25 comments

    1. Mark Gisleson

      A bull roarer would also be impressive. Yves pointed out the lack of digeridoo when I sent in the link and I told her I used to hang out with a band that had a digeridoo player sit in with them when they did outdoor shows. I forgot that he also played a bull roarer and that was why he only did outdoor venues.

  1. juno mas

    Impressive, yes. However, most of those string instruments were fretted which makes it easier to play a simple four note melody. Playing the melody on the violin, viola, and especially the Middle Eastern non-fretted instruments (they use a different note scale than Western semitone diatonic scale) is the impressive part. To play a non-gauged wind instrument (eg; trombone) is also a greater challenge, requiring practice and good ear training.

    So where did he get all those instruments? Some are extremely rare.

    1. juno mas

      The Dideridoo is a non-gauged wind instrument. Needs lots of practice and lots of lung capacity.

    2. bassmule

      Yeah, well, after being a wimpy 12 year old and having constant trouble with intonation on the bass violin, I discovered the electric bass. Thus my credo: “The Fret Is Your Friend. ;-)

      1. cousinAdam

        Duly noted, amigo, but after 40 years of beating the snot out of my trusty fender jazz bass I felt the need to venture into the world of upright bass (and jazz!) Once I got my feet wet, I quickly learned that “open strings are your friends “ – it’s how you find out if your fretted (sorry , fingered!) notes are in tune or not! The sheer physical demands of the instrument inform why jazz players play the licks that they do – quite a revelation! Carry on and “don’t fret about it 😝!”

          1. cousinAdam

            Touché, sir! I once read an equally sage essay by bassist extraordinaire Tony Levin (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel and many, many more) about the quest for “the good note”. Not the coolest or fastest or baddest but just the ones that made the best contribution to the music at that moment – even no note- Robert Fripp would infamously assign one of his “crafty guitarists “ to ‘hold silence’ in an ensemble performance to underscore the need for ‘less is more’ restraint in their performances. Alas, I was unable to find the publisher of his little collection of tales and musings from the road- I was loaned a copy by the lady who helped organize and edit the book- I remember her telling me it was self published In Woodstock with name “ ten speed press “ which returns an outfit on the west coast with no listing of him as an author. Happy hunting…

    3. Joe Well

      >>So where did he get all those instruments? Some are extremely rare.

      On his channel he has videos of him making instruments by hand. But, agreed, 100 is a lot for a normal person to have sitting on their shelves. My guess is he has researcher access to a museum or university collection of historical musical instruments. Or a friend who’s a private collector. I’m surprised no acknowledgement was made in the video. [[Trying hard to fight my cynical impulse to believe he’s some kind of trust fund baby.]]

  2. Rolf

    Thank you! Yves you are the best!
    Luna Lee and her gayageum (Korean plucked zither):
    Here with Dire Straits’ Sultans of Swing

  3. Joe Well

    Is it a coincidence that you share this the same day as the post about the death of the liberal person?

    Because this guy seems like an extreme example, to judge by his Youtube channel: 9 years of videos of him playing and making obscure musical instruments. Not a single bit of content hinting at self-promotion, not even a bio.

    Of course, he’s not from the Americas, Asia, or the Anglosphere. He’s (apparently) from France.

    Thank you for this antidote.

  4. Hepativore

    Here is a musical interlude using one instrument to make the sounds of many instruments.

    Arthur Ferrante, and Louis Teicher were a pair of professional pianists that released a whole bunch of easy-listening/lounge piano music, and their heyday was during the 1950’s-early-1960’s.

    However, they had real skill, and when they wanted to do experimental stuff, they could get really creative. During the 1950’s, they released an album called Soundproof, in which they used a pair of normal acoustic pianos, and somehow manipulated them to get sounds ranging from bells, harpsichord, xylophone, and various percussion instruments all without any form of electronic or recording manipulation. Other sounds are hard to describe, have harmonics that really do sound like they are made with alien instruments.

    They used a bunch of Latin American jazz songs, as South and Central American jazz were really popular in the US at the time.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csinqbk3WYA

    I do not know why people still continue to mock 1950’s in America as a cultural desert, because I am finding out that a lot of cool stuff was going on at the time, and that 1950’s mainstream US culture was actually quite sophisticated in many aspects.

    1. Mark Gisleson

      This came from Waxy’s Links, an occasional thing in my RSS feed going back to the dawn of the intertubes.

      If Waxy shares a link, it will show up all over the place almost overnight. I caught this just as he shared it and sent it immediately to Yves who apparently does not sleep and posted it right away. BoingBoing snoozed so they losed.

      Like a lot of internet hipsters, Waxy has also published beaucoup bs on Russia and Ukraine. And, had a conservative meme about this youtube sprang up first, Waxy might well have linked to a thumbsucker about how the right prefers to play accapella and not in an orchestra.

      Sorry to pollute this with politics but you gave me an opening ; )

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