I saw a program on TV a few years back about
a person who invented numerous instruments and
used them for composition. It was wonderful and
inspirational....more exotic than filling bottles
with water at varying heights...lots of percussives, strings, odd shapes...a wonderland
of invention.be crea
If anyone on this forum has or might be creating an instrument, I'd love to hear how it sounds.

In the process of it! (More of a on/off switchable modification to an existing instrument than a new one, but from the discussions I've had with other philosopher types, it would indeed be considered as a new instrument by many)

Tell us more about about it, unless its
a "patentable" item and we must wait!
How exciting!

Yes, we sort of have to wait - in one more term, I should have my patent and then I can say much much more about it. Suffice it to say I believe it will be revolutionary in all practical fields of music - pedagogy, performance, and composition.

When I was a kid our neighbor and friends of the family made banjos and it always fascinating me. I always wanted to learn to play the banjo because of that and still would like to.

Then my kids' great grandpa has made a couple fiddles, a banjo, and I think maybe some other things. I think it's neat to be able to pass the musical legacy down to my kids and future generations in the form of someone in the family that could make instruments.

So I guess my point is it's just another way by which some avenue of music even making an instrument can have an influence on others.

I used to hit my sister over the head to see if it made a hollow sound...but I wouldn't exactly call that a "new instrument". :p

laugh - Now you brought me back to thinking childhood memories (I had 2 older brothers, don't remember them hitting me over the head) but -thinking back as a child now - what about guitars made out of cereal boxes and rubberbands, drums made out of coffee cans or quaker oat boxes, tamborines made out of plastic lids with bells attached to the edges, shakers made with two paper plates stapled together filled with beans, etc., etc. I guess I have made some instruments come to think of it. I probably wouldn't have had I not had two older brothers to copy .

As a child, numerous things involving boards, tacks and rubber bands and the occasional cardboard tube. As an adult, I actually once built a lute from a kit.

We made a rain stick and used broken glass inside. Made a really neat sound.

Do you remember the wax paper over a plastic comb instrument? Kinda like a Kazoo sound.

I used to take all our crystal glasses and fill them with water and rub the edges to make the sound. I would add and subtract water and make chords. I once had our entire office party doing this. 10 people and forty or so glasses on the table, a little vinegar, pitchers of water, we played mary had a little lamb. It made so much resonating noise we bothered the people in the banquet room underneath us.

I remember the wax paper/comb instrument now too, lol, I had forgotten! I also have tried the water/glass experiment but not to that extent, hee! hee! (BTW those were two more things I would not have learned had I not had two older brothers to copy!)

I could never (sigh) make the Flat Tuba sound by cupping my hand under my armpit.

Most annoying instrument - pennies in a soda can. Poormans new years eve shaker.

I could do that one, the slightly higher baritone behind the knee, and even the trumpet with just the hands... but none of it ever got me a contract. The one I always wanted but could never do was the "hand-flute" (cup your hands, placing your thumbs together and blow through the gap to make noise). (Dad used to do it all the time...but I could never figure it out.)

I didn't know these noises were considered instruments. I can do the "hand-flute" sound :p (but I though it was a turtle dove sound) - another thing I learned from those "wonderful" older brothers of mine :p and they don't even play any instruments now .

The "flute" reminded me of another instrument, blowing across the top of a glass pop bottle. I think it works on the plastic pop bottles too.

I dunno what a "pop" bottle is...but I know it works on soda bottles.... :p

(It'll actually work on any necked bottle that can vibrate air with a resonant frequency within the range of the human ear. <---Or something like that. :p )

"laugh"/ :rolleyes: - There's always a smart one in the crowd!

In Indiana we called it pop, short for soda pop. When I moved to Florida they called it soda. When I moved to Pennsylvania it was soda on the eastern side. In West Virginia it is "pop" and some of the folks on the western side of PA use "pop".
When I was in PA i could never get used to speghetti sauce being called "gravy"... that was weird.

Getting off topic a little, when I moved from Co. to Mi., I was a cashier at a dept. store and asked people, "would you like a sack?" They looked at me dumbfounded and the usual response was "what?" It took me a long time to get used to asking, "would you like a bag?" Now I never know which to call it without getting confused.

Getting back on topic a little, speaking of unconventional instruments, has anyone ever seen concerts where they use trash can lids, etc. as drums? Very cool.

That brings up another good question since we're in a composer's forum, has anyone ever written a piece of music for non-conventional instruments?

I can do a cool arrangement of Twinkle Twinkle using the rubber-bands on my braces and opening mouth at varying widths to get the different pitches.

Another thing:

I could have sworn that I invented this, but it aparently existed before me.... the "prepared piano" (I called it Jacked Piano)... When I was in highschool, I entertwined string and paper in the strings of my mother's old piano and would play. Each key would have a completely different tone, and it was so creepy. Anyway, later I learned of John Cage, and realized he did that kind of thing all the time. It burst my bubble. That's when I moved onto braces rubber-bands.

Mary, does this mean your musical career will be over when you get your braces off? Have you worked on any other "band" compositions?

I'm surprized none of the techs have posted a groan at the thought of someone intertwining rubber bands and paper on the strings of a piano.

I suppose I have in a sense. A long time ago I noticed that 2^(17/29)= 1.50129... which is remarkably close to 3/2, much closer than the 2^(7/12)used in 12 note equal temperament.

Therefore, an arrangement of 29 notes to the octave ought to give a pretty satisfactory aural approximation to harmonic intervals. I wrote a programme to play music within this scale and experimented with it for some time. 29, being prime, prohibits symmetric chords, which fact I at first considered a blemish. However, 28 and 30 between them account for approximate symmetries of 2,3,4,5,6,7,10,14 and 15 and the diatonic scales are embedded most satisfactorily, all 29 of them.

I had the programme play more or less diatonic passages involving the circle of 29 keys, recorded the result and tried it out on musicians. Nobody realised they were listening to modulations through 29 keys instead of 12, which fact I found amazing.

I keep intending to rework this idea into something interesting but haven't got around to it yet.

A couple of years back, I invented a new type of organ pipe. I don't think this would qualify as a new instrument, but at least it works! It is a type of diaphone, but the resonators are very small, and the tone is louder and clearer than in traditional diaphones. Best of all, to produce a note of 16 Hz, the resonator only needs to be about 8' long! If you are curious, I could go deeper into the mechanics of this.

I designed what I called a "violaclavier" a while back which would be a mechanical bowed-string keyboard instrument. The player would press the keys and these would active a mechanism much like the weighted disc/gear mechanism in friction toy cars that children play with. That mechanism would bring a rotating disc with violin bow string against an actual string. The faster the player presses the key (and the faster the frequency) the greater pressure will be applied to the string. I've also considered having the bowing action powered by pedals, and then the keys would only put pressure against the strings with the rotating bow mechanisms.

Kind of a retarded idea, I know, since we have really good synthesizers now, but I'm a little surprised nobody did that back in the harpsichord/piano/organ era. Maybe someone did I've never looked. Seems like it would work though.

There's the hurdy gurdy . Not quite what you described, but the principle is very similar.

Haha...yeah very close only smaller! guess I just designed a "grand hurdy gurdy." I had heard of a hurdy gurdy but I was unaware it used strings. I think when I heard it before it sounded so reedy I assumed it had pipes. That's neat.

Not invented an instrument per se. Too "old fashion".

(not really, I'm just teasing you to bite in for a debate and flaming, etc! )

No, but I do extensive sound design in my works, which is mighty creative, as far as I can tell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL1YskdpHzM . Stero image is missing, but this is made from piano and string sounds only!