The 6 Most Ridiculous Guitar Designs. In the world of music, there's always going to be innovation, creativity, and products of intense drug use masquerading as innovation and creativity. The following guitars are primarily examples of that last category. #6. The Gittler Guitar Gittler Instruments The Gittler Guitar looks like someone put strings on a skeletal robot penis to fulfill a prophecy. . #5. Manzer via Oddmusic Homepage The logic problem that is the Pikasso Guitar was specially built for jazz fusion virtuoso Pat Metheny, who can play that stringed Escher painting better than the rest of us can do most things. . #4. Yoshihiko Sato It would be impossible to play this "guitar" without looking like a vaudeville comedy routine.
. #3. Carver Doug The Wangcaster takes some of the subtlety out of being a rock musician by allowing you to hammer out Motley Crue songs on a giant wooden cock. . #2. Andy Manson #1. Amy Crehore. Made On A Mac - Artists that Depend on the Power of the Mac. Posted 01/22/2009 at 2:42am | by Leslie Ayers Who: Adrian Freed, Research DirectorWhat: Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, UC BerkeleyWhy: To research and develop tech tools musicians and artists can use to enhance live performances Ensconced in a Spanish-style home on the northern border of the UC Berkeley campus, the researchers at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, CNMAT (cnmat.berkeley.edu), are working on a mind-boggling array of projects that crisscross multiple disciplines.
On the day we visit CNMAT research director Adrian Freed, the two graduate students we run into on our tour happen to be working on advanced degrees in mathematics and history—and both use Mac laptops safeguarded from accidental pickup by fellow researchers with name tags created on a digital label maker. This “spherical” speaker is really an icosahedron. Adrian Freed shows how the stringless acrylic cello he built for acclaimed cellist Frances-Marie Uitti works.
Landfill Harmonic film teaser. Make a Cigar Box Guitar. Instruments for Playing Water. Recently, I’ve been working closely with the artist Katherine Kavanaugh as she has designed and built a sculptural installation using bamboo, water, a plexiglass pool, and copper. On Saturday, I’ll perform a new composition at the installation’s official opening that I’m creating along with three fantastic musicians: Jacqueline Pollauf and Noah Getz of Pictures on Silence, and Peabody student composer Benjamin Buchanan. My concept for the musical performance involves playing the water and other parts of the sculpture directly, and also moving throughout the space in order to evoke a ritualistic sensibility and to involve the entire gallery in the staging. As part of our collaboration, Katherine and I spent a great deal of time considering what tools we would utilize to create the musical sounds. Although we never officially voiced this constraint, we decided to limit ourselves to further manifestations of the materials contained within the installation itself.
Hydro-Electro-Musical Machinery. [Image: Flow]. A floating tidemill on the UK's River Tyne has been filled with "electro-acoustic musical machinery," powered by the river itself. The building, a collaboration between Owl Project and Ed Carter, called Flow, is "a floating building on the River Tyne that generates its own power using a tidal water wheel. " The acoustic machines inside, powered by CNC-milled wooden gears and timber pistons, "respond directly to the ever-changing state of the river.
The sounds created by each instrument can also be manipulated by visitors to the millhouse. " [Images: Flow]. Specifically, the floating auditorium includes "three inter-connected sonic instruments which mix traditional craft and digital innovation. Finally, "Owl Project has designed a series of Log interfaces to alter the sounds the instruments make," literal pieces of wood with knobs and levers that produce acoustic special effects. Airlines have a new nemesis – cellos on a plane. Years after the snakes have been defeated, modern aviation has found a new nemesis: cellos. Boston-based cellist Paul Katz recently bought a pair of seats – one for himself and another for his 1669 Andrea Guarneri cello – on an American Airlines flight from Calgary to Los Angeles.
Only when he arrived at the airport did he learn that American Airlines “code-shares” with WestJet. His flight on American turned into a flight on WestJet – which, unlike AA, doesn’t allow cellos in cabins. Katz was faced with a choice: Stow the cello in baggage or get off the plane. The incident so appalled Katz that he wrote an as-it-happens account of the incident, published in the Boston Globe last week. “My imagination is out of control,” he noted in mid-flight. His fears weren’t unfounded. Top-of the-line Taylor guitars sell for about $8,000. Baggage handlers may have no idea of a fine cello’s value or fragility, however, treating it just like another piece of luggage. “I find that outrageous,” Katz says.
Musical Instruments-Unique Unusual Odd Strange Weird Experimental Rare Wacky Musical Instruments Gallery sound clips,photos. These are the oldest musical instruments ever discovered. Did Humans Invent Music? - Entertainment. Did Neanderthals sing? Is there a "music gene"? Two scientists debate whether our capacity to make and enjoy songs comes from biological evolution or from the advent of civilization. Music is everywhere, but it remains an evolutionary enigma. In recent years, archaeologists have dug up prehistoric instruments, neuroscientists have uncovered brain areas that are involved in improvisation, and geneticists have identified genes that might help in the learning of music. Yet basic questions persist: Is music a deep biological adaptation in its own right, or is it a cultural invention based mostly on our other capacities for language, learning, and emotion?
And if music is an adaptation, did it really evolve to promote mating success as Darwin thought, or other for benefits such as group cooperation or mother-infant bonding? Here, scientists Gary Marcus and Geoffrey Miller debate these issues. Marcus: "Ancient" seems like a bit of stretch to me. Marcus: I think it's deeper than that.