The view from the (organ) bench

One zen Roy or Davy’s settee

Stood alone leak at a shed

Wear another later bay be

Inner major forest bed

Mare he was some other mile

Gee sirs cry stir litter chai

And a rise alas chassis him

Who whisk gotten law doff ore

Handy shell to wash a stay bull

And degrade all rozzers door

Andy leads is chill dremmon

Tudor play swear he a scone

Stuff like this massively appeals to my rampant muso-ness

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...

On arrangement

I have, as of today, finished an arrangement of The First Nowell that I've been commissioned to write for a concert in December. It's a rather unusual scoring; two flutes, two oboes, three trumpets, timps, harp, organ and strings (and chorus) - basically the baroque orchestra that will play in the Bach Magnificat earlier on. The inclusion of the harp, and indeed the arrangement, is explained by Finzi's In Terra Pax being in the concert, a piece that quotes the carol, albeit tentatively. Admittedly a slightly odd ensemble to write for, one saving grace is that the absence of the bottom half of the the wind section, horns and heavy brass is made up for by the large modern organ in the church where the arrangement will be performed. This instrument is more than capable of filling in the weight these instruments would otherwise provide (and playing quietly when needed), and in any case such a small string section would be overwhelmed by too much sound from the back of the stage.

As with arranging folk songs, the obvious problem of having a strophic melody-and-accompaniment carol is that it really only has the words to provide any ready-made variance. The arranger must pull out every trick available to keep the tune sounding as fresh as possible, the difficulty of which increases exponentially with the number of verses. Often the text is the most useful starting point to creating contrast, as that the arranger can highlight the significance of certain lyrics or verses in the ancient art known as word-painting. Thus in the second verse of Nowell, which describes the star moving towards a certain stable in central Palestine, the loud full-ensemble texture of the first verse is replaced by the chorus in harmony, solo violin, solo flutes, and harp, with the strings entering softly at the chorus. Likewise, the third verse uses the trumpets, oboes and a reedy registration on the organ to suggest the exotic origins of the wise men (the carol perpetuates the perennial idea that there were three of them, despite there being no confirmation of the number in any of the Gospels) as well as little turns and arabesques which I hope, remain the sensible side of cliche.

However, where the arranger can really inject their individual stamp is in the last verse. This is usually, in the church music tradition, sung with the voices in unison, allowing the organist, or whatever other accompaniment is playing, to provide an 'alternative' harmonisation for the verse. As the choir and congregation are all singing the tune (one hopes at roughly the same key/place/words) there is no obligation to follow the bass line or the rest of the four-part harmony that will be found written out in the hymn book and thus pretty much 'anything goes' in the harmony. Obviously the aim is usually to make the thing sound spectacular (and wake the neighbours/shatter windows/cause seismograph needles to jump with the force of the sound) whilst not being so 'way out' that the congregation cease to follow the tune and disaster ensues. In the case in hand, I have instructed the organist to draw as many stops as grabbable before jumping simultaneously on two pedals both tuned to the note D natural, making a noise like Brian Blessed blowing through a ship's hooter; and then play as series of mildly dissonant ascending chords aided by the strings playing tremolo (moving the bow back and forth so fast it's a blur). At the second stanza the harmony starts taking excursions into all sorts of exotic key areas, with harp and strings playing arpeggios - there's little point making them compete for the melody in their lower register with all the other noise going on. Finally, the last chorus appears in more conventional harmony (high descant doubled by flutes, great upward scales in the strings), big slow down; then organ, drums and trumpets into overdrive for a high-volume frenzy of D major in the coda. Bang-crash-wallop. Bosh. Mahler never even came close.

The above description is probably very confusing and peppered with muso jargon. A simpler explanation for the layman is that it will sound good and be very loud. Both of which are commendable aims in composition.

Why the choir organ is hardcore

Has anyone noticed that the height at which musicians hold their guitars has a direct correlation to the level of hardcore-ness in the music?

Think about it for moment. At the one end of the scale - the scale being both vertical and musical - (and not the sort you get in exams, idiot!) we have country and western/folk/hillbilly guitarists, who either place said fretted instrument on their knee via a footstool, or at least have it pretty close to their chin whilst crooning about farming and how they'd rather you didn't mention Taylor Swift. Classical guitarists tend to follow the same formula in Bach and Brouwer.

Next we have the average middle-of-the-road pop guitarist. As these somewhat shy and secretive creatures tend to be session musicians in a backing band, they prefer the rear of the stage where it's darker. Thus, the guitar is held in an uncontroversial middle axis position.

Finally, the bottom end of the chart, in more ways than one, is occupied by the rock guitarist. Despite being rebellious and non-conformist, rock music has many rules and conventions, one of which is that any fretted instrument must be held as low as possible. Presumably this enables the rock musician greater slouching ability and thus to be more 'badass'.

How does this translate to other instruments, namely acoustic non-fretted ones? Obviously many musicians have no choice as to what height they hold their instruments. If you're a clarinetist there's not really a great deal of quibble on whether part of the instrument goes in your mouth or not. (In fact by the logic as explained above, observing a schalltrichter auf! marking in Mahler or Strauss actually makes you less hardcore because the instrument is held higher...right? It's the exception that proves the rule). String players theoretically could hold their violin or viola lower down on their chest, baroque-style, whilst cellists can just not use the spike. But it's all still a bit arbitrary as the argument goes.

However, after some thought, I realised there is one non-guitar instrument on which it is quite possible to play genuinely low to the floor and thus be genuinely hardcore on. And I'll bet you can't guess what it is in the next three minutes.

Time's up - it's the pipe organ.

Let me explain, for the benefit of non-organists. Organs, unless they're very small and weedy, have at least two keyboards ('manuals') and often three or more. These are, for obvious reason stacked on on top of each other in a gently raked fashion to enable the player to switch effortlessly (less so in my case) between them. All these keyboards have names which we don't really need to discuss, suffice to say that the lowest one is known as the Choir Organ because it's got quieter stops for accompanying the choir. (Since my church no longer has a choir, this function is somewhat moot). And it's really, genuinely low down, practically on the organist's lap, which puts it in pretty much the same vertical territory as the hardcore metal guitarist's instrument. Move over, Matt Bellamy.