Mike Grosso

Day 28 - The Singing, Ringing Tree

Day 29 - The Harpitar

Day 30 - The Singing Tesla Coil

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

30 Days of Weird Instruments, Day 30 -- the Singing Tesla Coil

Our final weird instrument has many nicknames, my favorite being the Zeusaphone, as in the Greek God, Zeus.

The Singing Tesla Coil is a solid state Tesla coil that's been altered to make analog synth sounds and emit sparks of electricity based on the musical data it receives. MIDI data is sent in, converted to what's called a Pulse-width modulation (PWM) signal, which is then used to tell the Tesla coil what to do.

In simpler terms, it's a device that creates electrical pulses in sync with music. Imagine a musical performance where electricity is an audio-visual aspect of the experience.

Pay your respects to the people who made/make these things -- it takes a lot of talent and intelligence to pull this off.

The singing Tesla coil made its national television debut when the band ArcAttack performed on America's Got Talent.

That marks the finish line for 30 DAYS OF WEIRD INSTRUMENTS! I hope you've enjoyed this blog series half as much as I've enjoyed researching and writing it. I'm glad to have had you with me on this journey.

Please feel free to comment with additional weird instruments you've discovered, or send an email to me@mikegrossoauthor.com with your thoughts. I've also included the full list of posts for all 30 instruments below.

Thank you for reading!

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Previous Weird Instruments:

Day 28 - The Singing, Ringing Tree

Day 29 - The Harpitar

Day 30 - The Singing Tesla Coil

Monday, October 17, 2016

30 Days of Weird Instruments, Day 29 -- the Harpitar

Ahhh! Hybrid instruments!

In September of 1918, Popular Science featured R.E. Bates's creation, the Harpitar. Electric amplifiers would not exist until the 1930s, so Bates strung six strings over the body of a harp and made an instrument with the beautiful tones of the guitar and loud projection power of the harp.

It makes me wonder what he'd think of today's guitar pickups and amplifiers.

A modern version of the harpitar can be seen and heard in this wonderful video performance from musician, Andy McKee. The original didn't use a double neck like this one, so it's a great example of how the instrument evolved.

Tomorrow's instrument will be our final post in this series! I can't believe we're almost done!

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Previous Weird Instruments:

Day 28 - The Singing, Ringing Tree

Friday, October 14, 2016

30 Days of Weird Instruments, Day 28 -- the Singing, Ringing Tree

We're heading to the town of Burnley in Lancashire, England to visit today's weird instrument.

The Singing, Ringing Tree is a wind powered sound sculpture made of galvanized steel pipes that harness the wind to create music. The three meter high structure was part of a Panopticons arts and regeneration project, a series of twenty-first century landmarks symbolizing the renaissance of of the East Lancashire area.

It looks like something an alien race might have left behind, and sounds fascinating, haunting, and eerie all at once.

Monday's instrument is two instruments smashed into one.

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Previous Weird Instruments:

Thursday, October 13, 2016

30 Days of Weird Instruments, Day 27 -- the Whamola

The Whamola is a bass guitar named after the whammy bar and viola. How those two instruments factor in to this bizarre thing is anybody's guess, but the final product is very cool.

The Whamola is a direct descendent of the washtub bass, and uses a single enormous string struck with a drumstick to make sound. A pulley system is placed on the back to loosen or tighten the string to change its pitch.

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing this extremely rare instrument in concert about ten years ago when Primus bassist, Les Claypool (credited with increasing the instrument's exposure and notoriety), played it in concert.

The below video showcases its sound quite well, assuming you can handle the equally outlandish outfits worn by the band.

Tomorrow's instrument would probably tell you to go climb a tree.

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Previous Weird Instruments:

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

30 Days of Weird Instruments, Day 26 -- Microtones and the Microtonal Guitar

Today's post was one of my favorite to research. It is also the hardest one to write, because what Turkish classical guitarist Tolgahan Cogulu is exploring here is a little hard to understand.

Let's start with the scale most readers of this blog will be familiar with.

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See the picture above? It shows the typical scale in American popular music, which consists of 12 notes/tones -- C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, and B. Each of these twelve notes, or tones, are an equal distance apart (this distance is often referred to as "one half step"). Anything outside of those tones is considered "out of tune".

So what if someone intentionally used the tones in between?

That's what microtones are. Imagine the note exactly halfway between G and G#, and you'll have an idea of what this means.

Which brings us to Tolgahan Coulu's microtonal guitars. He has adjustable and fixed models, with the former having movable frets and the latter having fixed frets. These are guitars he designed specifically to play compositions with microtonal "in between notes".

The below video gives a great example of his fixed fret microtonal guitars, and why a fretless guitar does not suffice for what he is trying to accomplish. It also includes some phenomenal playing by the man himself.

Tomorrow's instrument will change the way you see low notes.

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