Unusual / Unique Musical Instruments

"My homemade barrel organ"  - ILYA

Oh, very interesting!  Is the crank connected to an electrical generator powering electronic guts?

Yes, in first version a step driver from old 5'FDD was used as generator, in second I replaced it by the BLDC motor  taken from the same driver.

The Leonardo da Vinci's "Viola Organista" built by Slawomir Zubrzycki:


First performance:


and interview with author:
http://tygodnik.onet.pl/zmysly/the-da-vinci-tone-in-english/qw5s9

Seems to me that "theremin" is now a word used to describe anything played so badly and horribly out-of-tune its unbearable..

They are calling these things theremins! - Many theremin performances I thought were awful would sound wonderful in comparison to this. Warning! - Its REALLY BAD!

See Roy's posting below for the video - I have deleted it from this posting.. Once is way more than enough! ;-)

 thinking about it, its OT here.. Its "Strange" and "unusual"  ( Lets hope it stays "unusual" ) - But IMO its NOT a musical instrument.

Seems to me that "theremin" is now a word used to describe anything played so badly and horribly out-of-tune its unbearable..

They are calling these things theremins! - Many theremin performances I thought were awful would sound wonderful in comparison to this. Warning! - Its REALLY BAD!

FFS!

I made it to 43 seconds.

Really really agonising.

Of course I know posting this will give these 'things' the publicity that they certainly do not deserve!

I listened to the whole thing - at about 40 secs I started to find it funny ;-) Its Soooo Bad (and gets rapidly worse after about 40 secs - Yes! It gets worse!!!  ;-) that I put up with the pain.. not exactly sure why ;-)

I came across those horrible toys on  Ebay while looking at theremins there - Prices? From about £50 to £190

And I thinks to meself that its a damn strange world we live in!

 I should just say that I disagree with a lot thats said in this video - I dont think that "decency" or other attributes like that are IQ related - IMO Some of the most immoral and disgusting people people have high IQ's - And  IMO many "simpletons" are honerable and decent people.. But Apart from those irritations ...

It's an interesting toy.  Couple a pitch generator rich in harmonics to an ersatz vocal tract that's manually manipulable and you really could have something.  They went into production a bit too early IMO.

"They went into production a bit too early IMO." - Dewster

Hmmm - A couple of Xmas ago, I spent half a day with my (then 7 year old) son, and we built a musical instrument - it was a strip of aluminium tape stick to some plastic trunking, a length of carbon strap (used to bundle / strap electronic components etc), and A 555 timer driving a piezo .. If it was put into production, its component cost would perhaps be £3 .. And you could  play tunes on it .. Quin (my son) built most of it - I just soldered the components - and he played it for several months, getting quite proficient, but his interest waned (IMO the toy  sounded horrible, but nowhere as bad as those things..) and it got stood on..  One of the reasons I am going for a capacitive "ribbon" is to get him a better instrument and hopefully re-ignite his interest.

But the reason for the above tale is that I dont believe any amount of time will improve that "thing" - The greatest weakness in Quin's toy was the ribbon - but the ribbons on those "things" are so needlessly horrible that its obviously done as cheaply as possible - cheap as in pence.

As for a "ersatz vocal tract that's manually manipulable" - thats not whats going on here at all.. For good reasons - the first is cost, the second is size, the two are related - It is probably not possible to replicate the human resonance structure in a small mechanical resonator, no matter how much money you threw at it - you would need electronic processing / filtering of the sound controlled by manipulation of the "features".

Alternatively you go for a full size anotomical "copy" - I have been lucky enough to play with such models at med school - There are only a few complete sets in the world, some with computer controlled manipulation of the features - most models are moulded latex castings fixed to one particular vowel...

To go from that "thing" to anything which isnt a toy is like going from a 555 with an antenna stuck to it, to an Ether-Vox!

I agree  ""They went into production a bit too early" - IMO, they shouldnt have gone into production at all! - But hey, they'r making money, Im not!  ;-)

Fred.