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Thread: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

  1. #76
    Registered User Petrus's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by Polecat View Post
    I once got thrown out of the lobby of a bank where I was providing the music for an art exhibition opening, with a fiddler, for playing the Soviet National Anthem on an electric mandolin (yes, I was doing the Hendrix thang...)
    It's actually a pretty impressive work of music (I know, that'll get me kicked off certain fora I frequent) but I doubt if anyone recognized it ... you probably got booted for the excessive loud playing. And by "the Hendrix thing," do you mean you set your mando on fire at the end?

    I thought long and hard about whether to share this, as I would like other cafe members to still take me seriously, which seems unlikely: http://picosong.com/mLbw/
    I also enjoy (if that's the word) experimental and noise music. It's said (by me mainly), if you can't play music, play experimental music. Seriously though don't put down your own work ... just put it out there without comment and let the public decide if it's Grammy material or not.

    BTW, if you're not familiar with this, you should check out this documentary on the Portland noise music scene.


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  3. #77
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by Polecat View Post
    anybody who manages to listen to the whole 6 minutes of this trash has both my profoundest respect and deepest sympathy.
    All my life I had waited for a version of Jane Birkin's Je t'aime with Serge Gainsbourgh throwing up - here it was, at last.
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

  4. #78
    Mandolin Dreams Unlimited MysTiK PiKn's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by Colin Lindsay View Post
    Love that phrase… no doubt the smaller tribes and kingdoms were glad of the ‘stability’…

    Anyway I’m a hybrid - Ulster-Scots, which means my ancestors came from the Anglo-Saxon area of Lindesey, moved up through England (Lincolnshire) into Scotland and then across to Northern Ireland around 1700 - 1800 and have remained ever since. Notwithstanding those who claim there is no such thing as Ulster-Scots culture, the music involves bagpipes and other local instruments such as the huge Lambeg Drum, which has dozens if not hundreds of localised rhythms depending on where the player comes from, interspersed with more-wodely known Irish and Scots tunes. The best of both worlds, probably.
    Incidentally if I drink enough whisky I can speak fluent Ulster-Scots, an example of which I’ve added below (taken from some local government website or other):

    We’d be ableeged gin ye’d gie us aa tha wittins ye can anent tha ootfa ye’r makkin pleen o, takkin in thďngs tha like o:
    tha day, oor, date an richt bďt whar thar wus tha ootfa
    whut the’ caa tha offyser or yin frae tha darg-ban yokkt intil’t, an thair shoodčr nummer an tha leuk o thaim
    whut the’ caa onie yins remairkin whut cum aboot, an thair bakkin an langbl’r nummer
    tha registratin nummers o onie motors ’at wus yokkt intil tha ootfa
    onie ither helplie or effeirin pruif, tha like o leknesses or soon or video recoardins
    Dinnae fash yersel gin ye’ll can gie nae mair nor a feck o this wittins. We’r fur ettlin at fynnin whutiver wittins we reck tae be effeirin til yer pleen.
    Ye maun mak yer pleen athin a towmond o tha ootfa ye’r taen wi.

    Total gibberish, but when drunk it all makes perfect sense. So: the weirdest thing I’ve ever done musically, apart from phonetically singing a Greek song in Greece before a Greek audience, has to be either playing along with a pipe band on my hurdy-gurdy (great drones for pipe band tunes) or else playing jigs and reels accompanied by Lambeg Drum players at an Ulster-Scots concert, and trying to work out if those speaking the language actually liked it or not.
    For some info on Lambeg drums and their rhythms see the video below.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51MClt_FW0s
    A friend, of background Angleterre, never mind thawt crawp, but a felloo drinkaar of wis kee ya no, tauldmee anauld tayle of hown in auld daezze o how the warrs nsuch wid the soljarrs thed paws ferah wee drawm, and drrannk frum a bohll. aye. twasa sigheen of peass ta awffer a bowl wid tooo hawnds, and ta rahceevv et the seeamm way, as, do yoo nut no, if yer aahnds wer boat holden yonwee bohll, it was seeaff, aye - cos thawt was a sign thawt yer warnt holednn a niyfe wid the o'er. aye. streeanjj tymes them un's. Ya no ahcoood abeenyar neeawborr wenahwas abowt thrreee. ahwas faaraway awfter thawt. aye. cheers ta yeeoootoo. aye.

    Lambeg drum? Isn't that like a bass drum only larger diameter, and thinner side to side. I saw some of those in one of those infamous parades after the 11th night. aye. bonefires middle of the bulfawwst streets all over. an sawndeerow too. wee bit o drinkin there too, aye. and some of them go crazy on the black bush. I heard warnings about that one.

    Cheers.

    = The Loar, LM700VS c.2013 = "The Brat"
    = G. Puglisi, "Roma" c.1907 = "Patentato" - rare archBack, canted top, oval
    = Harmony, Monterrey c.1969 = collapsed ply - parts, testing, training, firewood.


    "The intellect is a boring load of crawp. Aye. Next wee chune".

  5. #79
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by Colin Lindsay View Post
    Total gibberish, but when drunk it all makes perfect sense.
    This made me curious - listening to a sample of Ulster-Scots assured me that it's close enough to Lowland Scots (which I am somewhat familiar with) so I understood most of it.
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

  6. #80
    Registered User Polecat's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by Petrus View Post
    It's actually a pretty impressive work of music (I know, that'll get me kicked off certain fora I frequent) but I doubt if anyone recognized it ... you probably got booted for the excessive loud playing. And by "the Hendrix thing," do you mean you set your mando on fire at the end?
    No, I didn't burn the mandolin, but there was a fair bit of feedback and distortion involved. The tune was familiar to at least some of the prominent people present (this was in Karlsruhe, Germany in about 1995, when the Soviet national Anthem was still fresh in many peoples' minds - it got played so often at the Olympic Games). The performance was a deliberate provocation - we started off with Bartok's violin duo 44 ("Transylvanian Dance") played way too slow, which sounds very dissonant, then a composition of mine which consisted of long rests, punctuated by bursts of purposely wrong-sounding intervals and counterpoint. We had contracted to play for 30 minutes, about 5 short pieces, but after the second I noticed that we were losing the audience's attention and suggested to my partner that we jump straight to the finale (said Anthem), which we did, regaining the listeners. Some looked horrified, some laughed, and of course some didn't have a clue, but as soon as we were finished, the Direktor of the Bank shoved me to one side, and used my microphone to announce that the buffet was now open. In spite of censoring us, we got payed in full and I signed the reciept for our fee (this was a german bank - they do everything very correctly) with the illustrious name "Ronald Biggs", which nobody seemed to notice, but still makes me giggle.
    Thanks for the video - I will watch it when I have time.
    "Give me a mandolin and I'll play you rock 'n' roll" (Keith Moon)

  7. #81

    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by mrmando View Post
    Ha! I wrote a composition based on pi in high school, but it was diatonic ... I didn't think of doing it as a 12-tone piece.
    I wrote a composition for a music theory class in high school based on the Fibonacci series.

  8. #82

    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by k0k0peli View Post
    That's new! (For me, anyway.) I hope it's my old unit, 1/5 FA of the Alexander Hamilton Brigade, doing the honors. Our motto: Field Artillery means never having to say, I missed. I do recall someone miscalculating and sending a couple shells into a KSU dorm parking lot. Oops.
    That unit from Ft. Riley would bring cannons to Lawrence every summer for "1812" by the Lawrence City Band (in which I play percussion). Haven't been able to the last 2 summers, since the government sequester.

  9. #83

    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Being a percussionist means playing some pretty weird stuff over the years. I played a typewriter with orchestra on Leroy Anderson's "Typewriter" and played tuned wine glasses for Saint-Saen's "The Swan". Got to play the Spike Jones part in "Tribute to Spike Jones", which included, among many other things, a blank pistol.

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  11. #84

    Default My quest for reverb led to unorthodox decisions

    One time many moons ago, I selected a house to move into, based almost solely on the wonderful acoustics and natural reverb that one of the larger rooms had. (Well, that, and it was cheap, I wouldn't have paid extra for good acoustics.) I figured it'd be a good place to practice and get the kind of sound I liked. At that time, I was into low-tuned nylon-strung fretless-banjo oldtimey stuff, and flute etc, and I always liked practicing/jamming anyplace that had a natural reverb, the more the better. But that house had literally no other redeeming features (I was living by myself at the time, no harm done). Of course I had to resist the temptation to put a bunch of furniture and window-coverings into that room, would have ruined the empty-room effect of the hardwood floor, high ceiling, and hard plaster-and-lathe walls. I suppose (guessing) that for some types of musical instruments, such a setting might be undesirable, but for the stuff I was playing then, it was good.

    Before that, a friend turned me onto a couple of nice reverb-y pedestrian-only tunnels that had good acoustics. One of the tunnels was in an isolated area about 4 hours from where we lived, that particular tunnel had no nearby residences so no worries about disturbing any neighbors, we'd sometimes stop there and play music for a few minutes when we were already driving through that region. I would play flute or sometimes tinwhistle (Celtic stuff mostly), my friend played mellow classical guitar - natural reverb sounded good with all of those.

    Another jam spot, at a music festival - was in a rather large otherwise-unused public restroom which had jam sessions that went well into the early hours of the morning. Same reason, nice reverb. Couldn't get that lovely a sound anywhere else on the premises. Ironically, you couldn't actually use that restroom for its, um, intended purpose, because its fixtures were inoperable.

    That was all during my extended super-strict acoustic-only mode. I hadn't yet discovered the creativity-boosting (and economical) wonder of electric instruments+effects etc.

    Anyway, what reminded me of this, was another person's (llamela) wonderful post at Mandolin Cafe Song-a-Week playing in a bathroom of some sort I guess, great sound. But I think his pickin' would sound fantastic anywhere, reverb or not.

    ---
    P.S.: I might be just a little bit off-topic here, but since I was the one who originally started this thread maybe it's alright, eh.

  12. #85
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: My quest for reverb led to unorthodox decisions

    Quote Originally Posted by JL277z View Post
    I selected a house to move into, based almost solely on the wonderful acoustics and natural reverb that one of the larger rooms had.
    You need one of those...


    One of the tunnels was in an isolated area about 4 hours from where we lived, that particular tunnel had no nearby residences
    No use running away. Nobody will hear you scream.

    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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  14. #86
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    I bought a Moog Thermin last year and brought it to school. My 5-7 grade band students loved it!

  15. #87

    Default Re: My quest for reverb led to unorthodox decisions

    Quote Originally Posted by Bertram Henze View Post
    You need one of those...
    Yes a cathedral, that would do, rather nicely...


    Quote Originally Posted by Bertram Henze View Post
    No use running away. Nobody will hear you scream.

    Cool pic, I see different possible interpretations of the picture, the person standing there could be friend or foe, enemy or hero rushing in to save the day, or just a curious passerby wondering where all the centuries-old flute music was coming from. The tunnels we played music in weren't spooky, although I've seen a couple of other tunnels since then, urban settings that don't look particularly safe, wouldn't recommend those. I've become somewhat lazy in my old age, nowadays when I want reverb I turn up the knob on the Roland MicroCube.

  16. #88

    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by Sterling View Post
    I bought a Moog Thermin last year and brought it to school. My 5-7 grade band students loved it!
    Cool!

  17. #89
    Registered User DavidKOS's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    During a misguided attempt to transfer my keyboard skills to accordion, I was playing the accordion in a Gypsy band....and someone dared us to play "Inna Gadda da Vida".

    What the "customer" didn't know is that the whole band were also classic rockers. So they got a version on squeezebox, fiddle, flute and dumbek!

    Complete with "organ" solo and dumbek drum solo. The folks listening loved...the folks that hired us, not so much.

    I also had to good sense to stop playing accordion, making me a true gentleman. I know how to play bagpipes and accordion...but don't.

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  19. #90
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    I've been overlooking the obvious. The weirdest musical thing I've ever done was pick up an instrument in the first place. But then, it got even weirder. The instrument of choice (albeit a gift) was the mandolin, which at the time no one around me, including me, knew what it was. But it got weirder still. I thought I could make a living and win the hearts of lovely ladies through playing it. What was I thinking?

    So here I am 47-odd years on - and there have been some pretty odd years - and I'm still bashing away on the blessed, beleaguered beastie. It was uncannily wise of me to have relocated to this odd duck of a city, Baghdad By The Sea as it's been called, where when the going gets weird, the weird go pro. Apparently I've been able to get away with it, to sneak one past a lot of people, and will again in just a few hours, playing barely rehearsed material in front of unsuspecting strangers at on of the most prestigious places in town. And you can tune in to verify this assessment for yourselves at www.schoonerwharf.com/webcam, 7-11 PM EDT.

    The main thing is, there could very well be a great deal of truth to the assertion that I have no real musical talent whatsoever, but have perhaps some facility with this one instrument, and my great love of music and proclivity for problem-solving have gotten me this far. It's fair to say my willingness to venture into the unknown musically has been the cause of some merriment and entertainment for those paying listening. You can't tell what is going to come next out of that instrument: heck, I often have no idea myself! For 2 1/2 years at this same establishment I played every Monday night, and the main reasons this went on so long were the lead singer had a good ear for material, a charismatic stage presence, compelling voice, and I was all too willing to try out all manner of musical and non-musical possibilities with my instruments and gear. It was musix for the curious, and apparently we did all right with it.

    My most recent venture, the Professor And Mary Ann, was a real odd pairing of two people from different generations with powerful loves of and similar tastes in music. I have no idea how we managed to convince ourselves that a duo could be formed by such an unlikely couple playing mandolin, ukulele, and glockenspiel, but we had a "Why not?" attitude, and had so much fun playing together, that hopefully that translated to others and won them over, despite falling somewhat short in the talent category. Our first gig was at the annual conch shell blowing contest - which we won, in the group category - but our first real gig was a disaster, a poor choice of venue - an Irish pub - where we got the hook less than an hour in. But our second gig went fine, playing at a seaside Mediterranean/Caribbean bistro, with a slightly more sophisticated and certainly more receptive clientele. I can't tell for sure, being all caught up in the moment. But the staff liked us and asked us back - can't, as my partner is leaving town to become, a Disney princess on a cruise ship, but it sure was an uplifting ending to what had been a tumultuous and very strange ride. I like to think we were kindred spirits who connected in spite of rather obvious outward differences, united by a true love of music. Most of what we produced was in the moment and has dissipated into the ether. But we did take a little while rehearsing the day before and then after the gig to record a few songs on my cell phone, so at least there is some rough idea of what we were up to. I think it's pretty weird, but it makes me smile. But then, my judgement is skewed, being so weird ...

    PS: Well, looks like you're going to have to take my word for it. I've converted these m4a files to mp3 files, but they're not uploading. Sigh ...

    PPS: Oh wait - they finally took!
    Attached Files Attached Files
    Last edited by journeybear; Aug-31-2015 at 9:44am. Reason: something to do with a little spinning blue circle ...
    But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. - Dennis Miller

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  20. #91

    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    I don't think of this as weird, but others have, so...

    Years ago, I owned a small lap harp. One spring day, when it was breezy, I was playing outside, and I heard a distant church organ. I damped the strings to listen, but the organ stopped abruptly. The same organ started playing when i undamped and started playing again.

    Then i realized that it was the wind blowing through the strings which was making them sound. That's how I discovered the aeolian harp.

    I've lived in places with windy times of year, so my unusual musical passion is to climb trees and to make improvised aelian harps with cotton string and resonators like found capped 2-liter bottles or frisbees. They're not noticeable from the ground, but when the wind picks up, there is a low hum from various trees, with shifting harmonies depending on the direction of the wind.

    I've done it a few times in more urban areas, improvising a "bridge" under the string to drive a wood or metal sheet panel which is part of a structure.

    The tree installations are the most interesting to me, because the shifting of the limbs in the wind alters the tension on the string, and thereby alters the pitch.
    ----

    Playing a funky oval-hole scroll-body mandolin, several mandolins retuned to CGDA, three CGDA-tuned Flatiron mandolas, two Flatiron mandolas tuned as octave mandolins,and a six-course 25.5" scale CGDAEB-tuned Ovation Mandophone.

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  22. #92

    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by journeybear View Post
    I couldn't get the above link to work, try this instead: http://www.schoonerwharf.com/webcam.htm
    You guys sound good! Looks like there's about 15 minutes left of your set as I'm writing this, so I'll only be able to listen to a few minutes of it, but what I hear sounds good! At least I *think* it's you guys, the picture is blurry and doesn't include the entire stage. I do hear a mandolin though. And you got 'em dancing! Cool.

  23. #93
    Professional Dreamer journeybear's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Thanks for tuning in! Sorry about the link; should have double-checked that. Yeah, we got a few live ones toward the end. We did this song, "Old No. 7," from The Devil Makes Three, about, well, Jack Daniel's and other things, after which I made an aside over the mike to the effect that I keep hoping someone is going to hear that and buy the band a round of shots. For once, someone took the hint and brought up four shots. She also bought a CD, tipped us, and danced for a song or two. People like that are always a joy. Its not just the generosity (gratefully accepted, of course), but their having so much fun. Beats the hell out of a roomful of stiffs to have even just a few people really having a good time because of the music.

    This was a pick-up band of sorts. The bass player and drummer started the gig a few months ago with a couple of other guys, who had since left. Their places have been filled by an ever-changing cast of characters. I filled in for the fiddler in this lineup four weeks ago, and got asked to do the same again this time. Next week the female singer and drummer are both going to be out of town and someone else will be doing the front man chores, a guy I don't even know. It's pretty nutso what goes on around here sometimes. The funniest thing tonight was seeing how many people came up and bought CDs. One is from an earlier lineup of this band, back when it was supposedly stable; the other is from my old band, that I was in with the bass player and drummer, which was recorded over a year ago, with a different lineup from the final one - which included tonight's female singer. (Have I lost you yet? ) The thing is, those people are going to go home listen to these CDs, and they won't sound anything like what they heard tonight! Oh well! Take the money and run!
    But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. - Dennis Miller

    Furthering Mandolin Consciousness

    Finders Keepers, my duo with the astoundingly talented and versatile Patti Rothberg. Our EP is finally done, and available! PM me, while they last!

  24. #94

    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidKOS View Post
    During a misguided attempt to transfer my keyboard skills to accordion, I was playing the accordion in a Gypsy band....and someone dared us to play "Inna Gadda da Vida".

    What the "customer" didn't know is that the whole band were also classic rockers. So they got a version on squeezebox, fiddle, flute and dumbek!
    Cool, would've loved to have heard that!

    In the '70s I was at a fiddle festival where the goal was to form little temporary student-bands and then play at a contest (onstage in a proper little theater) a week later, to see which 'band' had made the most progress. Someone in my 'band' (not me, I swear) came up with the idea of trying to dazzle the judges with our brilliance by playing a few measures of La Gadda Da Vida as an intro to a normal oldtime stringband tune. It was the very first time I'd played anything even remotely related to rock-n-roll, so at first it was a challenge to learn... involved going up the neck, I wasn't used to playing past the 5th fret. Our little 'band' practiced enough that the transition between tunes went pretty well. Come contest time, the audience was OK with it (they were mostly other musicians anyway, fairly supportive atmosphere, everyone was there to learn new stuff), but the judges weren't impressed, we didn't get a standing ovation and we lost to the Cajun band (as usual, back then). We had a lot of fun though.

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  26. #95
    Registered User DavidKOS's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by JL277z View Post
    Someone in my 'band' (not me, I swear) came up with the idea of trying to dazzle the judges with our brilliance by playing a few measures of La Gadda Da Vida as an intro to a normal oldtime stringband tune. .... but the judges weren't impressed,.
    That tune gets around, huh?

    Cool story.

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  28. #96

    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by Explorer View Post
    Years ago, I owned a small lap harp. One spring day, when it was breezy, I was playing outside, and I heard a distant church organ. I damped the strings to listen, but the organ stopped abruptly. The same organ started playing when i undamped and started playing again.

    Then i realized that it was the wind blowing through the strings which was making them sound. That's how I discovered the aeolian harp.
    Cool.

    I spent some years driving semi-truck (mostly hopper bottom trailers, set of doubles; old Kenworth longnose). On some runs, I'd pull up to loading site (or unloading site, as the case may be) last thing at night, so that I'd be first in line the next morning.[1] One night I was parked just outside the gate of a big grain elevator on the river (where they load wheat onto barges), nothing else around but sagebrush and coyotes, windy as usual, clear night sky overhead with a bunch of stars, you know how it is out in those semi-arid/desert regions with no city lights, the night skies can be amazingly clear...

    I'd picked a couple of tunes on banjo - always carried an old junky banjo with me in the truck, then I was ready for some sleep so I crawled back into the sleeper - one of those small old "coffin" type sleepers, not the modern big fancy ones - and was almost asleep when I heard something.

    It sounded like a flute! What the heck? No one else was around. It was well after dark and I was still the only truck there. The grain elevator employees had all went home many hours earlier. So where was that music coming from? It seemed very near, like someone/something was right outside the truck.

    Huh, a pretty unimaginative flute player, there were only two notes, both fairly low pitched like a bottle or something, which kept alternating back and forth with just those two notes...

    Being not too long out of music-theory class I noticed that the notes seemed to be a "perfect" interval apart (can't remember now whether it was a perfect 4th or a perfect 5th). No other notes, just those two notes, and not in any discernable regular pattern. Huh. A drunk unimaginative flute player? No.

    I finally put my boots back on[2] and got out of the cab to investigate. Right behind the cab, between the sleeper and the first trailer, was the usual hollow metal pole a few feet high that held up the air lines to the trailer - the idea being that the air lines (going to the trailer) were attached up near the top of the pole so that they could still have enough slack to move when the trailer turned, but they didn't drag on the deckplate and become damaged. Anyway, that pole had a number of different holes in it, to attach things to. The pole's top was open.

    The wind had picked up a bit more and become gusty, and it was the wind acting on that hollow pole with the holes in it, that was making the alternating-note flute sound I heard. Apparently the gusts caused the pitch to change, never did figure out the exact mechanism but I surmised at the time that it had something to do with natural harmonics or that the gusts were blowing the air lines around a bit and allowing access to, or blocking, certain of the pipe's holes, depending on how strong of a wind gust it was. Pretty trippy sound in any case, I was kind of awe-inspired.

    I thought it was pretty cool that an old truck could create music on its own with a little help from the wind.

    Footnotes:
    1. The reason for parking in line overnight, was because in that type of driving, pay was percentage, not hourly. If the truck wasn't making money, I wasn't making money. So getting to the loading or unloading site early (if they weren't open 24/7 as many of them weren't) was a good arrangement for me because it didn't cut into my income and I didn't have to sit around bored waiting in line the next morning.
    2. No, not cowboy boots, I never wore those (nor big belt buckles), these were regular lug-sole Red Wing work boots.


    Quote Originally Posted by Explorer View Post
    I've lived in places with windy times of year, so my unusual musical passion is to climb trees and to make improvised aelian harps with cotton string and resonators like found capped 2-liter bottles or frisbees. They're not noticeable from the ground, but when the wind picks up, there is a low hum from various trees, with shifting harmonies depending on the direction of the wind.

    I've done it a few times in more urban areas, improvising a "bridge" under the string to drive a wood or metal sheet panel which is part of a structure.

    The tree installations are the most interesting to me, because the shifting of the limbs in the wind alters the tension on the string, and thereby alters the pitch.
    Great idea, that is totally cool! I love it! I never would have thought of deliberately trying to creating such sounds, but it's a very intriguing idea.

  29. #97
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Quote Originally Posted by JL277z View Post
    Great idea, that is totally cool! I love it! I never would have thought of deliberately trying to creating such sounds, but it's a very intriguing idea.
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Well, my main instrument is a 7-string e-violin played through a high-gain tube preamp, so weird is kind of normal here


    Musically, one of the bands I'm playing in did a re-imagining of the classic Irish ballad "Ride On" into a happy/dancy/jazzy tune. We also redid the "Star of County Down" as a parody of Neue Deutsche Haerte (think Laibach/Rammstein)

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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    Ha! Some good contenders for the weirdest of the musically weird here. Great thread!

    I'll put myself near the bottom . I strung up an old fiddle with octave strings just for fun. It's great for blues and droning behind Scottish music but not much else. Oh, and I own glow-in-the-dark rosin, if that counts.

    While we wait for more weirdness, here's a neat clip:


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  34. #100
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    Default Re: What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

    That Walk Off The Earth cover is very famous on the web, and many have tried to outweird them:



    ...including themselves:

    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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