. Saw. One contemporary player of particular note is David Coulter, who has lent his creativity and master's touch on the saw to the recordings and performances of luminaries such as Damon Albarn, Tom Waits, The Pogues and many others.

The Birotron: The Keyboard of the Future

40 Watt — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:14:06 -0800

In 1975, armed with a big pile of 8-track car stereos and a whole lot of moxie, Dave Biro set out to change the sound of rock music. He failed spectacularly. This is the fascinating and tragic story of one of the rarest instruments in rock music- The Birotron. Even if you don't recognize the name, you've probably heard the Mellotron. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, The Kinks and countless others featured the unusual sounds of the keyboard on many of the most recognizable songs in rock music. However, despite the popularity of the Mellotron, it wasn't without it's flaws- heavy, bulky, slow, and- most important to this post- limited to 8 seconds of sound per key before the tapes which made up the sounds needed rewinding. Dave Biro decided to improve upon the Mellotron, and by cramming all those 8-tracks in a case and wiring the whole mess together, he was able to create an instrument with virtually infinite sustain. Unfortunately, his timing was a bit off: 4 years after the first Birotron rolled off the line, the world's first polyphonic digital sampling synthesizer was introduced. That, plus some serious technical and quality control issues, was enough to kill off the Birotron after only a handful were made.

Gaida! Gaida! Gaida!

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 07:00:33 -0800

The gaida is a bagpipe from Southeastern Europe. Gaida mp3s? Lots of 'em here. Gaida on the YouTubes? Why, yes. Yes, of course. Certainly. There's a bunch. Really. A lot. And electric ones? Yup. And here's a deflated one. But do any hippies play this thing? And dance to it? Sure! But the real question is: What is the problem with this gaida?

Tenori-on: sound on your palm

moonmilk — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:35:43 -0800

The Tenori-On is a new electronic musical instrument by Toshio Iwai [wikipedia], the creator of Electroplankton [previously]. It was just released commercially by Yamaha [flash site], to great excitement among those of us who get excited about such things. But what does it sound like? [more inside]

Hurdy Gurdy! Hurdy Gurdy! Hurdy Gurdy!

flapjax at midnite — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 07:57:53 -0800

When was the last time you listened to a hurdy gurdy? No, I mean really listened to a hurdy gurdy? No, I don't mean the The Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan. I mean a real hurdy gurdy. That is to say, an actual hurdy gurdy. Oh, and by the way, the French call it a Vielle à roue. [more inside]

Balafon! Balafon! Balafon!

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:06:09 -0800

The YouTubes have the African balafon you need. Alya Dioubate. Coulibaly Samadou. Kanazoé. Epizo Bangoura. Koeta Hakiri. Bala. Man and child. Danse Moderne Balafon!

100 volts. And what you can do with them.

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:31:03 -0800

Time once again to pay a little visit to Japan's ever-engaging electro-mechanical music overachievers, Maywa Denki. Here's some of their latest and greatest efforts.

Photoplayer

dhammond — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:22:05 -0800

A mainstay of the old-timey cinema era, the Photoplayer was a pump organ designed for player piano rolls, sound effects and a human composer. [Courtesy of Huell Howser]

Massive organ.

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 17:35:01 -0800

The world's largest operating musical instrument? Hear it here. New York Times article here. (Log-in may be necessary)