Most Unusual Instruments Used in Bands...
 

well I know Incubus play the didgeridoo from time to time, but who else plays something really bizarre in a band??
I'm a bassoonist myself, i challenge someone to find a band that includes that?!! (i think there's a reason why you won't find anything)

anyway....

- Portico Quartet (Mercury Award nominees last year) have a hang player (a sort of flying saucer shaped metal gong that sounds a bit like a steel drum...really lovely sound)

- Speed Caravan have an oud player (sort of like a lute, used in a lot of Arabic music), and he amplifies it which is quite unusual. plus he's a phenomenal player so well worth checking out.

oo and i saw a band with a bass keytar player recently, that was pretty cool.


any more??? (unusual effects on instruments welcomed too!! like sigur ros and people)

I always thought it interesting when I see a person playing a keyharp (nyckelharpa) in a band. It is an extremly difficult instrument to play so it is always admirable to see it being played well.

Mats Wester plays keyharp for Nordman:

The Cassettes utilizes a Theremin.

Speed Caravan
 

[QUOTE=julesg;740992]
- Portico Quartet (Mercury Award nominees last year) have a hang player (a sort of flying saucer shaped metal gong that sounds a bit like a steel drum...really lovely sound)

- Speed Caravan have an oud player (sort of like a lute, used in a lot of Arabic music), and he amplifies it which is quite unusual. plus he's a phenomenal player so well worth checking out.
QUOTE]


haha just heard the speed caravan cover of galvanise. brilliant!

Speed Caravan - Galvanise
 

Here's Speed Caravan doing Galvanise!!

I've seen bands use a saw, spoons, kazoos, glockenspiel, harmonium all by on e band in one set

Singing Saw. Julian Koster is probs the most well known musican to use it

i remember seeing a bjork performance in which one of the instruments was a guy shifting sand/small rocks with his feet.

Brings tears (of laughter) to my eyes

hahaha win

The two guys backing Bjork up in that performance are Matmos, a band that's used a lot of really weird stuff throughout their career to make music. Probably the strangest was using to movements of snails in a glass container to block lasers thereby triggering sounds.

I was gonna say the Jew's harp was rather uncommon, but hey, i've got nothing now...

Man that is about as random as you could possibly get hahahaha

nice

i want to use it. snails, what a cool instrument

Circulus

Michael Tyack - Vocals, Guitars, Cittern
Holly-Jane Shears - Vocals
Tom Goldsmith - Bass
Will Summers - Flutes, Recorders, Crumhorns, Shawm
Antony Elvin - Vocals, Percussion
Cathy Harabaras -Drums

^Bloody hell, that was embarassing! :p:

Magazine?

I can't remember the name of the band to save the live of me, but the most unusual instrument I've ever seen used in a band (out side of a symphonic band) is bassoon.

Well, it's not a band, some 50 years old music but I think it's unusual a lot :)
Orchestra and typewriter :laughing:

Hah, that's a brilliant vid Petula :)

It's perhaps not super-unusual, but for the sake of mentioning something exciting in this thread, I'll mention the Chapman Stick used for example by Tony Levin from King Crimson.

Here's Mr. Chapman demonstrating it :



Here it is in action in KC's song "Elephant Talk" from Discipline released in 1981 :)

Page & Plant live with an amazing hurdy gurdy player:

Maybe not as weird as some of these but when They Might Be Giants played in New Haven there was a euphonium solo. I found a youtube clip of a bunch of moments of the show, and they mention it about 1:29 but for some reason the actual euphonium got cut out :mad:

i sorta play bowed guitar (i still need to arch the bridge so i can play more precise)

Zamfir King of the Pan Flute

Eugene Chadbourne has a homemade instrument he calls "The Electric Rake."
Its a lawn rake with a guitar pickup attached to it.
I saw him use it at a show once. There was a bald guy sitting in the front row, and Eugene walked over to him and scraped the rake over his head a few times and then held the rake like a guitar and started hitting the tines. He then moved over to a window and scraped the glass up and down with the rake. Odd sounds indeed!

Not as unusual as snales or a typewriter, its a flute instrument known as a 'Gaita'. You can see it on my Avatar.

Boza


P.S the Chapman stick is a really interesting sounding instrument.

I now flute and piano aren't unusual instruments but for me this guy is unusual :D

that one-string bass that les claypool plays (the sh*t out of) is pretty rad. if you haven't seen it, it's just one string and a stick and the pitch is determined not by frets but by the fact that the string is attached to this giant torque lever at the top.

another bjork thing i saw was on a live youtube vid. from her volta tour... there was this guy with a round table... looked like a poker table, with "chips" lined up around the edge and everything, but the tabletop was glowing blue, and the chips, which were actually shapes (say like x's and y's) were moved around on the table... added.. subtracted from the table, and between them was this lightning. i take it that to stretch two of the shape's distance was to alter the circuit thusly creating new sound.

i downloaded a vst called joy synth cuz it kinda looked like the same idea, but the sound was ****e or the whole thing was just beyond me. anyway, it was neat.

I saw Sleepytime Gorilla Museum last April, and they have not one, but two sledgehammer dulcimers. And the percussionist/guitarist/clarinet player was beating on old metal dish tubs and bicycle spokes among other things. And the first opener was playing a strange configuration of computer and radio parts, a television and Wii remotes.

I saw That One Guy with his homemade instrument "The Magic Pipe", and then he played a saw and a boot. Cool stuff.

Band Orphaned Land... do you know them?
Maybe not unusual instruments but for sure unusual sound - mixture of metal and oriental music :)

This old song is part in arabic and part in hebrew language with oriental instruments



They have now new album The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR and here is video for the first track Sapari...

well, once on a concert I saw something that reminded me of a violin and a guitar. It has a small drum-like body and a lond handle, with strings.
The guy had it hanging on this belly)))
I don't even know the name of this thing, but the atmosphere it created reminded me of an ethno festival)
if somebody can name this instrument, I'll be grateful)

wait could it be a banjo

this is a beautiful banjo
http://www.musicwithease.com/banjo-4.gif

I like when they use violins and flutes.

The Triangle in a Metal Band, I heard there was an electric Triangle, but i'm not sure.

The oboe doesn't show up all that much outside of symphonic orchestras and yet here it is.



*Or rather there it was.

The Berimbau is one of the most unusual instruments I've ever seen (it's like a fishing rod made of bamboo or something)

Churchfitters use a saw quite regularly and have made most of their instruments, they have a double bass made from mainly kitchen objects.

Saw some folk bands this year using balalika (not sure on spelling), kazoos and lapsteel.

CAKE has been known to utilize a melodica. pretty neat looking instrument, makes a cool noise

i've used a radio as an instrument (i turn dial all the way up so it's noise then by adjusting volume and waving my hand and or metal object around the antenna i can make a very nice glitch sound)

i've used paper as an instrument in an unreleased song i made called "Origami Tea Leaves"

i bow pretty much every strings instrument i have (2 acoustic, 1 electric, 1 3-string ukulele, a busted violin)

in a song called "Early Cremation" i spoke through a harmonica, sounded interesting, thought it can get tricky to do it correctly.

in a song called "Eddy" my cat was outside the door trying to come in it sounded like percussion