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What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
If you could create a great, fantastic/ nightmare, frankenstein-like instrument from scratch, what would it be?
Mine might be a harp with a set of tuneable bass drones inside the soundbox so I could do a sustained bass-line. I'd call it the harp-pipes, or something...
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
How about a Banjhouran. Bodhran with tambourine shakers round the frame and banjo strings forming a snare. Oh aye, and a shaky egg on either end of the stick.
so i propose a piano accordion as big as four cows with 5 unretractable bodhrans! the operator unlike the real beast, has minus four ears so it really can hear nothing.. the right hand isn't really sensitive to touch at all but the bass hand can hit all 120 basses with in 3.5 seconds and does so on a regular basses!! (intended)
like the beast, it's made out of metal so as it can attach itself to normal musicians and follow them around to sessions destroying all in its audible path. oh and it has an in built banjo midi system for when the excitement gets up!
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
A keyboard instrument able to play tunes the normal way.
BUT...
It will have synthesisers able to lay on backing tracks sounding like every known ITM instrument and some over, the keys being adjustable.
It could accompany , say, a standard reel in D with out-of-tune DADGAD, Shetland Swing, a violin being played in classical style, the sound of a button accordion pumping out B and C chords, the drones of Highland bagpipes in Bb, and maybe a hurdy-gurdy somewhere, all going at once. Even expletives when someone breaks a string.
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
A strange, wooden object, shaped like an exaggerated woman's body but with a long, straight neck and a large hole in the "body". There would be some metal or plastic "strings" (say, about 6) running most of the length of it and you would "pluck" or "pick" or, worse, "strum" them. Euuurrgggghhhh. Then, if you wanted to shuffle off this mortal coil you would take this monstrosity to a nearby session and play it during the tunes. At some point someone would kill you.
The "instrument" would be known as the "tunmur" (short for "tune murderer").
I hope no-one actually invents this.
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
Actually, I've been seriously wanting to get a MIDI-enabled electric fiddle that I could use as a MIDI controller for my Waldorf Microwave XT synthesizer...would be a very interesting sound.
The only thing stopping me is price. That, and the fear of being lynched for playing trad fiddle through a synthesizer. Folkies are so touchy about that sort of thing.
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
I'm with you, maxF, and I've got another one. Again, it's wooden, with a small, frail, little body and several wires stretched at huge tension across it in such a manner that, sooner or later the puny little thing is bound to warp. It also has some wires wrapped around the stick thing at decreasing intervals.
In my dream, this thing makes a truly feeble little noise - a bit like the noise of an original, outdated and well-used iPod that someone else is listening to through earphones on the train would make.
Oh, and players of various different other instruments think they can play it with no extra effort at all, simply because they can pluck something else (this instrument in my nightmares is plucked) or they can bow something else that they think is the same, really, if only it wasn't plucked ...
And they float. In my dreams, I have thrown a number of them into the sea but, unfortunately, they have been washed back.
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
Easy one: just fit huge whistles into the wings of aircraft, fipples flush with the leading edge of the wings. A crew member or an automatic system could ensure the opening of each whistle that is meant to produce a note as the plane hurtles on its course. The sound can of course be relayed into the fuselage - Danny Boy, All Kinds Of Everything, whatever. It'll keep the spirits up on those long Transatlantic flights, that's for sure.
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
Skinicalick,how about DR. Gilberts? which reel would you
choose to play,or maybe you would prefer a slow air of your
choosing.I,ve never heard an air played on a dead goatskin.
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
What a fascinating prognosis by good old Goosygander. Slow airs on a bodhran. Can't really see it taking off. Anyone near me tried to play a bodhran to anything slow, would be in trouble.
Me, I play them on a mandolin. Ideal for this, not really suited to reels and such the mandolin.
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
I say what if you took the most loud and annoying and inherently out-of-tune wind instrument, the Middle Eastern shawm, and stuck it into an animal bladder so that you could play seven or even eight of them at the same time, then put keys on half of the shawms so that various parts of the operator's body could make as many different notes as possible to emit, then put bellows on the thing so that even chain-smoking people could blow it, and then showed up at sessions with the beast?!
(It could NEVER happen in real life, could it?)
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
But seriously, the Scottish folk group "The Corries" consisted of two guys playing "combolins" which they devised themselves. These were huge guitarish things with harp-guitar-like sympathetic strings, guitar necks, mandolin necks, and who knows what else.
In Bolivia they make a thing that combines a guitar with a charango.
What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
If you could create a great, fantastic/ nightmare, frankenstein-like instrument from scratch, what would it be?
Mine might be a harp with a set of tuneable bass drones inside the soundbox so I could do a sustained bass-line. I'd call it the harp-pipes, or something...
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by Mark Harmer
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
It,s been created already.goatskin.musical idiot,stick,
Name:Skinicalick.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by gooseinthenettles
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
Ah, it's got to be a NEW instrument!!!
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by Mark Harmer
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
How about a Banjhouran. Bodhran with tambourine shakers round the frame and banjo strings forming a snare. Oh aye, and a shaky egg on either end of the stick.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by bogman
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
the best nightmare instrument if it were truly terrible would have to be on a par with this to begin with : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlKrb54HGw4
so i propose a piano accordion as big as four cows with 5 unretractable bodhrans! the operator unlike the real beast, has minus four ears so it really can hear nothing.. the right hand isn't really sensitive to touch at all but the bass hand can hit all 120 basses with in 3.5 seconds and does so on a regular basses!! (intended)
like the beast, it's made out of metal so as it can attach itself to normal musicians and follow them around to sessions destroying all in its audible path. oh and it has an in built banjo midi system for when the excitement gets up!
Beware!!
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by martin t
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
It's already been done - the Wurlitzer.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by lazyhound
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
http://www.xstrange.com/bassbanjo.htm
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by dafydd
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
A keyboard instrument able to play tunes the normal way.
BUT...
It will have synthesisers able to lay on backing tracks sounding like every known ITM instrument and some over, the keys being adjustable.
It could accompany , say, a standard reel in D with out-of-tune DADGAD, Shetland Swing, a violin being played in classical style, the sound of a button accordion pumping out B and C chords, the drones of Highland bagpipes in Bb, and maybe a hurdy-gurdy somewhere, all going at once. Even expletives when someone breaks a string.
It probably exists.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by nicholas
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
A strange, wooden object, shaped like an exaggerated woman's body but with a long, straight neck and a large hole in the "body". There would be some metal or plastic "strings" (say, about 6) running most of the length of it and you would "pluck" or "pick" or, worse, "strum" them. Euuurrgggghhhh. Then, if you wanted to shuffle off this mortal coil you would take this monstrosity to a nearby session and play it during the tunes. At some point someone would kill you.
The "instrument" would be known as the "tunmur" (short for "tune murderer").
I hope no-one actually invents this.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by maxF
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
Actually, I've been seriously wanting to get a MIDI-enabled electric fiddle that I could use as a MIDI controller for my Waldorf Microwave XT synthesizer...would be a very interesting sound.
The only thing stopping me is price. That, and the fear of being lynched for playing trad fiddle through a synthesizer. Folkies are so touchy about that sort of thing.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by Screetch
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
I am sure the sculptor Barbara Hepworth made them.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by nicholas
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
I mean, things like that described by maxF.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by nicholas
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
How about a Jew's Harp (Jaw's Harp) with a pickup and electronic drums attached. Then I could spend all night trying to guess the tunes?
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by Free Reed
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
How about anything that Gooseinthenettles could play his/her 0 tunes on.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
I'm with you, maxF, and I've got another one. Again, it's wooden, with a small, frail, little body and several wires stretched at huge tension across it in such a manner that, sooner or later the puny little thing is bound to warp. It also has some wires wrapped around the stick thing at decreasing intervals.
In my dream, this thing makes a truly feeble little noise - a bit like the noise of an original, outdated and well-used iPod that someone else is listening to through earphones on the train would make.
Oh, and players of various different other instruments think they can play it with no extra effort at all, simply because they can pluck something else (this instrument in my nightmares is plucked) or they can bow something else that they think is the same, really, if only it wasn't plucked ...
And they float. In my dreams, I have thrown a number of them into the sea but, unfortunately, they have been washed back.
# Posted on September 15th 2007 by benhall.1
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
Easy one: just fit huge whistles into the wings of aircraft, fipples flush with the leading edge of the wings. A crew member or an automatic system could ensure the opening of each whistle that is meant to produce a note as the plane hurtles on its course. The sound can of course be relayed into the fuselage - Danny Boy, All Kinds Of Everything, whatever. It'll keep the spirits up on those long Transatlantic flights, that's for sure.
# Posted on September 16th 2007 by nicholas
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
Skinicalick,how about DR. Gilberts? which reel would you
choose to play,or maybe you would prefer a slow air of your
choosing.I,ve never heard an air played on a dead goatskin.
# Posted on September 16th 2007 by gooseinthenettles
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
I have it:
http://www.tradlessons.com/?p=127
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Michael Eskin
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
What a fascinating prognosis by good old Goosygander. Slow airs on a bodhran. Can't really see it taking off. Anyone near me tried to play a bodhran to anything slow, would be in trouble.
Me, I play them on a mandolin. Ideal for this, not really suited to reels and such the mandolin.
Goose, I urge you to reconsider.
# Posted on September 18th 2007 by bodhran bliss
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
I say what if you took the most loud and annoying and inherently out-of-tune wind instrument, the Middle Eastern shawm, and stuck it into an animal bladder so that you could play seven or even eight of them at the same time, then put keys on half of the shawms so that various parts of the operator's body could make as many different notes as possible to emit, then put bellows on the thing so that even chain-smoking people could blow it, and then showed up at sessions with the beast?!
(It could NEVER happen in real life, could it?)
# Posted on September 21st 2007 by Richard D Cook
Re: What sort of great / nightmare all-encompassing combo-instrument would you create?
But seriously, the Scottish folk group "The Corries" consisted of two guys playing "combolins" which they devised themselves. These were huge guitarish things with harp-guitar-like sympathetic strings, guitar necks, mandolin necks, and who knows what else.
In Bolivia they make a thing that combines a guitar with a charango.
# Posted on September 21st 2007 by Richard D Cook