Inventing new non digital electric-acoustic instruments

dumbangel · Post by **dumbangel** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 1:16 pm

When was the last great acoustic or electric-acoustic instrument invented?

I'm not speaking of all the improvements or developments of existing concepts like analog synths turned digital, but radically new instruments. I can't think of anything, except minor inventions like that "one shot" shaker by LP.

It seems all energy has been focused on digital or synthetic sounds for decades. "Real" instruments still rule i think.

KennyLusk · Post by **KennyLusk** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 1:52 pm

Not sure if it's new or not but have you ever seen or heard an Ocean Harp?

http://larkinthemorning.com/product.asp ... ceanharp_E_

brian beattie · Post by **brian beattie** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 3:05 pm

I've heard and recorded one of those oceanharp things. Crazy and ghostly, kind of like giant metal doors creaking open in a huge warehouse. Badass. Instant otherworldly soundtrack ambience.
The guy who I know who owns and plays this thing is the same guy who plays the chair, gerald pisk. It's.... uhhh.... a wooden chair, with strings and coffee cans and springs screwed into it, between the legs and under the seat. He sits in it and plucks the strings and gets tremelo by shaking his butt. It's chair-riffic.
brian

ubertar · Post by **ubertar** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 3:10 pm

i make some stuff.

www.ubertar.com/instruments

pandatone · Post by **pandatone** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 8:04 pm

i thought i heard once that the steel drums are the most modern none electronic instrument invented. but i can't remeber where i heard this.

panda

Rigsby · Post by **Rigsby** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 12:40 am

pandatone wrote:i thought i heard once that the steel drums are the most modern none electronic instrument invented. but i can't remeber where i heard this.

panda

Steel drums are pretty recent, so is the sax in the modern form.

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 7:53 am

Ubertar's stuff is awesome.
Check out Sleepytime gorilla museum. they have a TON of instruments they made, and they also play some very obscure "manufactured" instruments.

I collect oscure "numbered" instruments, like the marxophone, tremeloa, hawaiian art violin, ukelin....

Search any of those names and you get some interesting results via google.

I have been looking for a glass harmonica....

Even stuff like the optigan (whicch I have) interests me because the means by which a sound is made is just so mutant....

joelpatterson · Post by **joelpatterson** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 8:00 am

A guy down the road does "jungle ambience" installations at museums, and one time I was checking out his set-up, and I drew a violin bow across the spokes of a bicycle wheel and there arose a frightful cacophony of bird shrieks and weird, bouncy echoes. I guess this is just a new conglomeration of old "instruments," but it was pretty strange, I tell you.

ubertar · Post by **ubertar** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 8:32 pm

There used to be a great magazine called "experimental musical instruments". The editor/publisher got worn out with the effort after a while, but it was really good while it lasted. There are tons of interesting things going on... most are just really obscure.

s00p3rm4n · Post by **s00p3rm4n** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 2:10 am

I have a tremeloa.

What a bizarre, mostly useless instrument. It will be nice to mic up the two little chambers, though.

And I want an optigan so badly. They're ridiculously fun.

Marc Alan Goodman · Post by **Marc Alan Goodman** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 9:12 am

Damnit Joel, you already know all about everything I think is awesome! I've been looking for a Glass Harmonica (Armonica? Does it matter?) for about 2 years. I haven't even seen one used. One company still makes them new, but I emailed them for a price quote and they never wrote me back. Go figure...

It's certainly more than I can afford anyway, but the history of that instrument intrigues the hell out of me. They say it drives people mad.

-marc

Stephen B. · Post by **Stephen B.** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 1:37 pm

Harry Partch made a lot of new instruments for his composiions. This is one of my favorites:
http://www.harrypartch.com/ccbphoto.htm

;ivlunsdystf · Post by **;ivlunsdystf** » Fri Dec 09, 2005 8:56 am

I have read that claim about the steel drum in a high school music appreciation textbook. I think the establishment keeps that fact around for use in multiple-choice test questions.

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Fri Dec 09, 2005 9:01 am

Check out that "gravikords, whirlies..." CD. Amazing.

I recorded a guy on daxaphone. Amazing. That thing freaks me out. Like a camera tripod with a shingle clamped to it with a contact mic... bowed. The thingy you use to change the pitch looks like the bottom of a platform shoe with frets on it. The waterphone is amazing as well. Like a ford falcon hubcap mated with a bundt cake pan, the drank three simps of water and put on a crown...

really. Check one out!

I absolutely LOVE that sort of thing. I am in a band called the book of knots that uses stuff like this all the time, along side of really heavy guitar rock stuff.. cant really decribe it. The violin player in the band also plays in tin hat trio and sleepytime gorilla museum, and they really collect all this type of stuff. She played a bunch of that stuff on tom waits record, "alice" as well.
When we did a collaboration with tom, he just played guitar and clapped and sang.... We played all the weird stuff..

joelpatterson · Post by **joelpatterson** » Fri Dec 09, 2005 9:05 am

joel hamilton wrote: Like a ford falcon hubcap....

How did you know we had a Ford Falcon? It was beige...beige was big in those days. I remember lolling in the backseat as my mother drove, all splayed out, this was before seatbelts or safety in general, I think... listening to the rattle of the hubcap. Probably loose lug nuts...

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Inventing new non digital electric-acoustic instruments

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