Along with a love of epic transcriptions for unlikely instruments, I've always loved the concept of creating music from things that were not even remotely conceived for such a purpose. Even by secondary school I had picked up that the famous Twentieth Century Fox drum roll could be performed on a radiator using one's knuckles (or a ruler after sufficient repetitions to make them start to hurt). Bottle orchestras the size of ancient civilisations have risen and fallen upon kitchen worktops and tables in my various residences. Since then, I've always been slightly over-excited by the discovery of imaginatively conceived musical instruments.
Leopold Mozart got the right idea by including parts for toys in his (surprisingly titled) Toy Symphony, updated using modern toys by Cremerata Baltica some years back. In this post, I would like to take a quick tour through some of the coolest feats of luthier-uber-geekery ever conceived. Note that to qualify for this lauded status, the creations have to ideally be original instruments, or those which use the unique properties of their source material. Any idiot can strap some piano wire to an ironing board and call it a guitar - what we're talking about is truly inspired stuff like this:
Pyrophone: Yes, it really is an instrument played using fire! And it uses the other coolest substance in existence, liquid nitrogen, too! It may not come as a surprise that it's creator, Nathan Stodola, is a student (who apparently devised the organ for a mechanical engineering project). He ponders that 'more visible flames would be a nice addition'. We agree...
LEGO harpsichord: Ok, it's based on a 'real' instrument, but uses such an idiosyncratic source material and is such an audacious feat (not to mention overcoming a series of unprecedented engineering challenges) that we couldn't pass it by. Its creator, Henry Lim, 'had hoped to reproduce a piano, but ditched the idea due to the enormous tension involved (40,000 lbs.) - there's a reason why pianos have steel frames.' The instrument is, with the exception of the strings, entirely constructed from approximately 100,000 LEGO bricks. I would so have tried to do this when I was 10.
Diskette organ: What do you do with spare parts from an obsolete technology? A number of tech-minded folks have realised the untapped musical potential of whining floppy disk drives (remember those?) and uploaded the musically diverse results to YouTube. However, one George Whiteside has not only scored above-average marks for sequencing possibly-by-Bach's Toccata (and one day the Fugue too, he assures us) but has also produced a page on his website telling us how he did it, so we at ITM feel he deserves to be credited with this invention.
Scanner: In a similar vein to the above, the various tones of a flatbed scanner can also be made to perform Beethoven, Vivaldi and John Williams. 'Truly, a scanner darkly' commented one poker-faced YouTuber about the latter.
Vacuum cleaners: These have heritage. Malcolm Arnold's A Grand, Grand Overture, composed for the 1957 Hoffnung Music Festival and dedicated to President Herbert Hoover, also featured its cousin the floor polisher (in E flat). Compositions and installations for vacuum cleaner ensemble crop up from time to time, as described on this page.
Cars: Arguably a bit of a cheat, sampling different sounds and stitching them together, but we'll allow it because it was on Top Gear some years ago. It involved recording the engine noises of various motors and sequencing them into an almost-recognisable rendition of their theme tune, the Allman Brothers' 'Jessica'. Rumours that this may also have since been attempted using a dictaphone and a red Vauxhall Corsa are unfounded.
Hosepipe: The author has been (un)fortunate enough to witness at first hand a rendition of Handel's Water Music (or possibly Watering Music) utilising the amusing combination of four foot of garden hose and a horn mouthpiece x a horn quartet. The instrument too featured in the Hoffnung concert mentioned above, with Dennis Brain even managing a subtle lip trill at the end of Leopold Mozart's Alpenhorn Concerto.
Vegetables: Not just a collection of instruments, but an entire band. We reckon they're probably the only orchestra with a full-time cook on their books. Das erste Wiener Gemüseorchester have recently released their latest album, Onionoise, which features '...inspiration from various sources: Minimal Techno, Ambient, Noise, Pop, New and Electro-Acoustic Music.' The author confesses to having once attempted to construct his own Carrot Horn whilst waiting for a meal to cook. One important selling point of their gigs is that at the end of every concert, the audience is served suspiciously fresh soup. Even the Sex Pistols didn't get as far as actually eating their instruments...
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