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

[Purdy Bear]

As I've only just begun to learn the Mandolin the wierdest thing I've done was connected to another instrument - the Flute. When I was doing my grade exams I took the instrument to work with me, and played during the lunch hour and brought it home to practice again. Some of those in the building didn't know I was playing and thought the old place was haunted by a phantom musician! RFLOL

[DavidKOS]

Wow, best I ever did was a guitar duet on one guitar. these guys are cool!

[Phil Goodson]

I think I put a D7 chord in a Bluegrass song once.....

[T.D.Nydn]

I don't know if it's musical,but I've detuned instruments and called to bullfrogs with them.....

[journeybear]

Well, it's weird, anyway ...

[objectsession]

I don't know if it's musical,but I've detuned instruments and called to bullfrogs with them.....

I'll admit there's very close to a 0% chance I'll ever want to call to a bullfrog, but what instruments did you use and how were they (de)tuned to attract the bullfrogs?

Those are serious questions. Less seriously, what animals can I attract with a detuned mandolin?

[Bertram Henze]

what animals can I attract with a detuned mandolin?

I'll say cows. A harmonica works wonders on them, so why not a mandolin.

[k0k0peli]

I'll say cows. A harmonica works wonders on them, so why not a mandolin.

I'll have to try both on my next trip to town past verdent pastures. Cows, horses, sheep, goats, llamas, I'll see who responds. Hope I'm not trampled.

[Purdy Bear]

Cows love music, here's some examples

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTQD7imxd8o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKRfHoY-PRY

We do have farm animals round here, but no cows, I'll have to try it out on the horses and chickens once I'm good enough and let you know.

[T.D.Nydn]

I was born and raised living on a lake,so,when I was a kid,I used to take a banjo into the bogs with me and practice.i learned mandolins don't do well in swamps.after awhile I discovered if you detuned it,I mean really detune it,like the strings almost like rubber bands and pull and slap them against the banjo head ,it makes a blunt type sound similar to a bullfrog croak,,they respond alright,,

[journeybear]

You've got to know your audience and give them what they like.

There's a fellow 'round these parts somewheres who's played to turkeys and has posted some videos of their, ah, interchanges.

[T.D.Nydn]

Hey journeybear,your right,because I never got a lot of response playing " the ballad of Jed clampett",and "foggy mountain breakdown" just seemed to piss them off......

[Toni Schula]

Played "Old Daingerfield" live on stage with a Djembi player from Ghana providing the backup.

What Bill would have thought, I can only begin to imagine.

Bill combined so many musical styles and he also did so many experiments when eventually creating that new style. Once there was even an accordion in his band. So why not a Djembi?

[Jess L.]

Bill combined so many musical styles and he also did so many experiments when eventually creating that new style. Once there was even an accordion in his band. So why not a Djembi?

Agree. No harm in musical experimenting, sometimes great things are created/discovered that way.

Speaking of unusual instrumentation, I found this while looking for something else today, this is bluegrass played on liuqin, mandolin, bass, pipa, guitar, sanxian, banjo, and ruan:


I like it. But I think if I was going to play those things I might prefer geared tuning pegs, already did my stint with steel-string fiddles and old 1890s ebony-fiddle-peg banjos... my workaround for my banjos, was to put Suzuki-style violin fine-tuners between banjo bridge and tailpiece... yeah they're supposed to be for fiddle but they can be used on other instruments too... worked good (for steel strings anyway, the nylon-strung fretless didn't really need fine-tuners) but had to make sure the fine-tuners didn't contact the head and buzz.

[Heady]

idk if this is weird, but 30 years ago at orchestra camp my quartet coach gave us Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - we were insulted. She said if we proved it was beneath us she'd give us something better. We knocked it out of the park in less than an hour, but she didn't actually have anything else so she said it still needed more. We were pissed. So every time she left the room we traded instruments. Then we started trading parts. Then while playing for her we started modulating. I'm the viola player and at one point I'm playing the 1st violin part on a cello and in the wrong key. She kept saying something sounded "off" put she couldn't "put [her] finger on it]."

Joke was on us in the end, we kept screwing with her so she never gave us better music to play.

[Jess L.]

idk if this is weird, but 30 years ago at orchestra camp my quartet coach gave us Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - we were insulted. She said if we proved it was beneath us she'd give us something better. We knocked it out of the park in less than an hour, but she didn't actually have anything else so she said it still needed more. We were pissed. So every time she left the room we traded instruments. Then we started trading parts. Then while playing for her we started modulating. I'm the viola player and at one point I'm playing the 1st violin part on a cello and in the wrong key. She kept saying something sounded "off" put she couldn't "put [her] finger on it]."

Lol! That sounds like fun!

[MikeZito]

I'm over 4 years late for the party - but sure, I'll play . . . .

Probably the weirdest musical thing I ever did happened back when I was writing radio jingles and music for corporate presentations . A guy from some vitamin drink company came to me and said that he wanted 'traditional Chinese music' for his training tape - but he wanted it to be 'danceable'. Being a dumb Italian guy from Connecticut I obviously had no idea what I was doing when it came to traditional Chinese music, so I just laid down a nice drum beat and surrounded it with gongs and other strange eastern-sounding noises . . . and the guy LOVED it! I wish I still had a recording of that.

The most miraculous thing I ever did was; once, I played a song all the way through, without screwing up! I wish I had a recording of that, too . . . .

[Bob Buckingham]

At a gig, several years ago commemorating a defunct textile mill, that made material for the first moon landing, a woman came to us with a "bluegrass opera", her words for the band to play. It was in Ab and was rich with weird time signatures. It was among the strangest gig ever, her voice was, shall we say, unforgettable.

[Chris Cochran]

My former band recorded a lot of originals back in the 80's . Every so often I would hack up one of our tunes. No apologies.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tbjgreel4j...0Away.mp3?dl=0

[Greg P. Stone]

I guess the weirdest thing was learning to play the guitar in 1985. When I told a buddy that I had bought a guitar he asked me to start playing with him on a weekly guitar duo gig because he had just lost his partner. I protested, "shouldn't I learn to play it first?" "No problem." He gave me a half hour of instruction playing two Grateful Dead songs which we never played again.

I played with him for several years and literally learned to play guitar in front of an audience.

[DevanBennett]

I don't know if this really counts, but in college I was involved as a singer and guitarist in all of these projects at the same time:

* pop-punk band
* jazz octect
* madrigal choir
* church choir
* handbell choir
* a stage musical that was reviewed (correctly) as "one of the most overpoweringly dull musical dramas of all time."
* Peter, Paul, and Mary tribute band

Many years later, I've almost learned how to limit my commitments, but I still don't have a good answer to, "so, what kind of music do you play?"

[Jeff Mando]

I guess the weirdest thing was learning to play the guitar in 1985. When I told a buddy that I had bought a guitar he asked me to start playing with him on a weekly guitar duo gig because he had just lost his partner. I protested, "shouldn't I learn to play it first?" "No problem." He gave me a half hour of instruction playing two Grateful Dead songs which we never played again.

I played with him for several years and literally learned to play guitar in front of an audience.

My cousin had a similar story in the 60's. He was friends with a popular local teenage garage band who was gigging a lot. Their organ player quit and they said he could join the band even though he couldn't play and they taught him the "three" chords. Somehow he talked his folks into buying him a $1400 Fender portable organ. He played with them for quite a while.

[Paul Cowham]

I don't know if this really counts, but in college I was involved as a singer and guitarist in all of these projects at the same time:

* pop-punk band
* jazz octect
* madrigal choir
* church choir
* handbell choir
* a stage musical that was reviewed (correctly) as "one of the most overpoweringly dull musical dramas of all time."
* Peter, Paul, and Mary tribute band

Many years later, I've almost learned how to limit my commitments, but I still don't have a good answer to, "so, what kind of music do you play?"

Wow, I thought I had a fairly "eclectic" musical diet. Respect to you Devan

[Simon DS]

Sort of weird.

I was once in a French singing class -but it wasn’t that.
There were eleven or twelve of us, I wasn’t sure exactly, plus the instructor. She switched the lights off and told us to walk about the room.
She said don’t stop walking.
Of course it was chaos with everyone talking at the same time, arms and fingers jabbing each other in the face -‘why did you do that? someone shouted, and bumping into the walls of the large round room.
Shortly afterwards there were bitter complaints. ‘Pourquoi?’, ‘Oh, la, la!’ ‘Arretes’.
Then, still in pitch blackness, the instructor began to hum a low ‘ooommmm’ sort of sound.

It was like switching on one small light and I thought, well at least I’m not going to bump into the instructor. Then someone else made a higher frequency sound, ‘aaaaaahhhhh’. Then someone else... and someone else.

Now this is the weird bit.
Suddenly I could ‘see’ the other people. I could ‘see’ them moving, but I was seeing them with a part of my mind that I don’t often use.
More people sang, and passed me, like sailing at night and seeing ferry lights on the other boats, and I would change direction to avoid them. I ‘knew’ where the walls were because most of the sound came from the centre of the room, and also because you can hear your own echo as you near a wall. I mainly listened and had this map in my mind.
Then, with the others and the instructor we started to share tones and little riffs -though I was still mainly listening and could make out all the other ten people in the room. With confidence we all began moving faster around the room.

Then ‘bang’ I collided into someone. A listener, the one other invisible person in the room.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Bought a mandolin!