Composer Percy Grainger’s Cross-Grainger Kangaroo-Pouch Tone-Tool is completely loopy – rolls of paper and a series of oscillators conspire to produce a sound not too dissimilar to series of air-raid sirens going off.
De Caus water organ, 1615. Not sure if this would have worked very well – the mechanics are very clumsy, and the water wheel drive is tremendously inefficient.
Sound sculptor Henry Dagg and his sharpsichord, a solar-powered music box, sometimes called a pin-barrel harp. Its perforated cylinder contains 11,520 holes into which an artist can plug pins in order to create melodies. As the cylinder rotates, the pins pluck strings to create the sound. Dagg describes the sound as “a cross between a harp and a bass clarinet.” Björk used the sharpsichord on her Biophilia album.
It’s hard to be a clarinettist:
Austrian Vegetable Orchestra:
And the Chinese Version:
Guilhem Desq on a surprising Hurdy Gurdy:
Construction materials:
Wintergatan – Marble Machine (music instrument using 2000 marbles)
(how they built it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebRh-Q-GCVQ)
The Anarchestra:
A bananophone – which is a makey-makey or similar circuit board, connected to bananas. Touching them makes the connection – like a keys on a piano. I have a similar setup, but unfortunately, the response time is slow, so I’ve found it difficult to use in performance.
The wrist piano…no keyboard needed.
This is from Yamaha motorcycles – a joint project with the music division…
A prototype marimba project, also from Yamaha.
Don’t know what the heck this is as it seems more sinister than musical – of course you could make it sound like anything. But the lights are going to appeal to a lot of star-trek fans, if nothing else.
Star wars – Lego collaboration: a barrel organ, using figurines to indicate the pitches.