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This epic musical geek creation is called the gAtari-a musical instrument which uses the extremely limited sound capabilities of the Atari 2600 to make the kind of music hardcore gamers will love, and parents will classify as noise.
I don’t fully understand how the device works, but here the creator cTrix attempts to explain how, and why, he came up with it:
The “gAtari” was my excuse to do something a little silly after I discovered that the Atari 2600 was more limiting than I realized! (31 pitches, minimal waveforms and only 2 channels!) I needed an EQ which could take a high voltage and drop it down to line level (Boss bass EQ) plus a way to hold loops between tracks and parts (Boss delay). So rather than have it “DJ” style config, I thought I make something a little more creative.
I hope the gAtari sparks a new trend in club music, doesn’t the sweet sounds coming out of this thing make you wanna get up and shake your rump?
–via GeeksAreSexy
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The waterphone is a musical instrument invented by Richard Waters in the 1970s. It has a steel resonator partially filled with water. Rods of various lengths project away from the resonator and can be played by striking with a mallet or stroking with a bow. The eerie music that results has been used extensively in movie soundtracks. Listen to this sample, and you can understand why.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ
The Swingtop Philharmonic Orchestra, an all-star combo assembled especially for this project, plays “Oh, Christmas Tree” on instruments made from beer bottles in this ad from Belgian Dutch brewer Grolsch. -via the Presurfer
Marvin Maxwell once made a guitar from a toilet seat. Now he’s reversed that idea and made a toilet seat that looks like a guitar! Or how abut a “piano bench”, if that’s your taste? Several colors are available from Jammin’ Johns. Link
Last summer David Byrne of The Talking Heads converted an entire building, the Camden Roundhouse in London, into a musical instrument! He connected every pipe, pillar, and beam to a keyboard, from which you can make them vibrate and produce their individual sounds. This is one only of several large and different musical instruments made out of structures such as silos, a tower, a synagogue, and more at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
(Image credit: Mark Obstfeld)
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For this brief video, a mouthpiece and vinyl tubing have been combined to illustrate some basic principles regarding the generation of musical notes. It reminds me of the unusual musical creations of Gerard Hoffnung, who commissioned the “Grand, Grand Overture” by Malcolm Arnold (scored for three vacuum cleaners and an electric floor polisher). One instrument Hoffnung devised was the “hosepipe” – a mouthpiece attached to a garden hose.
And a hat tip to Yucatanstan [nice name!] for identifying the instructor as Dr. John Winkler, Professor of Trumpet at West Virginia University’s College of Creative Arts.
Via Arbroath.
Pitched one octave below bass, contrabass and subcontrabass instruments are about as low as most instruments go. Aside from those massive pipe organs, they’re also about as big as most instruments get.
See and hear the biggest flutes, clarinets, saxophones, and more in this collection of videos. Link -via the Presurfer
Andy Mackie of Washington state had undergone nine heart operations and was taking 15 different drugs when he decided to quit. He gave up the medicine and started using the money he saved to give away harmonicas and music lessons to local kids. Mackie figured it would be a gift before he died.
“I really thought it was the last thing I could ever do,” he says.
And when he didn’t die the next month, he bought a few hundred more.
Harmonicas in hand, he explains, “I just started going from school to school.”
It’s now 11 years and 13,000 harmonicas later.
The now 70-year-old Mackie also makes and buys other musical instruments for interested children, and arranges for his older students to give lessons to younger kids.
Mackie says, “I tell them music is a gift, you give it away – you give it away and you get to keep it forever.”
Link -via Metafilter
(image credit: CBS)
