The 12 Best Jimi Hendrix Guitar Solos

From: http://www.complex.com/


12. The Jimi Hendrix Experience “1983... (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)” (1968)

Album: Electric Ladyland

Complex says: Yet another Hendrix elegy for the end of Western civilization when folk will mutate into eroticized water breathers. This was as close as he came to writing his own symphony, in a form he described as a “sound-painting.” Anyone else could only have made this in the studio, but as guitarist Mike Bloomfield once intimated, there's no sonic effect Hendrix got in the studio or with pedals that he wasn't capable of getting right before your eyes with just an overdriven amp, those humongus mitts he called hands, and his weapon of choice, any old upside down Fender Stratocaster that happened to be lounging about.

11. The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Still Raining, Stil Dreaming” (1968)

Album: Electric Ladyland

Complex says: Behold the mother of all wah-wah guitar solos. I don't know why more strippers don't use it to bare their souls before the world. That boompa-pop beat, dropped like it was hotter than July by Buddy Miles, was old before Gypsy Rose Lee was plying her trade. Hendrix performed with a jazz trio of sax, conga and keyboard that Jimi pulled in off the street, probably Times Square. They haven't been heard from much since, but were more than ready to get down and greasy with master blaster.



10. The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Are You Experienced?” (1967)

Album: Are You Experienced

Complex says: When The Beatles played voices backwards on records, folk thought they were trying to summon Satan. When Jimi does it you feel like you're watching reverse footage of a black hole swallowing a star gone supernova. The freakiest sound in his trickbag is made even freakier when you’re told that he figured the telemetry out while listening to a backwards take of the song. If you don't know how freaky that is, imagine driving blindfolded in reverse on a three-lane highway at night and only using your ears to navigate and evade oncoming traffic.

9. Jimi Hendrix “Villanova Junction” (1969)

Album: Live At Woodstock

Complex says: This is the last thing Hendrix played at Woodstock but it also seems like the last thing he ever played in life—though that night was still nearly a year away at the time. A master cellist named Rufus Cappadocia did a note-for-note every-speed-bump-intact rendition of this song at a Black Rock Coalition Town Hall Hendrix tribute years ago. After hearing that it was impossible not to recognize that Hendrix truly was as great a writer of symphonic themes as any of the 4 B’s—Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, and [James] Brown. Yeah we said it, we meant it, we even represent it.

8. Jimi Hendrix “Midnight” (1972)

Album: War Heroes

Complex says: A one-off instrumental that finds Henrix pile-driving riff after incendiary riff over a steam-driven industrial-strength mid-tempo bass groove that would send Black Sabbath back to their mommies. When it's over you have little doubt it was recorded at “the witching hour” in an utterly dank abyss of a studio where the the only visible light leaked from a blood-red Recording sign.

7. Jimi Hendrix “Star Spangled Banner” (1969)

Album: Live At Woodstock

Complex says: It was Jimi’s take on the national anthem that made Ornette Coleman realize Hendrix was up to something musically profound. Hey, even harmolodic jazz geniuses might need a late pass sometimes.

The Woodstock version is the one you're most likely to hear during any documentary about the ’60s even more than “Machine Gun”—if only because it speaks more directly to the war abroad and on the homefront. Only Marvin Gaye ever managed to make Francis Scott Key’s ditty such an apt vehicle for left-wing subversion, and Marvin did it at a basketball game wearing cyberpunk mirror shades.

6. The Jimi Hendrix Experience “All Along The Watchtower” (1968)

Album: Electric Ladyland

Complex says: Bob Dylan wrote it, but Jimi made it The FM Rock Radio Classic it is today. So much so that Dylan does Jimi's arrangement in concert as an homage to the man. Dylan also wondered why Jimi didn't do more of his songs because “They were all his anyway.”

The guitar solo here is restrained, sublime and aerodynamic and contains a rare example of Hendrix using a sllide. In total the solo and the delivery of the song are a work of exploded architecture with wings—ascending from the roof of the battlements right off the jump and somersaultsing through the air with the greatest of unease. The verbal poetics make you feel like Dylan is the real Nostradamus of 9/11. Like so much Hendrix, a perfect marriage of guitar and the captured vapours of Armageddon.

5. Jimi Hendrix “Machine Gun” (1970)

Album: Band of Gypsys

Complex says: My grandfather made a rare trip up into my attic temple of boom when I was about 17 and asked me "Gregory, who’s that playing?'' When I said Jimi he said, ''Huh, sounds like John Lee Hooker to me.” And he ain’t never lied. Jimi knew the deal: If you want to get deep and lament from the depths of human suffering, you need to be conjuring up some of those devil blues Hooker style.

This performance, a 12-minute phantasmagoria of man's inhumanity to man, is the war movie Coppola wished he'd made with Apocalypse Now—except Jimi's cinematography of slaughter on the battlefield is even more infernal and hellbent. You come out on the other side feeling like you have personally survived all manner of evisceration via modern warfare—mortars and grenades, full metal jackets, napalm infernos, My Lai massacres, even Hiroshima. This is also the cut that made Miles Davis realize Jimi was truly on some other shiznit.

4. The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Bold As Love” (1967)

Album: Axis: Bold As Love

Complex says: Like all the gods of creation, Hendrix knew the destruction of the earth could be likened to the most heartbreaking break-up known to man. The lyrics give you the seven stages of grief the way Apollo or Oshun might romanticize them. Musically we find another ornate example of Hendrix chordal technique and imagination, and further proof that you can’t divide his rhythm guitar from his solos—the flow between them is inimitable and ineluctable.

Still the solo that leaps out of the triads on “Axis” is Coltrane-worthy, sailing across the heavens in sheer transcendence of this bitter earth. When Hendrix finally achieves escape velocity after the flanged drum break and then goes soaring down a black hole, you'll wish you had something stronger than a warm Guiness to swoop your ass on up-up-up and away from here too.

3. Jimi Hendrix “Red House” (1972)

Album: Hendrix In The West

Complex says: Many amazingly graceful and gritty versions of Hendrix’s best known original blues appear on various albums and YouTube clips. There's something special about the way he moves forth and back between his spidery guitar obbligatoes and his sardonic vocal narrative on this one. The song offers a split-screen view of Jimi the wounded animal and Jimi the comedian.

He ends the thing after an acrobatic accapella wah-wah midsection that crescendos into one of the best fuck-you-and-the-ho-you-rode-in-on lines in all of blues literature: “I know if my baby don't love me no more, I know good and well that her sister will." The fact that his baby lives in a whorehouse makes it all the more poignant.

2. Jimi Hendrix “Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)” (1968)

Album: Loose Ends

Complex says: The full band vocal version of this on the EL album is breathtaking and the best R&B song for falsetto voices The Delfonics never cut. But this fragmentary acapella version offers a peek behind the curtain at how melodic and sublime Hendrix could be with just bare naked chords. His debts to Curtis Mayfield are presented with extreme transparency here, but Curtis never made a whammy bar weep so gently, like the breeze that brushes your cheeks after a hurricane blows itself out.

1. The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)” (1968)

Album: Electric Ladyland

Complex says: Inarguably the most well-covered song in the Hendrix catalogue. It’s the easiest to learn and impossible for any guitarist not to feel like a god when he or she rips it loud and proud in public. The lyrical boasts alone fill you in on what kind of god Hendrix envisioned himself as, and what kind of MC he would've been as well:. “Well I stand up next to a mountain / Chop it down with edge of my hand / I pick up all the pieces and make an island / Might even raise a little sand." Watch the throne indeed—Poseidon wuz here.

Trumpets? We don't need no stinkin' trumpets.

Uploaded by yurplekush on Aug 30, 2011

Guy plays his trumpet he made out of a coke bottle. Make money online here-http://www.prizelive.com/r/Siriusb

8 Insane Musical Instruments

From: http://www.popularmechanics.com/

AudioCubes
Belgian researcher Bert Schiettecatte and his company, Percussa, launched AudioCubes in 2007. These palm-size plastic cubes don't technically produce sound; they control it. They work with a system that's preloaded with beats and samples, and the human instrumentalists change the sound by moving the cubes around.

Percussa developed a sensor and communication system that allows the cubes to sense one another position via infrared. As they communicate wirelessly, the shift in position tells the software (the kind sound designers, DJs and composers use on home computers) to modulate sound.

Along with its own custom-built digital-signal-processing computer, each cube features built-in, full-color lighting that can flash in more than 4,000 LED colors, and can be synchronized using MIDI—the industry-standard protocol allowing electronic instruments to synch with one another—for a spectacular live show.


Eigenharp
Released by UK-based startup Eigenlabs in 2009 after eight years in development, the electronic Eigenharp uses MIDI to create audio oddities. It is built long and thin like a bassoon, but rather than finger holes and standard keys, it features an impressive display of joystick-like keys that are 10 times more sensitive to the touch than a typical keyboard and detect movement in five directions (downward pressure for volume, side to side for effects, and up and down to modulate pitch).

The digital Eigenharp needs to be plugged into a computer to produce sound, and uses Mac-based software—EigenD—as its engine. With this software, the player assigns a function to each of these keys. The Eigenharp can be set to sound like preloaded instruments, or create sine wave noises. The Eigenharp also includes a breath controller for converting actions like bite pressure and fingering into control signals, and one or two ribbon controller strips, which the player uses for tweaking pitch. Leonard Cohen incorporated an Eigenharp into his 2010 tour.

"The spirit of exploration is alive and well in both the creation and control of these unconventional instruments," says Carl Coletti, an experimental electronic musician and former session drummer for Ottmar Liebert, "however outlandish or primitive they may be."



Ondes Martenot
If you've seen Ghostbusters or Amélie, you've heard the haunting sounds of the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument invented by French musician and radio operator Maurice Martenot in 1928. Like the futuristic theremin, the ondes Martenot uses a vacuum tube oscillator—the amplification of repetitive electronic signals within vacuum tubes—to produce its wavering notes. With the Martenot, the player does this by moving a metal ring back and forth in front of the instrument's keyboard. You can control the sound with the left hand—which can flip a series of in-drawer switches to change timbre or intensity—while playing the piano-style keyboard with the right.




Theremin
Like the ondes Martenot, the theremin was invented in the 1920s and bears the name of its inventor—in this case, Leon Theremin. The instrument employs the heterodyne principle—when two radio waves overlap to produce a beat frequency—to generate its otherworldly sound. It's one of the only musical instruments played without any physical contact. When you stand in front of it, your body becomes an oscillator, acting like an electronic resonator or tuning fork. You move your hands to alter the frequency variations within its tubes, producing music like some sort of sci-fi conductor. The distance from the right hand to the theremin's right antenna determines pitch, while the distance from the left hand to the left antenna controls volume.

The theremin has provided the soundtrack to classic sci-fi films, including, famously, 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still. After fading from the public eye, the avant-garde instrument made a comeback in the 1990s, boosted in part by the well-received documentary Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, about the life of Leon Theremin.




Tenori-on
Popular with house and electronica musicians since its 2005 introduction, the Japanese-built Tenori-on is all about interaction. It's a hand-held screen with built-in speakers and 256 LED button switches arranged in a 16 x 16 grid. Users create notes by randomly pushing the switches, and then can interact with them intuitively by reacting to the light they produce.

There are six performance and sound/light modes—including the Atari-like bounce mode, where notes bounce from low to high on the screen—and 10 function buttons with options that include changing octaves and increasing loop speed. The Tenori-on even comes with a memory card slot for uploading voice recordings from your computer. (And now you can even play it on your iPad.)




Hydraulophone
University of Toronto professor Steven Mann invented the hydraulophone in the 1980s. It's a relative of the 16th-century water organ, but where that instrument used water simply as a power source, Mann's creation can use water (or another fluid) to create sound.

Here's how it works: A pump (operated by hand, wind, water power or electricity) blows water into the acoustic instrument's reeds or fipples—which are essentially constricted mouthpieces. The player then molds each note by putting their fingers into the hydraulophone's mouths and adjusting the coverage accordingly—similar to the way you'd play a flute. Some hydraulophones feature an underwater pickup that adds an amplifying effect to the flute-like tones. "The common denominator in all this art is that the human beings need to communicate its rapidly morphing and expanding mindset," Coletti says. "New sounds equal new musical landscapes to inhabit."



Glass Harmonica
Invented in the 18th century, the glass harmonica (also called the hydrocrystalophone, or bowl organ) is a friction idiophone—an instrument in which friction creates the music. In this case, the user moves their moistened finger along the rim of a series of varying-size glass bowls or goblets, producing a pitch tone that changes depending on glass size and the amount of water used.

The harmonica's eerie sound falls within 1000 to 4000 Hz, the range that is most sensitive for humans and often tricks the brain into uncertainty as to where it originates. This helped fuel rumors that the instrument drives both its players and listeners mad, which squelched its early popularity. Still, Mozart, Tom Waits and many other artists have incorporated glass harmonica parts in their music. And Ben Franklin invented his own version, called the armonica, with horizontally laid glasses that turn on a foot-operated spindle. One of the originals is on display at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute.




Phonoharp
The phonoharp is a record player with nylon or steel strings built in, allowing the user to "take bits of recorded history and draw them out" by plucking or bowing the strings, its inventor, Walter Kitundu, says. The produced vibrations then travel through the body of the instrument and are amplified by the stylus. Acting like a microphone, the record player picks up these vibrations and incorporates them into the record being played.

"I started out as a [hip-hop] DJ," Kitundu says, "but was jealous of drummers, keyboardists and other musicians who were able to simply pluck or tap a key and produce a sound." Part harp, part record player, part percussion—the result is an awesome blend of reimagined instruments and exotic sound.

Amazing Japanese Commercial: Android phone, Touch Wood CH-08C

youtube.com — To advertise its latest Android phone, the Touch Wood CH-08C, which has a wooden back, Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo built a giant xylophone in a forest to play a tune.

Uploaded by sakura4250 on Mar 10, 2011

ドコモのサイトでステキな映像発見。

TOUCHWOOD SH-08C
http://answer.nttdocomo.co.jp/touchwood/

Star Trek Theme played on a Musical Saw

Uploaded by StreetPerformersTV

The Saw Lady, musician/street performer Natalia Paruz, plays the original Star Trek theme song on the musical saw.

Please tweet about the video if you enjoyed it! http://clicktotweet.com/k75cc Thank you!

Enjoyed the performance? Click over to the Saw Lady's site to leave a tip that will fund her next musical saw album. http://www.subwaymusicblog.com/ http://sawlady.com/

New video almost every week. Thank you for stopping by.

http://streetperformers.tumblr.com/
http://twitter.com/strtperformers
http://on.fb.me/ehKv5V

Created by Michael Tapp.
http://www.michaeltapp.com

Play This Holographic "Instrument" Using Your Mobile Phone

Music Boxel from aircord on Vimeo.

by Kevin Holmes

from: http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/

Using smartphones to interact with installations at exhibitions is something we’ll no doubt be seeing a lot more of. Artists Sander Veenhof and Mark Skwarek already used them to launch a guerrilla AR attack on MoMA in their DIY Augmented Reality Art Invasion last October. Not quite as audacious but still thrilling is this collaborative installation, Music Boxel, from Japanese interactive designers Aircord and Uniba.

It’s a multi-user interactive music game which allows people to interact with it using their smartphones. By holding their phone up to a QR code they download the software and can then point it at the 3D hologram and add or remove voxels, changing the graphical interplay of the display and the pixellated sounds it makes.
Aircord have been experimenting with 3D holograms and mobile devices for a while now. Check out the video below, which shows a mobile phone used for 360 degree 3D projection.



N-3D "Mobile Ver." from aircord on Vimeo.

AirTap - Guy Plays Guitar Like A Piano

In this video, Erik Mongrain shows off his AirTap guitar playing technique, which is quite similiar to hitting piano keys.



another street performer

Guitar Or Piano? - Watch the best video clips here

Ten Weird Instruments that Changed Music

Check out the top 10 weirdest instruments in action. —

Forget your '80s era synthesizer. If you're looking for a unique sound, the kind that make David Bowie look like a novice, search no more! Some of the strangest, most distinct sounds in music come from these 10 weirdos, all for your listening enjoyment.

#1 - The Theremin

You don’t even have to TOUCH this one to play it. Just plug in this seminal electronic instrument, and move your hands around nearby. Invented by Leon Theremin in 1920, it’s like an early, musical motion detector. Its sound is whiny, but very “futuristic.” Eerie, too, when played well. The movie soundtrack to the new The Day the Earth Stood Still and Sting’s song “Moon Over Bourbon Street” use the theremin effectively.

Check out the “Legend of Zelda” theme song played on a theremin below!

Click here to read the rest of the article: http://shopgala.com/couponblog/ten-weird-instruments-changed-music

Bass + Piano = The Bassoforte Machine [Video]

DSSessionVideos | June 17, 2010 | 2:34

Few days ago I started thinking about how I could re-purpose the keyboard of the dismantled piano I keep in the garden, so I thought to build a new instrument by combining it with some other parts I had laying around.
I ended up with this mechanical hybrid thing I thought to call "Bassoforte" (bass + pianoforte).

The neck is from a broken electric bass, as a bridge I used a cabinet handle, the pickups are from a guitar, and the part at the top where the strings are attached is a chimney cap, which works as resonator as well as percussive sound.

The track I created is a tribute to my Dad who is a big fan of Western comic books and "spaghetti western" films, and because of him I am too.

I hope you'll like it!

The track is available also at my Bandcamp page: http://diegostocco.bandcamp.com/track...

Here you can see a gallery with pictures and more detailed descriptions: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Bassof...

The Goat Bagpipes with huge horns & goat head pajdusko oro HD! gaida gajda гајда гайд

2 Macedonian goat-head gaidi made by Risto Todoroski, sirulsko@gmail.com, in Sydney.

1. Song on a billy goat(!) gaida, hardwood sleeved in water-buffalo horn. 2. Paidushko oro (folk dance).

Dedo Risto playing a mad high-pitch gaida with drums:
http://www.youtube.com/vasili33

Risto also makes tapans - Balkan drums - from goatskin, and wooden kavals or flutes for sale.

(A note on animal cruelty. The goats are humanely slaughtered for meat by their owners in familiar surroundings, lured with a bucket of treats. No live transportation. No abattoirs!)

Unusual Musical Instruments

From: http://www.darkroastedblend.com/

You mean this device plays music, too?

This article will cover a few bizarre musical instruments, an oddities used by musicians to convey that special feeling or a melody. Some of the uniquely crafted items may cost a fortune, others are very simple and can be easily assembled from parts found in your kitchen. All of them have loads of character, and that special sound that no other instrument can make.

"The madness" started in 1619 with the "Temple of Music" acoustic experiments:


(image credit: Bibli Odyssey)

I am going to devote a special post to vintage music machines, as they are endlessly fascinating to my inner "music geek". Fast-forward to the modern times:


Thumb Pianos, or Kalimbas

Robert Patterson Collier makes custom and very aesthetically pleasing miniature instruments. There are many varieties on display in his Flickr set and, with his permission, here are a few that we particularly like:

Kalimba made from lamp parts and an ashtray:



The Ultimate Portable Thumb Piano? "A Camera Piano" -
Kalimba fitted inside a bellows camera case:



"The thumb piano, known as a kalimba or mbira and by many other names, is a lamellaphone that uses plucked prongs called tongues, keys or tines to generate acoustic vibrations."

Another Collier's set shows easy-to-make "Screw Lamellaphone" in detail and this Instructables article describes the DIY process:



Zither Kalimba:


Robert writes: "The sound produced is idiosyncratic to each instrument, often colored by creaks, buzzing, humming, croaking, twittering, hyper-resonance and other strange artifacts... While many of the instruments are wired with a piezo transducer and some even have their own built-in amplifier or digital recorder, the manner in which the sound is captured and the signal processed offers great potential for exploration."

On his Flickr set page are many links to the videos, marrying the lamellaphone's "ambient sounds" with minimalist abstract imagery. Some are very relaxing, check them out.


On the other end of piano scale

High Fashion... Fluid Forms... Consider this futuristic "Pegasus" piano made by the German firm Schimmel and designed by legendary Luigi Colani himself:



...or a classic upright piano nicely complementing your Porsche (or your SonicAir toothbrush)



We also like this transparent concert piano idea:



Another model "Otmar Alt" that even your kid would love:



Here is a new development: scientist say that it's best to learn piano while playing underwater ;)



or if you set it on fire, you might get a really scorching solo out of it:


(image credit: Japan Today)

Jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita plays a burning piano on the beach in Shiga, Japan. Yamashita did the same thing once before in 1973; he would do this every day, given an endless piano supply.


The Ondes Martenot - very strange French keyboard with a plaintive spacey sound

Definitely better sounding than most analog synthesizers, this highly refined instrument has been invented in 1928 by a French radio enthusiast Maurice Martenot. The pure "space bliss" sounds are made by pressing the sensitive button with your left hand (modulating the waves) and stretching the special string assembly with your right hand.


(image credit: Keyboardmuseum)

Here is a demonstration of the technique:



Watch Radiohead perform on the Ondes Martenot the techno despair sounds that this instrument was plainly designed to produce. "The Martenot Waves" keyboard was also used in the "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Mad Max" soundtracks.


Guitar Solos with Bite

Bill Stahl Photography site has a groovy picture of this bass guitar: (unfortunately there is little information on where to order this thing)



From this monumental compendium of curious instruments (thanks to Barry Wood) come a few guitars that may cause some head-scratching:

Split-Level Doubleneck from China (quite ergonomic, we might add)-



Spanish coolness -



Hindu Doubleneck (would come handy to have goddess-like four hands to play it, they say) -



Some gorgeous acoustic guitars:
Delmundo -



Zemaitis engraved guitar:





Weirdomatic has collected more examples of bizarre bass guitars. Here is a couple of our favorites:

This one is made from "Ouija" board, apparently for communicating with the "Grateful Dead":



Assault Bass, made by The Armando Custom Case company:
(order it from here - but just don't take it thru the airport security checkpoint!)




For a True Audio Gourmet: Drums Made From Cheese!

If you consider yourself a sophisticated partaker of sublime sounds... sort of like a gentleman shown here:


(original unknown)

then you will appreciate the yummy sounds produced by a set of drums MADE FROM CHEESE.


(image credit: Quixoticals.com)

Seen at Quixoticals.com, they were created by Dutch artist Walter Willems for the Mocca Contemporary Art exhibition. The cheese must be really aged to make a thumping sound, plus the whole thing may be used to feed the starving artist for a week, if paid gigs would dry up. See it in action in this video.


Finally a truly EPIC instrument

Bored of the tinny sounds your little piano or guitar makes? In the mood for something as big and mysterious as the ocean itself? Come to Zadar, Croatia, and listen to "The Sea Organ". Giant 70 meters long instrument has 35 pipes and resonating underwater cavity - they interact with tides and wind to produce the deep, entirely natural sounds.



Designed by award-winning architect Nikola Basic and built in 2005, this project is not only extremely popular with tourist, but also a welcome redeeming feature for what was once an ugly concrete-enclosed waterfront.



Such nature-affected instruments are often called "aerophones", and at any given moment listeners can hear at least five pipes played in harmony by the waves and wind movements. This page has a sample of "sea Organ" sounds.

The air holes "breathe in" the wind along the shore, and the pipes hidden deep underwater make lower sounds.




(image credit: OddMusic)

Aeolian Wind Harp is the only other instrument comparable in its aural majesty to the "Sea Organ" - a grand Aeolian harp is very rare instrument, first introduced ages ago in Ancient Greece. A perfect choice for the "Myst/ Riven" game sound effects.



I leave you with a link that just might totally swallow you up. This page is the best compilation of bizarre instruments to my knowledge, with a sound sample from each of them! Prepare to spend a while there.

Hope you enjoyed this little tour of instruments we found since our last publication on this theme. Hats off to these musicians who master the art of playing such oddities. It takes a certain panache and loads of determination to learn to play an unusual instrument. As for me, I only play normal-looking keyboards. "Sometimes I also play the fool", like John Lennon used to say.

What is This Instrument in a New Trent Reznor Song?

What is This Instrument in a New Trent Reznor Song?

Posted by Sean_Yeaton

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It’s the Dewanatron Swarmatron, of course!

So, Trent Reznor is back with his first musical alms since Nine Inch Nails. The project, named after British industrial noise band, How to Destroy Angels, is a collaboration with his wife, former West Indian Girl frontwoman Mariqueen Maandig.

What we’ve heard so far is really cool, and I for one am really excited about the Dewanatron Swarmatron getting some love in this video. The mysterious synth – though perhaps not as mysterious as this one – was created to produce eight tones tuned approximately to one note, each tone slightly different in pitch to produce a complex and natural choral effect.

Best of all, it’s played with a single taffy-like controller that moves the pitch center up or down.

The Swarmatron was developed by Sculptors, electronic musicians, inventors and cousins, Brian and Leon Dewan. The Dewan’s have a whole fleet of homespun electronic instruments that you should definitely check out, here

You can buy it here: http://bigcitymusic.com/product.asp?cat=new&pid=1000896

Concert pianist plays iPad onstage

by Chris Matyszczyk

One of the world's foremost concert pianists has taken the iPad to a place it has surely never been. Yes, away from the thighs, where the device so often rests.

A few days ago, wandering onto the stage to perform his first encore at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, China's Lang Lang, one of the world's most dazzling piano players, proved the product's astounding versatility. The audience was clearly surprised he emerged clutching an iPad. They could be sure he wasn't going to use it to take a shot of the audience. But perhaps he needed to send an e-mail. Concert pianists are busy people.

Yet, no. For Lang Lang is a man who keeps time while being ahead of it. No sooner had the audience paused for a last cough than he broke into Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" with the help of the Magic Piano iPad app from Smule.
 
He held his iPad aloft. He placed it on the piano, while his left hand stroked his Steinway (yes, he's a Steinway man) and his right tickled his iPad. He even let a bemused conductor, who cursorily resembled a relative of Ben Kingsley and Dr. Evil, share in the experience.

As you can see from the video, Lang Lang's thighs were only used to sway a little to the music.

8 Strange and Different Musical Instruments

by Miss Cellania

from http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/52304

Middle school music classes will offer you a trumpet, flute, clarinet, drums, and a few other everyday musical instruments. Learn to play one of them and one day you may be asked to play a very different instrument that you might even fall in love with. Here are eight out of the ordinary musical instruments.

1. Lituus

The medieval lituus was a specified instrument in Bach’s cantata O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht. But no modern musician had ever played, or even seen a lituus! The Swiss conservatory Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB) asked the University of Edinburgh to recreate the lituus (also known as Bach’s horn) for them. They used computer modeling to design the instrument from information about what it shouldsound like, what it might have looked like, and the available materials and technology in Bach’s time. Two identical instruments were produced, and were played in the Bach cantata in 2009. Listen to the lituus in a video here. Get a closer look at the construction of the lituus as well.

2. Gajda

A Macedonian gajda is a bagpipe made from a goat or a sheep. The animal skin is the wind bag, and occasionally you’ll see one with hooves or even a head still attached. Variations of this instrument are found in Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. Hear a strangely-constructed gajda in these videos.

3. Tromboon

The tromboon is an instrument that combines the reed and mouthpiece of a bassoon and the body of trombone. The word has become a slang term meaning a mashup that combines the worst qualities of two disparate things. The term was coined by musician Peter Schickele, and is a required instrument in some works of the fictional P. D. Q. Bach. Hear the sound of a tromboon in this video. See othertrombone variations as well.

4. Shakulute

A shakulute is a hybrid of a shakuhachi, or Japanese bamboo flute, and a western silver flute. The shakuhachi is blown into from the end. To make a shakulute, you attach a special head joint to your flute so it can also be blown from the end. This hybrid instrument was developed by shakuhachi maker Monty Levenson. Listen to the shakalute here.

5. Serpent

The serpent is also called a contrabass anaconda. It is an ancestor of the modern tuba and was introduced in the year 1590. The sound is made with the mouth like a trumpet or tuba, but the notes are made by covering finger holes like a flute. See more pictures of many people who play the serpent. Hear the serpent in this video.

6. Subcontrabass Flute

Flutes are usually thought of as high-pitched instruments, but there are many types of flute that are biggerand pitched lower. The subcontrabass flute plays a fourth below the contrabass flute. The pipe is 15 feet long, but doubled, so the instrument can fit into a eight-foot box. A rare variation is the The Kotato double contrabass flute, which has 18 feet of pipe. There are only four of these existing. Shown is the contraflutes of the Metropolitan Flute Orchestra in Kylemore Abbey, with the subcontrabass flutes in back. Hear what the subcontrabass flute sounds like in this video.

7. Igil

The igil is a two-stringed traditional instrument from the Tuva region of Siberia, just north of Mongolia. A very few old igils are made from a horse’s skull, which reflects the legend that the igil was first created on instructions from a horse that appeared in a dream. The igil is sometimes referred to as a horse head fiddle. Hear the igil accompanying a performance of Tuvan throat singing in this video.

8. Otamatone

The otamatone is a new electronic instrument that resembles a musical note with a cartoon face. It was invented by Novmichi Tosa of Maywa Denki, an art collaboration of the Tosa family that specializes in nonsense machines. The otamatone is now available to the public. Hear this cute little instrument in this video.

Bonus: Hosaphone

The hosaphone is an instrument invented in order to parody fans and websites dedicated to other odd instruments. It appears to be a length of tubing with a funnel on the end. Hear the hosaphone here.