• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

Cool old musical instruments

TBRS1

TBRS1

Transparent turnip
V.I.P Member
I have a passion for ancient, obscure, peculiar musical instruments.

My ESPECIAL passion is for musicians using these instruments to create new, awesomely creative music.

Here's an instrument you don't hear too often. This is Patty Gurdy playing (of course!) the hurdy-gurdy:


Anybody else have anything fun to share?
 
The band Wardruna use several traditional and historic norse instrument, like goat horn, tagelharpe, deer-hide frame drums, kraviklyra, mouth harpe and lur. And they do it well, I like it.


 
Forest Cat said:
The band Wardruna use several traditional and historic norse instrument, like goat horn, tagelharpe, deer-hide frame drums, kraviklyra, mouth harpe and lur. And they do it well, I like it.


Click to expand...
That's music you can feel so strongly that you can almost chew it.

A lot of the music I end up listening to is heavily influenced by Celticy/Norsey sensibilities. I love that!
 
Something from the land of Swedes, they call it a "nyckelharpa". Translated to English it's a key harpe. Some call it keyed fiddle. The song is called "Old Woman".


 
Last edited:
Forest Cat said:
Something from the land of Swedes, they call it a "nyckelharpa". Translated to English it's a key harpe. Some call it keyed fiddle. The song is called "Old Woman".


Click to expand...
It's amazing how technically and mechanically sophisticated some of these instruments, like the nyckelharpa (and hurdy-gurdy) were.

There were mechanical geniuses in the past, and it seems like they enjoyed designing musical instruments. Now-a-days they seem to prefer developing plumbing systems for strip malls :) .
 
A weird musical instrument is the theremin, like the theme music for the BBC TV show Midsomer Murders. It sounds unearthly but I really like it.
 
https://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/05/the_old_pump_or.html

Here you go. Obscure instrument, plus obscure performance from the 1950s on vinyl of Naomi Barfield playing one of these 19th century relics (albeit in need of a rebuild.)

Reed organs are special, even in their decay. I have some here in my apartment, two of which work nicely enough. They're probably my guilty-pleasure keyed instrument.
 
The the theramin in is interesting. I bet one could be incorporated into a good stage show, with a dancer being the player.

Along the same lines, there are laser harps that have lasers instead of strings. They are played by breaking the beam with your finger, as if you were tripping security alarms. They can be made huge, and are used in performance art.

Laser harp - Wikipedia
 
Warr Guitar


I always thought the Warr guitar was cool. Colin from Dysrhythmia and Behold the Arctopus (two jazz-fusion / metal bands) plays it, and both projects have a wonderful timbral range because of it. I guess it's essentially a bass and a guitar smashed together, but since it's meant to be tapped mostly, it's cool for progressive and jazzier genres.
 
The higher register of the recorder family is fairly well known. I have a soprano and a tenor. My alto broke. I knew of the existence of bass recorders, but had never heard of a greatbass.

IMG_0276.jpeg



Here is an entire orchestra playing beautifully

 
WhitewaterWoman said:
The higher register of the recorder family is fairly well known. I have a soprano and a tenor. My alto broke. I knew of the existence of bass recorders, but had never heard of a greatbass.

View attachment 137755


Here is an entire orchestra playing beautifully

Click to expand...
That is so cool.

I have a soprano that I play with (I don't actually play it, I play with it), but those a wild!
 
And here’s a Heckelphone
IMG_0277.webp



It was invented by a man named Heckel. It is a cross between an oboe and a bassoon. Amazingly it has been used in quite a few prominent works such as Richard Strauss’ Salome and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Apparently there are only 100 instruments left, and very few professional performers.
 
I mentioned this in another thread: The tin piano isn't used too often, but I like the sound of it (the first song's a children's song, but it sounds first rate).


 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New Threads

Top Bottom