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SUZUKI OMNICHORD Back in 1981 the Suzuki Music Corporation released the Omnichord, an electronic version of the autoharp. It had the same tonal characteristics as keyboards of the day, but was much easier to learn since you only needed to know the alphabet in order to recreate any type of music.  Throughout the 80s and into the late 90's, Suzuki released upgraded models that had better strumplates, more features and MIDI interface capabilities. It was adopted by a diverse array of people, from schools and programs to help the disabled to church choirs and stars like David Bowie and Brian Eno. SUZUKI QCHORD  After two decades of Omnichord models, Suzuki decided to revamp the instrument and released the QChord Digital Songcard Guitar in 2000. The form factor was redesigned to mimic a guitar and Suzuki added a slot for QCards, which hold either pre-recorded songs to play along with or new rhythms for creating your own tunes.  The 'arm' of the QChord contains the buttons for choosing the chords you wish to play. With a single button press, the chord buttons can be turned into a keyboard for playing melody lines. The QChord comes with a keyboard overlay so you know what key does what in piano mode. The range of the keyboard is 4 full octaves, adjustable using the control buttons. What makes the QChord unique among most keyboard/synth gadgets is the touch sensitive strumplate on the side. This plate covers 4 octaves and all notes are preset by the chord buttons, guaranteeing that wherever you touch the plate, you'll play a note in the correct key. Aside from the 10 built in voices accessible by the control buttons, there are also 100 general MIDI voices that can be assigned to the strumplate.  OMNICHORD VIDEOS Omnichord Demo – Demo of functionality of an earlier Omnichord model (OM-84) MGMT – Kids cover – Girl covering MGMT on her Omnichord OM-82 OM-300 Demo – Demo of the last Omnichord model to be released before the QChord debuted Omnichord Demo – Casey Desmond demos her Omnichord QCHORD VIDEOS QChord Intro Video – A basic testimonial/demo video with all the charm of Made for TV informercials Amazing Grace – A video of a song everyone knows and is included on one of the QCards Let It Be – Another song everyone knows played by a crazy old man Strumplate Demo – A demo of the strumplate and pitch bending wheel Melody Keyboard Demo – A short improv using the piano function Mod Your QChord – Mod your QChord with paper clips, clothespins and wire ties
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Mar 4, 2012 08:59
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How about the steel guitar! Love that country twang. 
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Mar 4, 2012 17:26
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I didn't see anything about this instrument mentioned but maybe someone can help me. I REALLY want to learn to play the guzheng (Chinese zither), but I'm a broke student. My birthday is coming up but I know my family can't afford a $350 instrument. Does anyone know if there's a place I can get a beginner model cheaper? Even if it's secondhand. I want to learn to play so much!
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Mar 5, 2012 03:13
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BigHustle: thanks for the Q-chord writeup! Really interesting, and apparently really accessible instrument. I do also want to point out the Canadian musician Jenny Omnichord, who does some cool singer-songwriter stuff. Overall seems a good option for chiptune/bitcore lovers who want to learn an instrument.quote:How about the steel guitar! Love that country twang. We cover the dobro, slide guitar, and Hawaiian guitar on page 4, and the lap-steel and pedal-steel guitar on page 11. Note I've updated the handy-dandy table of contents in the OP. If you like slide guitar for country, probably your best bet is to get a lap-steel guitar, which are crazy cheap since they're really easy to build, plus there's a huge surplus of vintage ones on eBay and all. You can buy a decent quality starter lap-steel on eBay for $100ish any day of the week. Toss in another $20 for a good steel, $5 for fingerpicks. You'll need an amp to run it through, but amps get sold for cheap on Craigslist all the time; I've bought decent amps for $20-50.  If you want to go acoustic, page 4 covers that pretty well, and the electric stuff on page 11. And if electric, make sure to join the forum suggested on page 11. If you have any questions beyond those, we have a couple goons who play these, so we got you covered. Ekplixi posted:I didn't see anything about this instrument mentioned but maybe someone can help me. I REALLY want to learn to play the guzheng (Chinese zither), but I'm a broke student. My birthday is coming up but I know my family can't afford a $350 instrument. Does anyone know if there's a place I can get a beginner model cheaper? Even if it's secondhand. I want to learn to play so much!  This is a tricky one; are you in China, or in the US, or where? Glancing at eBay, these come as low as $250-300, but with the low budget you're aiming for the odds of finding any decent non-lovely guzheng seem low unless you're living in China and can pick one up in a pawnshop or something. I don't know if lurking eBay can get you an ultra-cheap but actually playable guzheng (and I wouldn't bet on that unless you can get specific advice from a guzheng player about finding a beater student one), so let's momentarily proceed with the assumption that you can't buy one. If money is indeed tight, but your desire is high, personally I'd vote you chuck caution to the winds and just build a drat guzheng. This is just off the top of my head here, but poking around the early guzheng had 5 strings, so let's start with that as a baseline. Buy/salvage a long 2x4, drill cut into one end to install some guitar tuners (classical guitar?), which you can buy for maybe $10-20 online, or cheaper if you have a guitar repair place in your town which has a scrap bucket of old parts. Then just buy five strings in the proper gauges, string them onto the guitar tuners at one end, and drill reinforced holes at the other end of the board to knot them through. Then the guzheng has this weird movable bridge system I'm not totally clear on, but either improvise the bridges with bits of wood or whatever, or spring for a set of guzheng bridges online. you need 2 per string I think, and you can buy a set of 21 on eBay for like $25 (not tip-top quality, I'm sure, but still). Okay, so now you've got five strings suspended in the air, with two movable bridges on each. That's a drat guzheng. If you want to get more resonance (and I'm being totally serious here), find a long/shallow box of heavy cardboard, maybe like the ones fluorescent tub lights come in, hose it down with plenty of spray-paint and/or clearcoat or whatever to make it stiff and durable, and glue your 2x4 guzheng on top of that. That's about how a cardboard dulcimer works, and those are perfectly fine instruments for students, and we have goons in this thread who've bought them and love them. Bang, starter primitive guzheng for: Cheap: salvaged wood, $5 scrap classical guitar tuners, $10 improvised strings from guitar strings, improvised bridges = $15ish? Nicer: $15 board, $20 decent tuners, $20 set of genuine guzheng strings, $25 box of guzheng bridges = $75? Here's a cardboard dulcimer; imagine this with a wider board, five strings spaced far enough apart to play, as long/short as you want it to be, and two movable bridges per string. Note how the tuners are worked into the wood, I'd recommend doing them from the side like that so the strings start off low enough and come up.  FAKE EDIT: I'm not sure how wide guzheng bridges are, so if they're too wide you'll either need a wider piece of wood (2x6?) or else make improvised bridges from wedges of whatever material. Depending on the thickness of your board and its stiffness, and the string pressure, you might get some curvage which may or may not annoy you, and if so you just need to brace the underside to prevent that. EDIT: Now, I'd still start out by going to chinesezithers.net and posting on their forums there for advice. Maybe there are indeed some cheap but playable guzhengs out there, or maybe someone has some cool suggestions for your cardboard guzheng. I would also post on the Building/Repairing subforum over at everythingdulcimer.com . A guzheng is pretty close to a dulcimer, and folks there are pretty cool and odds are someone will be interested in your project and give some good advice. As further evidence of the odd guzheng/guqin/koto relation to dulcimer, here's a cool clip of an electric guqin made by the American dude who builds the Dulcicaster electric dulcimer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZJQNYLdFuY So that's my idea. Either suck it up and save up for a decent guzheng (not just the first lovely one you can afford), or else put in some sweat equity to make one. Don't think of it as a sad compromise, think of it as really grasping the instrument. There are plenty of players of the cigar-box guitar on YouTube who can utterly smoke guys playing $1000 guitars, using their $20 instrument, so a lot of it is just attention and attitude. Hope thins helps you, and definitely keep us posted if you end up making a cardboard guzheng! Got to get some stuff done before bedtime, so will attend to the harp, Irish flute, and Hayden and English concertina stuff in a day or two. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 5, 2012 04:27
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I need like a Big Book of Folk Tunes for my concertina, because the only sheet music I have around is piano stuff. Any suggestions?
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Mar 5, 2012 14:08
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Thanks to this thread, I picked up a recorder yesterday. They only had sopranos at the shop I stopped by, with a choice between "baroque" and German fingering. Having left my phone in the car, I took a gamble on baroque. Later Googling vindicated my choice.  I must say, it's an amazing instrument. It makes a great sound with little effort. I picked it up and played Three Blind Mice in a snap. By the end of the day, I was playing the vocal sections to a dozen James Taylor, Carol King, Beatles and Jethro Tull songs, and any other tunes that popped into my head. (For the person asking about Tull songs, check out the woodwind piece on Velvet Green. It's easy on recorder! e: Also, Fire at Midnight) My only complaint is that it's a soprano, and is rooted in C, leaving me improvising or blowing low C every time a song dropped down, usually on the last or second last note. Either that or killing my ears on the second octave. What other keys are available? What are going to be most common? Are the mouthpiece / foot interchangeable by any chance, i.e.: swap out the main body for a different key? Tan Dumplord fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Mar 5, 2012 |
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Mar 5, 2012 15:18
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quote:That said, I had not seen much other than page 3 on the lap (celtic) harp. I just started learning/practicing it pretty recently (while I was unemployed in February, needed something to do with the time between job interviews!). That said, does anyone have any recommendations on practice material with it, or online resources for it? Especially stuff written for both hands. I'm not totally sure if we have more than a couple Celtic/folk harpers on SA. I know there are a few classical harpists, and with them I've run into the same problem as with goon bagpipers: someone says "hey, I'm interested in harp", and the classical folks start talking to them about 7" tall $8000 pedal harps, rather than try and figure out if they want to jam out some O'Carolan in their lap. Same thing with Great Highland bagpipers, where they assume everyone else wants to wear a kilt and march around with 50 other guys, as opposed to play Scottish dance tunes along with a fiddler (smallpipes), play Irish tunes in a session (uilleann pipes), or amplify them for death metal (most of the medieval or German pipes work for this). In any case, specifics on sheet music is probably above us; Harp Column has a forum that's a mix of folk and classical harpist, so worth checking. And TheSession is one of the more popular Celtic forums; though a bit more session-y it's bound to have some harpers too. I'd put some thought (and some YouTube watching) into what genres/traditions of harping interest you. The Irish stuff is pretty well documented and probably tons of sheet music somewhere, but Welsh, Scottish, and Bretagne traditions are strong as well. Check out some Alan Stivell if you haven't already, probably one of the world's most famous folk harpers, and out of the Bretagne (Celtic northwestern France) tradition.  If you get some good answers or buy some cool books, definitely check back in here to share the info. By the bye, what kind of harp did you get, and what kind of music are you fixing to play? Chin Strap posted:I need like a Big Book of Folk Tunes for my concertina, because the only sheet music I have around is piano stuff. Any suggestions? Really depends what you mean by "folk". Are you talking instrumental melodies, or more singalong ballad stuff? If the former, books will tend to be broken down by tradition, and be fat scholarly items. For Irish the hands-down is O'Neill's Music of Ireland, written in 1903 by a mick cop in Chicago who scribbled down the melodies for 1,850 Irish tunes from Ireland and the diaspora. It's in the public domain, so you can buy it hardcopy or read it all online. I keep meaning to check if anyone's ever claimed to have learned (or at least played) every single tune in O'Neill's book. Someone could probably write a short book about the experience. Similar books exist to varying degrees for other traditions. Not that you're into Cajun, but Yé yaille, chère is an awesome fat hardcover book with the melodies for hundreds of Cajun dance tunes. So yeah, you kind of have to pick a tradition and find its classic book if you're talking instrumental melodies. Now, if you're talking like "House of the Rising Sun" and "Black is the Colour of My True Love's Hair" and those other Anglo-Celtic-American songs, there are a goodly number of books out there. My only caution is you want to be careful (I assume) to get a book that has both the staff-music melody and the chords and lyrics, vice just a chord-lyric book. There are several comprehensive books published under Alan Lomax's name, with songs from the music he field-recorded. A bit more obscure, but I'm a fan of the work of Keith and Rusty McNeil, a couple who compiled a bunch of American history songs and performed them along with audio explaining the context behind all the songs. Unfortunately, their work appears to be mainly available on audiocassette, but there are matching books of sheet music for each album. The King County Library System outside Seattle had most of his stuff, and I learned some songs from those as a lad, so maybe inter-library loan can get you the tapes and books?  There are also plenty of publishers of "fakebooks", which are all down-and-dirty simple music for jamming and such. A brief Amazon perusal turns up the Hal Leonard folksong fakebook, which does appear to have written melodies too. HL is a slightly cheesy publisher, but if you're looking for commonly-known classics it's probably a good deal for $15. In terms of free junk online: - http://www.folktunefinder.com/ - which also has a cool app where you can play a few notes on a clickable keyboard and it'll try to figure out what song you're thinking - abc.sourceforge.net/NMD/ Nottingham Music Database - just ran across this recently, mostly English stuff - Mudcat.org - this is one of the main folk-music websites since the Internet began. A jumble of a lot of stuff, but they do have a ton of folk music. If you find some good stuff in the above, drop back by here and let us know what you found and liked. We did have withak post on the previous page with his interest in Hayden concertinas, so if you have any conclusions from the time spent with yours so far, that'd be good to have. I'm certainly digging mine, and need to get off my rear end and engage my plan to do some YouTube covers of Alan Ginsberg's music. Ginsberg used a little Indian pump-harmonium, and Hayden concertina does an awfully good job of imitating that for backing up voice. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Mar 6, 2012 |
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Mar 6, 2012 06:31
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I am not going to learn an instrument, but I am already quite familiar with recorder and saw some folks asking for tips about it. I just thought I'd chime in and say the toughest thing about recorder is not using too much air. Most people are used to maxing out their air when they play wind instruments, as they should. But recorder takes almost no air at all - you can get a strong fan to play it. If you get to the exact amount you need you can start playing with your timbre, pitch bending, and tuning, as well as get that sweet bubbly recorder sound that you might hear on recordings. sliderule posted:Thanks to this thread, I picked up a recorder yesterday. They only had sopranos at the shop I stopped by, with a choice between "baroque" and German fingering. Having left my phone in the car, I took a gamble on baroque. Later Googling vindicated my choice. If you want another key, get an alto recorder. It won't really solve your problem because in my experience not many songs are in suitable keys for the alto, but plenty of 'em might be once you have the facility to play in high-sharp or high-flat keys(which isn't that bad, if you put a little bit of real work in on it). There are also tenor and bass, but they are not really suitable. I have never heard of people making such extensions. empty whippet box fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Mar 6, 2012 |
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Mar 6, 2012 08:27
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I scored a CC Elise on ebay for pretty cheap. 
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Mar 6, 2012 15:52
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:
I will do. As far as first books, I cannot recommend Sylvia Woods' Teach Yourself to Play Folk Harp enough. That and the DVD you can pair with it both are helping me get placing and stuff down. I also tend to play music better if I know what it's meant to sound like--plus I can watch how she places in the DVD and see what I might need to tweak in myself to be more smooth. There's a good mix of different tunes from different regions, too, so that is pretty nice. Harp wise I have a 22 string Celtic, bought second hand off someone in my area. It's C to C, so I have a pretty good range, and for the most part I've been able to alter the G below C-below up an octave without too much trouble. It was kind of a steal since the person was moving and didn't want to take both their harps with them (they had one a bit bigger) and no one here really plays. As for what I'm playing, I'm really just sampling a little of everything, though primarily focusing on working my way through the Woods book and finger exercises. I'm aiming to be able to buy a few more books to work through in about a month, and (as I'm enjoying it now) start throwing some money into savings so I can possibly get a bigger harp. Don't plan on a pedal harp though--I could buy a house for the price of those! I quite like the lever harps and the versatility you can get out of them. 
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Mar 7, 2012 02:35
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Does anyone have any idea what the quality of this ocarina I have is, and how to get started playing it if it's not too cheap/lovely to be worth bothering with at all? I don't even know how to hold it properly, every way I can figure out feels a little awkward. These aren't pictures of mine, but it is the exact same model.   I bought it locally, but this is the ebay page I found this one on: http://tinyurl.com/7mxjnde edit: did some research, apparently peruvian ocarinas are like, the worst for just playing around on and are specifically a bad thing for newbies to use. 
Lavender Philtrum fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Mar 7, 2012 |
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Mar 7, 2012 06:31
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Lavender Philtrum posted:edit: did some research, apparently peruvian ocarinas are like, the worst for just playing around on and are specifically a bad thing for newbies to use. Well, several points of good news: - At least you looked into it rather than try it, fail, and think it was your fault rather than a crude instrument - It makes a really cool-looking knick-knack - Really nice starter ocarinas can be quite inexpensive, like $15-20. See OP (wherein I also warn against getting generic imported clay ocarinas) Be forewarned that WAFFLEHOUND has strong opinions on ocarina brands. Read up a little online, buy one from a reliable maker, and go nuts. quote:I scored a CC Elise on ebay for pretty cheap. Awesome, Hayden Duet-system concertinas rock. It's a really, really intuitive system to play on; not as lighting-fast on melody as English, but way smoother to harmonise with yourself on. In my personal experience, the easy way to start out is to play a two-note root-fifth drone on the left hand, and play a melody on the right. So start off with a song where a simple drone throughout doesn't sound bad, like Amazing Grace or some Scottish tune. Then I started doing 2 or 3-chord tunes, and on my left I'd play just a root-fifth chord (so CG instead of CEG for a C-chord), and have my left switch between chords while my right did the melody. I really haven't done much more advanced than that, other than playing the same tune in different octaves on each hand, which is a fun mental exercise too. So far as what do with it, musically, it's great for basic song accompaniment, either chording and the occasional solo, or doing some counterpoint or descant if you're clever. Does instrumental work quite well too; check out this version of the Shetland tune, Da Slockit Light. Starts out slow with just melody, but then those slow, humming chords kick in and it's just lovely. If you want to take a whole 'nother angle on it, you can try what I'm dabbling with: taking inspiration from Indian music and using the Hayden either as a shruti box, or like an Indian pump harmonium. Check out some of the genres, like kirtan where people sing over drones or a really simple chord set. That's kind of where Allen Ginsberg gets his style from (note my above post). In general, check out harmonium players East and West to get some Hayden ideas; check out some Nico from the Velvet Underground. quote:Harp wise I have a 22 string Celtic, bought second hand off someone in my area. It's C to C, so I have a pretty good range, and for the most part I've been able to alter the G below C-below up an octave without too much trouble. It was kind of a steal since the person was moving and didn't want to take both their harps with them (they had one a bit bigger) and no one here really plays. Awesome; any particular make, or an unlabeled generic? If/when you do upgrade, specifically what (more strings, more levers, bigger?) would you aim to find in a better harp? So far as repertoire; if you like Irish stuff, there's plenty of learning materials out there. I'll be contrarian though, and say that if you like harping but don't have a preference for Irish over anything else, take a hard look at the other harping traditions. There's actually a book that has samples from a huge swath of Celtic cultures, called Easy Celtic Harp Solos: Irish, Manx, Bretton, Hebridean, Scottish, Cornish, Welsh, which can be bought from various folkshops, or for $7.99 as an eBook off Google. That seems a promising array of tunes to sample. After the omnipresent Irish books, Scottish harping books seem most readily available, and then shrift gets shorter for Welsh and Breton, though there is oddly enough an entire book of Manx music for harp. The Sylvia Woods Center also has several books of Scandinavian harp, which surprised me because the harp was dead in much of Scandinavia for a century or so until the Folk Revival. If you like Irish, go Irish. But if you're exploring, definitely branch out, try something different from the other harpers. 
TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Mar 8, 2012 |
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Mar 8, 2012 02:32
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Awesome; any particular make, or an unlabeled generic? If/when you do upgrade, specifically what (more strings, more levers, bigger?) would you aim to find in a better harp? It's a generic, or at least I can't find a label on it. It sounds good and holds its tuning (I've played other instruments before), and the sharping levers actually sharp just right, so it's been pretty well cared for before I got it. The soundboard is actual wood instead of plywood or something cheap. Who knows how much it would have been otherwise. The main thing I'd be looking for would be a move up in strings--ideally I'd like 5 octaves to play around with. I haven't really needed to use levers, though I'd like them since they seem useful for when you do. I'd love to get the Salvi Ana one day, mostly because I love how it looks. The Salvi Nicoletta would be pretty ideal though; that or the Lyon & Healy Ogden. I'm really not decided at all because that will be some time away. I'm definitely keeping a smaller harp though, nothing really beats being able to sit with resting between my knees and play a few little songs. I might even change my mind and just get a 26 string harp and use the extra money on something else! Thanks for the advice--I will certainly look into that! I'll probably sample a few of those, music isn't very expensive after all.
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Mar 8, 2012 02:51
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So a couple of weeks ago, after listening to a lot of Hindustani classical music, I got myself both a bansuri and, for good measure, a tinwistle. Progress is slow but steady on both instruments, and it feels good to learn something new again For anyone, especially in Europe, interested in getting a bansuri, I recommend this site. For some reason they stick with using order forms for their stuff, but the shipping costs are lots cheaper than any other site I've seen.
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Mar 9, 2012 13:11
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(From a little earlier in the thread:)FLX posted:I think we should all post videos of ourselves struggling with our new instruments! I got my Theremin yesterday and practiced a song, which you all should know pretty well This is a really great video and I'm glad you recorded it. I love watching videos of all these crazy instruments and i've always thought the vast majority of them needed true HD videos with great audio to demonstrate them, as I'm pretty sure the only person who's showed off most of these is Brett Domino and he tends to sway towards the electronic stuff like the Stylophone and Theremin. I'd love to see HD, modern videos with good audio, of stuff like cigar box guitars, jug bass, NA Flute, tinwhistle, etc. So many of these videos, I've found, while going through this thread, are of really poor quality, usually in both audio and video, and a large amount are just totally broken and have been removed since the thread was made. If I end up pursuing this and making some sort of youtube channel with HD audio/video of weird instruments I'll be sure to post it in the thread. On another note, I ordered an Oak (company, not material) Pennywhistle In D and I plan on getting a good plastic ocarina ASAP. I love the idea of having a handful of weird instruments just lying around the house I can pick up and mess with, and I plan on picking up either the ocarina or tinwhistle semi-seriously. I'd be super interested in an NA Flute but $50 is too rich for my blood in my current situation. Lavender Philtrum fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Mar 10, 2012 |
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Mar 10, 2012 02:03
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Longhouse posted:So a couple of weeks ago, after listening to a lot of Hindustani classical music, I got myself both a bansuri and, for good measure, a tinwistle. Progress is slow but steady on both instruments, and it feels good to learn something new again So are you going to teach yourself the basics of Hindustani classical music as well? Could be an interesting challenge, though fortunately there are a goodly number of books in English, as well as some YouTube tutorials, for learning the basics. There appear to be a pretty solid number of Westerners who've gotten quite respectable on Hindustani instruments, so maybe it's more accessible than I would have guessed.  Since we've mentioned theremin again, I glanced around at what's on the theremin market these days. Generally most theremins under $300 or so are reckoned as "toy theremins", many of which are more for making cool sound effects rather than actually playing melodies. Many of them lack a volume antenna, and some are actually based on factors other than proximity, like optic-type "theremins" that are based on the band blocking off light to a sensor. Apparently there is one "toy theremin" that's actually pretty solid for the money: Gakken Premium Theremin runs under $100 on eBay. Not to be confused with the Gakken mini-theremin, which is more of a toy. The Premium appears to be kind of along the lines of the Moog-style, and while not the same level of quality at least gives a basic feel for a proper theremin, and has been getting pretty good reviews from what I've seen so far. Check out this guy playing the melody line of a tango on a Gakken.  There are also a few folks who've stripped the electronics out of the cheap plastic bodies of the Gakkens, and reinstalled them in a cigar box to get a classier look:  And, for cuteness, a Scottish Fold cat in Japan playing the mini-theremin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ONJfp95yoE&feature=related
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Mar 10, 2012 23:31
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I'm working up a new instrument post, and a most cool one, for the coming week, but in the meantime wanted to put out a pitch for the ClearTune smartphone app for iPhone or Android. It's $4, fully chromatic with the scale showing hz increment. Extra cool for anyone really geeky is that it can be sent for all kinds of different intonations based on various pitches, so you can set it for, say, Just Intonation in D for an Open D tuning on strings, or various Baroque tunings set at A=415hz, etc. Those are rather advanced options, but as a basic tuner I've been really pleased with it indeed.
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Mar 12, 2012 01:28
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And now my favourite for all East Asian instruments, one that combines the glissando of slide guitar, the drony rumble of dulcimer, and the mellowness of the classical guitar. Qin (or guqin as they call it in recent centuries)  The qin is believed to be several thousand years old, and is frankly breathtaking in its minimalism. It's simply a long, slightly curved board over which seven strings (silk, or these days nylon) are stretched, just low enough over the wood that they can be pressed down to its surface. The strings can be plucked just as they are (open, like a harp), can be pressed down to the board to "fret" them and raise their pitch, or can be lightly touched while plucking to produce "harmonics", bell-like tones caused by isolating chunks of the vibrating string's sine-wave. So it's really an instrument of intimate closeness to the string dynamics, and not a whole lot else. Those white dots painted on it indicate mathematical intervals in the string's length, to make finding the harmonics easier, while the underside is often painted with Chinese poetry.  The instrument has been fundamental to Chinese high art throughout history, and played by figures up to and including Confucius. In the modern day, it was even selected to be shot out into space as part of the Voyager Golden Record, having been chosen due to its fondness for the pure mathematical intervals of the harmonics. The instrument was and is generally played solo, partially because it's a rather quiet instrument and a lot of its nuances would be lost in a band. And partially because it's more of a ritual and scholarly instrument, though modern players have taken it a wide variety of directions.  So far as related instruments: no, it's really not the same thing as a Chinese guzhen or Japanese koto, despite some vague similarity if you squint. Those instruments have strings high up that can't be pressed and slid down on the board, and have a system of floating bridges very unlike the qin's simple "strap string down at each end of board." There's apparently even a handy macro to cover this:  So far as where to buy these, I don't have the best gouge on that. They can go as cheap as $200 or so on eBay, but I am emphatically not recommending buying those without some endorsement from actual qin players, and a brief perusal at the Traditional Chinese Music Forum seems to indicate the eBay markup is huge over what you'd pay if you can just buy directly from a Chinese site. Apparently some folks who can actually read Chinese can recommend some online sellers with less markup. So far as qin already imported to the US, there is a site ChineseCulture.net that's a California-based qin dealer that, to outward appearances, seems musically serious and involved in the playing community, with qin starting at $700. The owner of ChineseZither.net sells guzheng, and apparently also guqin. If you live in a city with a good-sized Chinese community, you might have a Guqin Association to go touch base with, and that'd probably be your best bet for finding starting instruments and instruction. Failing that, ChineseZither.net appears to be the main English-language forum to talk shop on guqin, guzheng, and the rest, with the above-mentioned Trad Chinese Music forum also looking useful.  - A round-eyed devil doing a nice slow and nuanced guqin piece - Jung-Ping Yuan, one of many cool clips of this old dude playing and singing traditional songs. A lot of qin tunes have awesome titles, like "Drunken Madness" - This guy is the loving man, a math teacher in Portland (the good one, in Oregon) who does both traditional guqin and also some jazzy fusion. If you like this track, go listen to every clip of his on YouTube. This tune is influenced by Hawaiian slack-key guitar, so even more Western than usual for him. It also has a lot of great use of harmonics; note the bit where his fingers just barely rest on the string while he plucks, and gets that chiming sound. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Jul 13, 2013 |
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Mar 15, 2012 06:09
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:... Thanks to this thread, I think I might well pick one up, just as I got myself a nice ocarina from one of the links posted in the first couple of pages here. (Twelve-hole alto C sweet potato, if I recall the description correctly. I don't play Legend of Zelda tunes on it, though. I play tunes from Illusion of Gaia, which is totally different and far superior, of course .)This is a pretty awesome thread; thanks for posting it!
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Mar 15, 2012 21:09
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People may have seen this but it's worth it anyway. Why not play a normal instrument in a weird way? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx4cRw6TIIg
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Mar 15, 2012 21:36
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My whistle in D arrived today! It's a harsh mistress, it can either sound as bad as my peruvian ocarina at the worst of times if I'm playing poorly or really drat good if I play correctly and the difference between those states is a hair. It's definitely fun though, even if I am a little afraid I'm bothering people around me. It says on the package the mouthpiece thing is adjustable and you can adjust the tuning but it doesn't seem to budge so I don't know what they mean by that, maybe someone can elaborate.
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Mar 15, 2012 22:43
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Usually the glue that holds the mouthpiece on is pretty weak. You might just have to pull/twist harder to break it loose. Heating it with hot water or steam can supposedly help also, but I've never had to go that far.
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Mar 15, 2012 23:55
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withak posted:Usually the glue that holds the mouthpiece on is pretty weak. You might just have to pull/twist harder to break it loose. Heating it with hot water or steam can supposedly help also, but I've never had to go that far. I've had to do that on a few. Usually I just turn the tap on until it's hot as it gets, and then run a string of water over the whistle body (held horizontal) while trying not to get hot water actually on the plastic. Do that for a few seconds, and then grasp the head and pull while twisting slightly. It should come off pretty easy. If your tap doesn't get particularly hot, you can just boil some water and then pour it (carefully) over the metal body close to the head.
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Mar 16, 2012 23:44
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The harp playing continues apace, and it's still really soothing. I just got paid, so I've got a few music books on the way! Very excited. :3 While I know it's a bit shoddy (I'm still learning how to minimize buzzing, and I know I didn't hit that A on my right hand as loud as I should have), I wanted to share my playing of the first slightly complicated two handed piece I've had. This really makes me proud, as this song was something of a stumbling block for me, and has forced me to really practice the techniques prior in the book.  Hope no one minds.  It's only about a month that I've been playing the lap harp now, but I just wanted to share what you can do with a few minutes of practice a day. I've never played piano or any other instrument where moving both hands simultaneously for different notes was a thing, so this has been a real challenge for me.
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Mar 17, 2012 02:18
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quote:Hope no one minds. For as short as you've been playing, this sounds great. The rhythm is a bit halting, but good coordination between the hands, melody is nice and clear, etc. Certainly nice work! FelicityGS posted:The harp playing continues apace, and it's still really soothing. I just got paid, so I've got a few music books on the way! Very excited. :3 What books did you end up getting? What style(s) are you angling for?
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Mar 19, 2012 06:22
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:For as short as you've been playing, this sounds great. The rhythm is a bit halting, but good coordination between the hands, melody is nice and clear, etc. Certainly nice work! I picked up the Easy Celtic Harp Solos, and the Icelandic harp one. I have a huge thing for Iceland/Scandinavian knitting (my other hobby) already, might as well explore music too. I figure between the two of them I'll find something that I like, since it seems they cover a bit of a range.Also, thanks!
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Mar 20, 2012 00:47
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My CC Elise arrived today so I ditched work early to noodle around.  This thing is very easy to figure out.
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Mar 20, 2012 01:47
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FelicityGS posted:I picked up the Easy Celtic Harp Solos, and the Icelandic harp one. I have a huge thing for Iceland/Scandinavian knitting (my other hobby) already, might as well explore music too. The only acceptable kind of harp for Scandinavian trad. is a nyckelharpa.  Jokes aside, that lap harp sounds great and I'd love to hear some nice swedish folk music on it. 
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Mar 20, 2012 02:11
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Placeholder posted:The only acceptable kind of harp for Scandinavian trad. is a nyckelharpa. I make no promises on my ability to play it for a while. Everything suggests it's for intermediate players, and I don't quite think I'm that yet. But I will certainly try!
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Mar 20, 2012 03:21
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Placeholder posted:The only acceptable kind of harp for Scandinavian trad. is a nyckelharpa. Nah, nah. For Icelandic this is the 'harpa:  It's a fiðla, one of only two surviving Icelandic musical instruments, the second being the langspil, which is just about the same thing as an Appalachian dulcimer. Neat thing about the langspil is that folks also play it by striking the strings with a stick while fretting, or bowing the strings. You can do those with dulcimer too, and a few Appalachian dulcimer history books mention (or even have pics of) folks doing that, but they're pretty uncommon dulcimer techniques in the US. Anyway, the fiðla: it's just two strings on a box body, with an extremely high bridge (and sometimes nut). The two strings are bowed, and the free hand is used to touch the strings in mid-air, to change the note. This technique is pretty much that used in a few other instruments in this thread, like the various bowed lyres (big further east in Scandanavia) and the Balkan gadulka.  If you're keen to get a fiðla, there are a couple of makers online (some Icelandic dude, and the skilled but pricey Michael King), though frankly I'd be tempted to just show pics of one to any affordable luthier (in the US, any dulcimer maker) and have them make one. I bet a US dulcimer maker could make you one for like $150 or $200 or so. It's a bit hard to find fidla clips online, but here are a few: - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaPOgN1P92w&context=C4af44aeADvjVQa1PpcFMg5sA5LsBTNJ01wwP57nGIEh7RuuqqoxM= cute duet with guy playing fidla, women playing langspil with a stick, and both singing. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZR7RlgtEo 4-string fidla with steel (rather than the more traditional horse-hair) strings. It's a bit rough, but in fairness there are probably more people who have built one of these in an afternoon for kicks than there are people who actually have experience playing one. Regardless, looking forward to (eventually) hearing Felicity take a stab at the Icelandic lap-harp book, but felt obliged to geek-spar with Placeholder. FAKE EDIT: While on the subject of fidla, worth mentioning one of the very few indigenous New World string instruments (basically all of which are probably but not positively post-Columbian) is the Inuit tautirut (ᑕᐅᑎᕈᑦ ). Notice an uncanny resemblance?  dammit, the full-size version on a museum website is a dead-link now, so enjoy this crappy stolen one from some accumulator site TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Mar 22, 2012 |
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Mar 22, 2012 06:08
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I'm curious, why are you so interested in getting goons into (particularly weird) musical instruments, to the point of even having a banner ad and posting these awesome big posts every once in a while? Is it just an attempt to make goons better people or help drive business to shops that sell instruments, or to help prevent this stuff from dying out, or what? And why am I so bad at the tinwhistle? That last one doesn't have to be answered.
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Mar 22, 2012 06:13
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Lavender Philtrum posted:I'm curious, why are you so interested in getting goons into (particularly weird) musical instruments, to the point of even having a banner ad and posting these awesome big posts every once in a while? Good question, kind of three questions: Why do I encourage people to to play music? Because it's a fundamental music skill that mechanisation and commercialisation have pushed further and further from the average person, to the point that tons of people somehow believe that they simply don't have any musical talent despite enjoying music. There's about nobody who can't relatively quickly get to the point of pulling out a guitar at a party and strumming some Beatles tunes, it's just getting up the will to try. Music is an engaging hobby, not necessarily at all expensive, and something you can do for the rest of your life. It makes you more well-rounded, helps keep the brain active, and all in all probably makes you a better person. Why weird instruments? There's nothing necessarily wrong with playing guitar, but given the sheer variety of things out there, and access to information, tutorials, forums, and the like, there's not the same necessity to be limited to what you can buy in your corner store. There are tens of thousands of guitar-bass-drums bands out there, but there don't have to be, and maybe we'd have a richer musical palette if folks branched out a bit. An instrument isn't just a generic tool to make music, each brings its own traits and (dis)advantages. All the old "the medium is (at least part of) the message." Why goons? Because I've learned quite a few things from this forum, made some big life decisions based on it, so I figure it's a good place to offer some life-changes to other people. And hell, my ukulele thread has been going for nearly five years now, so apparently goons like weird instruments in the same way they like weird books/movies/albums/videogames/guns/food/ and everything else. Kind of rambly and Dr Bronner-like, but makes sense overall? quote:And why am I so bad at the tinwhistle? That last one doesn't have to be answered. Just guessing, but it's probably breath control. Try doing just basic switching between two notes over and over, making sure your tone sounds good even during the transition, as you learn to slightly adjust your breath pressure for each note. Just try different arbitrary intervals, like D to E over and over, then F# to B, then low E to high E. If you've got that down, it's a matter of getting your fingers solidly on the holes, switching fingering in rhythm, etc. If you have the basic musical skills down but sound plain/boring, you need to dig up tutorials online for "ornamentation": all the little tricks to make your music less bleep-bloop dry/precise. Things like slurring and sliding between notes, cutting off notes slightly for syncopation, warbles between notes, etc. Do any of those sound like a fix?
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Mar 23, 2012 04:42
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I was reading through the Lonely Planet book on Iceland a while back with plans to take a trip there this summer, and I came across this entertaining passage about the langspil:Lonely Planet posted:CONVERSATION ABOUT AN OLD ICELANDIC INSTRUMENT
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Mar 23, 2012 05:04
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Just guessing, but it's probably breath control. Try doing just basic switching between two notes over and over, making sure your tone sounds good even during the transition, as you learn to slightly adjust your breath pressure for each note. Just try different arbitrary intervals, like D to E over and over, then F# to B, then low E to high E. Speaking of online tutorials, when I was learning the basics of the tin whistle I really used this page quite a bit: http://www.rogermillington.com/siamsa/brosteve/index.html It's mainly for traditional Irish music, but even if that's not your thing the basic techniques are very good to know. When I later purchased an Irish flute I also got this book: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Irish-Flute-Whistle/dp/0786649429 It's extremely thorough for both the flute and whistle and it covers everything from basic breath control to advanced ornamentation. Of course nothing beats actually getting a teacher.
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Mar 23, 2012 08:13
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So I just got me a melodica to go with my ocarina and damned if it isn't one of the funnest things ever. Got mine off Amazon, from these folks called Hurricane Harps; I have no idea of their reputation, but the melodica I got appears to work wonderfully and it was around half the price of the cheapest Hohner, which was the only other brand I found (around twenty-five dollars versus anywhere between fifty and several hundred bucks, is what I'm sayin'.) Maybe I'll get one of those little synth thingies next, I dunno, but I'm having an awful lot of fun with what I have now  .Again, thanks for setting up this thread! Without it I'd never even have considered exploring some of the far corners of the world of music. edit: Okay, further corners at any rate. SatansOnion fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Mar 24, 2012 |
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Mar 24, 2012 00:27
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Hey TTFA, I'm spending my honeymoon in Northern India with the Tibetan Exile community. What kind of instruments can I expect to see up there?
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Mar 24, 2012 14:58
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Placeholder posted:When I later purchased an Irish flute I also got this book: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Irish-Flute-Whistle/dp/0786649429 Dammit, another book I need to get. My tinwhistle principles are pretty solid from years of dicking around, but I'm really weak on formal ornamentation styles. I do like Irish, so I might as well learn Irish ornamentation, though I am wishing that there was some book on Bretagne tinwhistle, or at least a Bretagne wood-flute book I could crib ideas off of. quote:So I just got me a melodica ... Hurricane Harps; I have no idea of their reputation, but the melodica I got appears to work wonderfully and it was around half the price of the cheapest Hohner, which was the only other brand I found (around twenty-five dollars versus anywhere between fifty and several hundred bucks, is what I'm sayin'.) They seem to have decent reviews on Amazon; I'd suggest you try posting a review after you break it in for a couple months. It's a cheap/easy way to try the instrument out, but given that free-reed instruments can only be made well so cheap, if you find yourself getting into it seriously, I'd put a jar on your dresser and start chucking your spare change and loose singles into it in preparation for an upgrade. If you get enough cash to buy a nicer one before your current one breaks, I'd give it away to a friend to try and win them over to the instrument. Cheap free reeds tend to start falling apart after extensive play, so best to move it around a little bit to get the max benefit out of it. Plus if a reed or two go out of whack, you can practice reed surgery on a cheapie without risking much. Melodicas.com seems to have some cool offerings, despite their Geocities-circa-1996 website. quote:Maybe I'll get one of those little synth thingies next, I dunno, but I'm having an awful lot of fun with what I have now Meaning the Stylophones we covered earlier? Those can be fun, though I would suggest checking out a few more upscale options; $20 is about as much as I'd pay for a Stylophone, as you start running into nicer stuff not much above that. The Korg Monotron is a bit more expensive ($40ish), but can be found used for a bit less. The Gakken SX-150 analog synth can be had in kit form (no soldering required) for about $25, is easily hacked, and appears to have a goodly online following. Bleep Labs (yay Austin) offers their Nebulophone in kit for for $55, and it sounds pretty rad, though a bit less musical and a bit more freaky-noise.  If you want to get fancy (and oddly melodica-like), I was just checking out the website for Critter and Guitari, and they have some cool synths, particularly the "Pocket Piano" (clip).  quote:Hey TTFA, I'm spending my honeymoon in Northern India with the Tibetan Exile community. What kind of instruments can I expect to see up there? EDIT: Dammit, I'd assumed starting out that you were going to Sikkim, since that's one of the places with a lot of Tibetans, but there are also a bunch of them (and the Tibetan Governnent in Exile) up in Himachal Pradesh, way on the opposite side of India. Which of those two very different places are you going to? TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Mar 24, 2012 |
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Mar 24, 2012 22:32
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Dammit, another book I need to get. My tinwhistle principles are pretty solid from years of dicking around, but I'm really weak on formal ornamentation styles. I do like Irish, so I might as well learn Irish ornamentation, though I am wishing that there was some book on Bretagne tinwhistle, or at least a Bretagne wood-flute book I could crib ideas off of. If you havn't already, check it out on Google Books before you buy it! http://books.google.se/books?id=5tUZwCtYSp0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false How common is the tin whistle in Breton folk music? I've seen Breton players on wooden flutes (Irish flute is a bit of a misnomer when you think about it) but never on tin whistles, though I guess the ornaments and techniques would be largely identical.
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Mar 24, 2012 23:09
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So, a quick question. I used to be very big into music when I was younger (was, and still am fairly decent with the cello) and its in my family history. My Grandfather used to play the GHB before his health deteriorated (born-raised in Scotland). I already know I love music and I really want to learn another musical instrument and I am quite interested in the Scottish small pipes as posted a few pages back. My only issue is that they are in different keys. For general usage, what kind of musical key should one go for? A and D seem to be the most common, though it seems you can get a combo A and D as well for quite a bit extra on the money side. Would it be worth shelling out extra money? Should I just get a practice chanter first? I have only ever played string instruments before, so if going for mouth-blown how much would I be screwing myself- I take it my lungs would suck at first. I just cannot justify the extra few hundred dollars that Walsh and Shepherd want to include bellows, unless its deemed really worth it. Thanks.
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Mar 25, 2012 23:21
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| # ? May 11, 2024 18:18 |
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You're going to get really good posture and really good lung strength if you stick with it. Breath control is kind of a big deal with wind instruments, and you'll learn that too. You aren't really screwing yourself--lots of people who never have played wind can do it, you just get more control/stronger if you keep practicing.
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Mar 25, 2012 23:59
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