All The Malevolence Of A Grade School Music Class In A Box

February 17, 2023 11:14 PM

Introducing The Hellcorder - an unholy mashup of recorder, pipe organ, and guitar amp. (SLYT)

As its creator put it, the humble recorder is just as damned an instrument as the electric guitar, so he figured combining the two would make for a truly demonic instrument.

posted by NoxAeternum (16 comments total)

I flipped back and forth over all of this, but the first thing I did was skimmed straight to the final few minutes to find what the goal state of the instrument/amp sounded like, without having to sit through the techspeak of this otherwise very videogenic and eager host. It's hilarious (no spoilers).

Watching the rest in bits and bobs made me wonder if he could do a similar same setup with accordion or melodica reeds.

And, dissonance rules, and grade school music class, recorders and all, embodies the spirit of that dissonance perfectly. It was the only class that I liked and felt truly tuned into no pun intended
posted by not_on_display at 11:43 PM on February 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's fiendish that the presenter starts at the front, where the recorders are, but then spends so much time round the back that you sort of forget that the recorders are there, leaving you totally unprepared for the final hellsound.
posted by BCMagee at 1:15 AM on February 18, 2023

I’d like to hear it do some bagpipe tunes.
posted by MtDewd at 3:48 AM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

This thing is really cool but far less powerful than a gaggle of gradeschoolers with recorders bc it's monophonic. It's no more hellish than one person playing a recorder, maybe wearing tap shoes for the clicks.

I don't know if he'll ever get a good general guitar audio -> polyphonic midi converter bc that's an intrinsically very hard problem.

Still an amazing achievement and fun to watch too!

If you want to really hear an awful organ, check out this one made with 44 furbies.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:32 AM on February 18, 2023 [9 favorites]

It’s my contention that the recorder is intentionally designed so as to be incapable of making any other sound other than hellspeak. This is satan’s plan, in order to filter out the kids who say “fuck this shit” and go on to rewarding lives, from the ones who are bound and determined to get a pleasant sound from the instrument. Those kids will eventually sell their souls and become…musicians!
posted by Thorzdad at 5:31 AM on February 18, 2023 [7 favorites]

I stopped playing recorder in college because my hands gave out. I tried to go back to it twenty years later, but I found that I couldn't play alto (my favorite size) any more, because the link in my head between printed notes and fingerings had severed. I could still play tenor, but somewhat painfully.

It's a lovely instrument. It's not as flexible as the transverse flute -- doesn't have much dynamic range, louder = sharper with recorders -- but I've always liked the sound better. With apologies to Lizzo, the transverse flute is too piercing for my taste; the recorder has a gentler, fuzzier sound.

I do wish people would stop doing the equivalent of judging the sound of a violin (also not my favorite, similar reasons) because of what three-year-old would-be prodigies make of it.
posted by humbug at 5:44 AM on February 18, 2023 [10 favorites]

I guess this likable chap isn't the only one who spends an ungodly amount of time on something totally pointless, but he really deserves a prize for the time/pointlessness ration of his project. Oh, throw intricacy, craftsmanship, and cost into the equation somewhere, too.
posted by kozad at 5:46 AM on February 18, 2023

The thing about this is, as janky as the final sound is... he conceived of a thing, and he made the thing. And the process was fascinating even if I didn't understand half the details. What was probably missing from the proverbial junior high shop classes (where we spent a whole semester making a plain rectangular cutting board) was that, if you did the work and learned how to use the tools, you could make anything that you wanted (and could afford the parts for), just as you could play anything you wanted on the recorder and not just warble out "The Caissons Keep Rollin' Along" with the rest of the class. As you may have guessed, I wasn't too fond of shop class as it was, but if they'd let me put together one of the consoles from the bridge of the starship Enterprise, I would have practically lived there. Just like, if you're teaching guitar, the dumb (if logical on the surface) way to teach is to teach people to pick out a melody note by note and then move on to chords, whereas the cool way that really draws people in is to teach them three easy chords so that they can play an actual song.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:14 AM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

There was a similar, really nicely executed midi Recorder pipe organ shown Maker Fair in Japan. Here's one of the build videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGCIKLGDJrw

It looks like Roland picked up on the project and sponsored them to add a second wind-chest? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLoMMzyzot8
posted by atomo at 8:00 AM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

The journey is the reward!!!
posted by njohnson23 at 9:14 AM on February 18, 2023

This is so funny. I played recorder in high school -- we had a full recorder quartet, all wood instruments, mostly playing SATB choir music, and placed in a few local music contests. Like many budding musicians, we didn't start off in elementary school with recorders even as nice as the ones he uses here; we had "tone flutes," which were unholy crosses between the cheapest possible plastic recorders and bottom-of-the-line ocarinas.

Would love to see this when he gets the polyphonic unit and then get it hooked up to a keyboard.
posted by lhauser at 10:34 AM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

"but the recorders? I friend of mine told me how to tune them. I haven't done that."
posted by philip-random at 11:46 AM on February 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm glad he made this terrible thing but I was really hoping for polyphony too; I think the recorder-amp equivalent of doing piano midi synthesis versions of e.g. Mariah Carey would be the proper level of insanity.
posted by cortex at 1:10 PM on February 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I don't know if he'll ever get a good general guitar audio -> polyphonic midi converter bc that's an intrinsically very hard problem.

It’s just some FFTs man, obvs this is pretty solved on the market for post production but I’m pretty sure real time chord to midi plugins already exist and are good enough for hellcorder standards
posted by thedaniel at 5:04 AM on February 19, 2023

I like his laugh but...I want a sequel where he really shreds.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:21 PM on February 20, 2023

The creator also made an amp with analog kazoo distortion.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:57 PM on February 21, 2023