The Cool/Rare/Weird Instrument Appreciation Thread
 

Post instruments that you think are interesting, preferably ones that are kind of uncommon. Expecting to see a lot of great stuff here. I'll get the ball rolling with

Umrhubhe

The mouth acts as a resonator where you can change the overtones of the bowing, making a whistling sound. It originated with hunters using their bows as instruments before it took off throughout various tribes.

The Fluid Piano

Great for ragas and other styles of music that uses microtones.

Viola Organistra

One of the more infamous unique instruments since it was invented by Leonardo Da Vinci, but wasn't built until long after his death. It uses the organistrum design (better known as a hurdy gurdy) and applies it to the piano, with the foot pedal controlling the "bows". I have wet dreams about the drone music that this one can make, I find the classical approach in this video to be a little sterile tbh.

http://cs622423.vk.me/u159052614/video/x_66d29004.jpg
contrabass balalaika
http://www.chrishind.com/wp-content/...itartech_1.jpg
Picasso Guitar?

Daxophone
http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/daxophone3.jpg


Paul Metzger's Modified Banjo
http://images2.citypages.com/imager/...zger_promo.jpg


Paolo Angeli's Sardinian Guitar
http://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/8...a89bd5d873.jpg


Bazantaar
http://sites.psu.edu/danielw/wp-cont...0/Bazantar.jpg


Bowhammer Cymbalom (the cymbalom isn't that unusual, but the bows are)
http://www.artistgeneral.com/hands.gif


Nyckelharpa
http://www.nyckelharpa.com/images/harpa_hh4.jpg


Domra
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...a-topview2.png


Glass harmonica
http://www.laopera.org/GlobalLAO/Blog/LdL3002blog.jpg


Duduk
http://armintour.com/wp-content/uplo.../02/duduk.jpeg
(Also some nice hang and sintir playing there)

This is some of the freakiest crap I've heard. I love it.

The semantron: a long piece of wood played as a melodic percussion instrument.

This brings back some memories. About 10 years ago I played bass for a Russian Gypsy band. They all wanted me to play bass balalaika (rather than the fender precision copy I was using). It sounded cool but was just too hard for me, I wasn't even a real bass player, just a guitarist pretending to be one. This is the first I've heard of a contrabass balalaika though.

One of my faves is the octabass - lowest notes are below the range of human hearing.

Pedal piano

Basically a two story piano with a full pedalboard.

http://p3.storage.canalblog.com/30/9...0/24573604.jpg

Here's Alkan's wonderful "Benedictus" played on one. Although I have to say that I slightly prefer this piece being played (contrary to the composer's intentions) on an organ.



Pencilina
http://www.pencilina.com/penc2.gif

"Yaybahar is an electric-free, totally acoustic instrument designed by Gorkem Sen. The vibrations from the strings are transmitted via the coiled springs to the frame drums. These vibrations are turned into sound by the membranes which echo back and forth on the coiled springs. This results in an unique listening experience with an hypnotic surround sound.

What you hear in this performance is captured in realtime without any additional effects and with no post audio processing."

^That thing is awesome. Hope some music that utilizes it well will be released soon.
Couldn't find anything besides four tracks on soundcloud.

There's this little bit. I'd like to see that played with someone like Stephen O'Malley, I could see that working out well.



And now, this

Some great vintage soviet industrial played on various weird-ass instruments.

This is a cool thread. The videos where they sit around and talk about their instruments instead of playing the damn things are aggravating as hell though.

Vibraband






Mouth xylophone (?)

My band acquired a TaishoGoto (Nagoya Harp) several years ago and have a few songs that feature it.

Very cool Miyazaki ST feel.

^So that's how that sound is made! Cool instrument. Never saw that one before.



Here's the Sabionari guitar, the only currently playable Stradivarius guitar, in action.

It's nice, isn't it? Thrift store find, believe it or not.

^Lucky bastards

Here's about as close to the daxophone as you can get (although it's still pretty far from it)


Some instruments are right outside our own homes

Ah, nice! Jon Rose and his fences. Didn't know he got the Kronos Quartet to play them.
Apparently Hans Reichel once organized a daxophone quartet to be played by KQ, but they found it to be quite difficult and the whole project more or less failed.
I really hope someone will eventually master the dax as well as Reichel himself.
There's a freshly released album by Junji Hirose and Kazuhisa Uchihashi called Saxophonedaxophone. Really hope it'll utilize the instrument in an appropriately cool way.

https://vimeo.com/41333672

Can't find too many videos of this, and one of them is ****ing sideways, but I can say that I want a Stamenphone.

^The video being all hypey and hipstery annoyed me, so I had to fast forward through it.
It's basically just a flashy synth with a mic and some effects for it?
Or is there something genuinely exciting about this thing?

Motion control, mainly. There is a serious lack of good videos on the thing, unfortunately.

It looks like it's capable of a whole lot of **** though, which makes it alright in my book.

Motion control's cool.
Yeah, I'd love to see a vid of someone actually playing it for 3 minutes, instead of some guys going "woah" for 15 and intersped with short snippets of "playing" where you have no idea what's happening and where the sounds come from. Hate that manipulative approach.

They should join with Survival Research Laboratories.

Another annoying ass commercial. Someone should do this with the synthesizer, and put some knobs on the top of the urinal.

The Harpejji:


There's some YT footage of Stevie Wonder playing one, but the sound quality wasn't as good.
Plus, Stevie doesn't seem to be as proficient as that ^ guy.

Ellen Fullman's long string instrument


Scott Nielsen's harmonics guitar (very cool guy too)


Glenn Branca's double-body harmonics guitar

Bob Ruthman's steel cello

Fantastic!

Also fantastic!

http://i.imgur.com/JJZNOxE.jpg?1

Found this in an antique store the other day for around 600 USD. The guy in the store had no idea what it was since he consigned it on that shelf, but I think it's some kind of kora or ngoni from Africa. The thing that makes this one really unique for me is that there's a skin pulled over the gourd body similarly to a banjo (which I've never seen on a harplike instrument such as this) and that there's some amazing carving on the neck especially. I did play it a little bit, but I can't say much because about half of the strings weren't strung in a playable way and I wasn't brave enough to tune an instrument like that to my liking.

EDIT: Just found this, too. Maybe we can get LiL to help us make a cello?

It was only a matter of time :laughing:. I really considered putting it in the OP.

Luray Caverns Stalacpipe Organ

Some douchebag explaining it


An actual performance (the natural sounds of the cave really make it imo)


I wonder if you were to create acoustic resonance with this instrument a la Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In a Room" (which is also a cool and weird instrument if you think about it), if it would cause the stalactites to shatter.

This one has been making the rounds. I wonder if it's as limited as it looks, because it doesn't look like the performer has too much control over what happens tbh.

2003 Bender Distortocaster...

http://i1058.photobucket.com/albums/...pslqpzahf6.jpg

http://i1058.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2j0h3tta.jpg

http://i1058.photobucket.com/albums/...psbxb0clxw.jpg

That's pretty dam cool.



Glad they got you sorted, btw.

The first time I saw a picture of one of those guitars, I thought it was just an unplayable piece of artwork. The guy who makes them also has a Tele, Les Paul, and acoustic style which also have the same sort of distorted look but are playable.