Posted: 6/22/2008 6:05:17 PM EDT
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So, of course, plenty of people here play the guitar, the bass, drums, members of the violin family, keyboards of various types, the standard orchestral woodwinds and brass and percussion and strings and so forth. But who here plays really unusual instruments? Like the crumhorn, or the baglama, or the sitar, or the bouzouki, or the norwegian willow flute? My father has long messed around with various of these. He's, at various times, taken up the crumhorn (a curved double-reed woodwind), the shakuhachi (a five-hole, end-blown, Japanese bamboo flute), the vielle (a five-string predecessor of the violin), the appalachian dulcimer (a fretted zither), and is now living out one of his life-long dreams by playing the Great Highland bagpipes and the Scottish smallpipes (a smaller, quiter set of pipes designed for accompanying other instruments). Myself, I don't currently play any odd stuff, just the bass. Though there's a couple I should take up. I'd like to learn the pipes myself, although either the Swedish sackpipa or the Uilleann pipes (which are small, bellows-blown and with playable drones called regulators), and I think I have a bombarde (a double-reed woodwind) laying around somewhere that a friend gave me that I should learn how to play. |
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When I used to work at a college, I spent some free time learning to play Balinese gamelan music at the music deptartment. These days it's guitar, bass and keyboard, but I'm not great at any of them. I like this youtube clip of a couple of guys playing Giorgio Moroder's Chase theme from the Midnight Express movie on Iranian ouds. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlCihQ1X-HQ (not a rickroll) I used to see a street performer from time to time who played an Appalachian dulcimer, that looked interesting. I'm waiting for someone to post in this thread that they play a hurdy gurdy, an alpenhorn or Jamaican steel drums. 
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I've been wanting a bouzouki, hammered dulcimer & bagpipes for YEARS. Haven't made the plunge. I do a pretty good bagpipe-guitar sound though  Here's some of my 'bagpipe guitar' over the fade out of a new song I'm doing. The bagpipe effect is actually better in other parts of the song but I don't have the complete track with me today. Check it out: www.thelightningwaltz.com/bagpipe1.mp3 |