The Siberian Jew's Harp.

"Sakha Yakhut Turks" as performed by Ayarkhaan, the vocal and khomus performing female troupe from Yakutia.


Thanks to Joachim Tevebring.

Theremin Cello: Cool.. but can it Liquify Organs?

We all know about the Theremin, but what ever happened to the Theremin Cello?

"It was also used by the great Stokowski to reinforce his orchestra's bass section, it is said that the subsonic rumblings made some of the orchestra members complain of sickness...... was later abandoned due to the side effects caused by subharmonic frequencies on the orchestra's string section."

Promising technology abandoned because of a couple of whining underpaid violists. Ready for an upgrade by some modern bands. The kids might like the side effects.

Boom-ba!

Hey nah, this here's a boom-ba real, real nice once. It's a popular Pennsylvania Dutch musical instrument. If you ever have the opportunity to see a full band of 10-20 old men marching down the street banging away on these things, it is quite a site to behold! More info here.

Toni Iordache, the Godfather of the cimbalom

Global Groove offers Toni Iordache - Tresors Folkloriques Roumains vol.1.


Hora din ialomita


Video uploaded by tambalmic

Ondiolini (1948)

The ondioline again:

Musical eccentricities of the Jazz Age

Popular Science takes a look at some oddball musical instruments of 1926.
The "Siamese banjo" looks a bit like the Thai jakhe — any ethnomusicologists out there recognize it?


Here's an ad for the "weird" one-stringed Jazzitha which promises to have everyone stepping in ten minutes.

Music lessons (3) The ondioline

From wikipedia:

The Ondioline is a vacuum tube-powered keyboard instrument, invented in 1941 ^[1] by the Frenchman Georges Jenny, a forerunner of today's synthesizers.

The Ondioline was capable of creating a wide variety of sounds. Its keyboard had a unique feature: it was suspended on special springs which made it possible to introduce a natural vibrato if the player moved the keyboard (not the entire instrument) from side to side (laterally) with their playing hand. The result was an almost human-like vibrato that lent a wide range of expression to the Ondioline. The keyboard was also pressure-sensitive, and the instrument had a knee volume lever, as well.

A few videos:

First a vintage record demonstrating Georges Jenny's Ondioline tube-driven electronic instrument, an important but almost forgotten ancestor of the modern synthesizer. The uploader included English translation of the French-language narration in this video.



From I've Got A Secret an episode of co-inventor of the ondioline Jean Jacques Perrey. (thanks to JJP for posting this on fb)





See also this previous post on the subject.

Double Guitars Under the Double Eagle

Clip added by RockinGator
Larry Collins & Joe Maphis - Under the Double Eagle

It's Cembalet Party Time!

Let´s go to the bar and listen to the sounds of the Mag´net Quartet featuring Michael Ramos playing the CEMBALET.

The rarely heard instrument, where the player could control the volume with the knees (!), was developed by the genius inventor Ernst Zacharias for HOHNER in the late 50´s.

You can find this swinging little record at my beloved Berlin Beatet bestes which in the past few weeks alone has posted this record of the failed dance craze "The Pop-Art":



as well as this music-on-cardboard tune of the Scottish Twist (I dig the papery scratchy sound!);



Which qualifies them for music blog of the century, in my book.

music and retro photography

Incredible Flickr sets from AIRFORM (including architecture, design, fashion, retro photographies, music bands, record cover and labels ...
Everything that we love here at PCL!

120 years of electronic music

http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/