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skrapp mettle posted:Good to know. Still at $9.99. Two days left to go. If I don't like it I'll send it your way to find a new home. Alright, which one of you is bidding against me on this? At $61 now. Still worth it?
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Nov 19, 2014 22:17
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:Skrap, minor sidenote: Goodwill thinks the brand is "Homa", since they can't read Cyrillic. The brand-name is "Nota", as in "musical note". It'd be "Нота" in block script, but it cursive the "t" looks like an "m", oddly enough. Went for $109.50, too rich for my blood.
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Nov 20, 2014 03:08
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Popping in to give an update and thank TTFA once again. While my wife was in (early) labor, I was playing 5 string kantele for her in the birthing room. I also used a mountain dulcimer for an entry in the GBS terrible christmas song thread (since my music-playing options are a bit limited.)
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Nov 20, 2014 03:38
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So I find myself in Korea for the next year teaching--are there any instruments here that might be worth looking into? I'm based in Daegu, but it's really easy to go wherever and I do speak a smattering of Korean too.
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Nov 20, 2014 11:43
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Wow, awesome kantele story! So glad you're finding it a fulfilling experience. quote:Went for $109.50, too rich for my blood. Yeah, that's a bit high for a tiny one. What kind of crappy concertina is it that you have? You might be better off saving to upgrade that, stick with a familiar platform. FelicityGS posted:So I find myself in Korea for the next year teaching--are there any instruments here that might be worth looking into? I'm based in Daegu, but it's really easy to go wherever and I do speak a smattering of Korean too. Did some digging into it, and Korea has: - Not very many string instruments, except ones they stole from the Chinese, and then a bunch of zithers which are probably too huge to bring back. - A ton of kinds of little flute, so that might come easy for you, as well as a few kinds of oboes and trumpet - A buttload of drums, although again a lot of them might be too hard to haul back. Though their double-drum is pretty cool, if you can find one that's small but not a cheap toy. Most airlines let you bring a musical instrument as an additional carry-on at no charge (almost everywhere I've flown has let me do that), so might be worth checking on.  - For something that's cool, probably not too pricey, and compact, is the hu, kind of a Korean end-blown ocarina. Somewhere between a ocarina and blowing across the top of a whiskey jug.  Aside from trad stuff, Korea might have some interesting electronic music toys, MIDI, stuff, etc. Also there are a number of makers of Western wind instruments, especially plastic ones, like ocarines, panpipes, etc. so you might see those at good prices. Definitely report back if you find anything interesting. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 18:59
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Too bad about that garmon. I have a similar one but even smaller, a "Notka", it's definitely cheap, but a lot of fun. This summer I finally realised my dream of owning a full-size garmohska, a relative of mine stumbled upon an old Tula in an antiques shop in Lithuania and bought it for me. It's not in perfect condition — there's a one note that sometimes sounds without my pressing any buttons, otherwise alright. I tried to get a local accordion repair guy to take a look at it but he apparenty thought it was too exotic. I am a terrible accordion player anyway, doesn't matter much. This reminds me to play garmon more. I've recently become enamored with a mandolin which takes up all my time.
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Nov 20, 2014 20:10
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:- For something that's cool, probably not too pricey, and compact, is the hu, kind of a Korean end-blown ocarina. Somewhere between a ocarina and blowing across the top of a whiskey jug. I have done some shopping from China, via agreetao. I have to do a proper writeup on that, but if you want to take a risk I think they had the hu and the xun for 2$ + shipping. No idea how much the shipping or would be, but I cannot imagine too much. Also no idea about quality, but stuff I got was decent. You could grab a cheap dizi for another 2$ while you are at it. Not quite compact and will eat a constant supply of clear tape to replace the fussy membrane that it usually needs. Ok, enough about cheap crap from China. Korea is home to the "Noble" company. They make fantastic plastic ocarinas, to the point that some people rather would play a plastic Noble than a clay anything. Ideally you want a "Night-by-Noble" in either black or ivory. Those two colors come in rubberized finish which also solves some moisture problems. N-b-N might be hard to find in Korea despite being made there. It is a thing made for the Japanese market. The regular and widely available plastic Noble Alto C is just a tiny step down. In general all Noble plastic stuff is great, as long as rubberized. (And if you won't play for more than 10 minutes at a time, you don't need to care about rubberizing.) Noble also has a lot of clay stuff that is well-respected. I got the impression that the ocarina is a bit like the recorder of Asia, pretty popular for school. The people at the local veggie store know someone who runs the Ocarina museum in Seoul. I think there is an ocarina festival somewhere there too. EDIT: Noble alto-C in plastic: http://nobleocarina.en.ec21.com/Noble_Ocarina_Nobly-c--9149040_9149055.html See how the black version is not reflective? This is due to the rubberizing. Night by Noble: http://www.amazon.com/Night-By-Noble-Plastic-Ocarina/dp/B00F3J7P74 Yup, it is a Noble-made ocarina all right. Look at that distinctive Noble-only sharp/truncated tip. Does seem Japan-only, It is not even shown on the Noble website in English. And if you are wondering: Night is a Japanese company that makes ocarinas. Super expensive (if very drat pretty) in clay. I guess they wanted to branch out into high-quality plastic, so they have Noble make their designs. At least from what I gather. http://www.ocarina.co.jp/news/120916_news.html A Night clay ocarina in purple: 
No Gravitas fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 20:34
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FelicityGS posted:Daegu I used to live in Daegu, great place to be in Korea, especially if this happens to be your first year. When you go shopping for instruments, you're going to want to go to 낙원악기상가 in Seoul. Yes, there are some music stores in Daegu near National University of Education stop on the red line (I bought my favorite Ocarina out there), and they're fine, but Nakwon is just a really awesome place and I highly recommend you go there. They have EVERYTHING! You might just find the one weird, ridiculous instrument of your dreams. The drums are pretty cool, and the two different sticks kind of thing seemed pretty unique. There is an end-blown flute, a bit like a tiny shakuhachi, that many of the kids learn in elementary school. You can usually pick these up at a big chain grocery/department store. If you know anything about traditional Chinese or Japanese music, traditional Korean music has an equivalent version of almost everything. Lots of lap-zithers and lap-qins for example. The haegeum is like a Korean erhu. Here is my recommendation: an accordion. Now, it is hard to find info on South Korean accordion playing on google, everyone wants to tell you about the NORTH Korean accordion scene and how all teachers are required to learn one. Accordions were big in Trot (Basically Korean Enka) it seems, and there are TONS of places (even in Daegu!) that specialize in selling accordions. It might have less to do with Trot and more to do with something else, but accordions are serious business in Daegu. At the time, most were expensive imports but my now Korean made student models might be more widely available. I'd also go to Kyobo and go through their music books to give you a rough idea of what is readily available, music-instructionally speaking. Also, look around your neighborhood and see if there are any music hagwons. Feel free to PM me about music stores/interesting places in Daegu. I still have at least a couple of friends there. Edit: A Korea Times opinion piece on the state of accordion in the ROK. Apparently it just got really big with retirees and there are lots of cheapie DPRK accordions floating around. Paladin fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Nov 21, 2014 |
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Nov 21, 2014 07:19
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Paladin posted:There is an end-blown flute, a bit like a tiny shakuhachi, that many of the kids learn in elementary school. You can usually pick these up at a big chain grocery/department store. What is that thing called? I'm curious now.
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Nov 21, 2014 07:41
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No Gravitas posted:What is that thing called? I'm curious now. It's called a Danso. I found it more difficult than a cheapie pvc practice shakuhachi, but I'd never done much with end-blown flutes beforehand so that may have been the main problem.
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Nov 22, 2014 02:48
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Awesome, thanks so much for all the info guys! I just got set up with internet at my apartment and got on to see all the info.  It is my first year in Daegu--I think in about a month I'll be taking a trip to Seoul to visit a friend, so I'll definitely swing by that music store too. Percussion is most interesting for me, but I might go for a flute if only for the sanity of my neighbours. I keep odd hours from them, but so far getting up in the morning while they're gone has been rough going.
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Nov 22, 2014 15:38
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Oh, if you're going to be there a while, might as well buy one of those large Korean zithers to make up for not having a harp. Not worth doing if you're there for a month, but if a year well worth it to keep your hand in the game. Ooh, can you get one of your friends to mail you your books of Manx/Breton/Scandinavian etc. harp music so you can learn them on some zither? Here's a Jimmy Hendrix cover on zither: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfOHjeI-Bns The main popular ones are kinda large, but perhaps you can find a smaller travel-sized one, or 7-string beginner one, or old-school one? Korea also used to have harps, though apparently mostly extinct. If you or your friends speak Korean, maybe you can find some hipsters trying to revive the Korean harp? That'd be loving amazing and a great way to apply your harper skills. Maybe the fancy-repro ones are pricey, but with some digging surely there must be some kids finding affordable ways to re-make the old style ones for a new generation.  These are the kind of things where, if I ever make it big, I'm just going to muck around funding small startups to fund young luthiers producing affordable versions of extinct and dying instruments and popularizing them. FAKEEDIT: See, here's a traditional Korean harp, how hard could this possibly be to rig up out of modern materials? Basically it's just a soundboard, curved arm, and a resonating body. This looks like one of those things that just someone who's clever enough to build a chest of drawers could knock out in a week weekends. Albeit now with the fine lacquerwork and subtle curves, but just building a boxy body and angling an arm up can't be much worse than building some of the primitive Western cheapo harps  FAKEDIT2: If you or any buddies got serious about wanting to make a modern version, I bet if you ping mad genius Denis Havlena and send him some pictures, he'd be able to help you dream up a cheaply-produceable design. You could be the foreign heathen who helps revive the Korean harp.  FAKEEDIT3: Here's a Burmese saung harp, one of the few remaining live members of what was once a large family of South/East Asian harps of similar design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpoUHOCPaNw  All Korean/harp stuff aside, since we're approaching the holidays I'm going to work up a megapost about instruments and gift-giving. Long/short, it's a risky endeavor since unless someone has massive enthusiasm (or is already a musician) it can be tough to get someone into a new hobby. That said, there are a few instruments cheap enough you can take the risk on their eventually taking to it, and/or instruments that are just really easy and intuitive to mess with where even non-musicians can have fun with them. For the latter, thumb piano is really a great choice, since you basically never need to tune it, and especially on pentatonic ones anyone with any sense of pattern can make good-sounding music. For people slightly more ambitious, ocarina and tin whistle can both be had cheaply, easy to learn with lots of online instructions, and durable enough you can chuck it in a drawer for a decade and pull it out later and learn to play it, which is exactly what happened to teenage me with a tinwhistle I'd gotten as a gift around age 6. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 18:30
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I've been thinking about learning a musical instrument for a while now, especially after reading the thread, so- long story short, I now have a lovely polycarbonate Mountain Ocarina. They seem like a good value for the price, but I have the tragedy of living in Canada, and I think the shipping cost more than the ocarina did. So I got the CDs, too. I'm really excited to try this out, I just hope it stays mild outside so I don't drive my housemates batty going "fweet fwoot fweet" at all hours... Anyway, thank you, TapTheForwardAssist, for apparently knowing every single musical instrument.
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Nov 27, 2014 17:17
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quote:Anyway, thank you, TapTheForwardAssist, for apparently knowing every single musical instrument. No worries, I enjoy spreading awareness about musical possibilities. But I definitely don't know anything close to every instrument out there. I've learned about quite a few while researching for the thread, and folks here have occasionally posted some puzzlers that had be doing some digging, like that bat-banjo thing from Southeast Asia. Part of it is that I have a strong background in running foreign policy analysis projects, so digging up lots of info on short notice and processing it intelligibly is a reflex for me. YggiDee posted:I've been thinking about learning a musical instrument for a while now, especially after reading the thread, so- long story short, I now have a lovely polycarbonate Mountain Ocarina. They seem like a good value for the price, but I have the tragedy of living in Canada, and I think the shipping cost more than the ocarina did. So I got the CDs, too. I'm really excited to try this out, I just hope it stays mild outside so I don't drive my housemates batty going "fweet fwoot fweet" at all hours... Ocarina is among the mellower wind instruments, so really your roommates lucked out. Getting onto the gift-giving side, ocarinas are a pretty solid for being easy to learn, not sounding to annoying while someone is learning, affordable, small, and durable. Overall my gift-giving advice would be pretty close to our advice earlier in the thread, with some minor mods. Ocarinas make good gifts for pretty much anyone: adult with no music background, even small kids (like maybe 7+), as well as experienced musicians who might enjoy a little something different. - I would actually put STL Ocarinas at the top for giftgiving choices since they have a number of plastic ones in the $10-20 range. I'd tend to get folks the round-body ones (inline style) rather than the "sweet potato" style played to the side of the mouth, except for Zelda fans who would want the sweet potato. - Mountain Ocarinas are among the better actual practical ones, just less sexy visually as gifts and run around $25-30, so that's the brand I'd get for someone who might take it somewhat seriously and want a knockaround one that'll hold up while backpacking, traveling, etc. - Songbird Ocarina has mostly non-plastic ocs, except the plastic Bravura line, but if you're buying for an adult and need the instrument to look classy as well as play, in case they use it more as a knicknack than a player, Songbird has some great ones for cheap. I particularly like their little teardrop models:  Demo clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozmmF1CIQTs - If you need really small and cheap, Susatto has their little plastic necklace ones for like $7 in a variety of colors, and those play decently and are pretty unbreakable: http://www.susato.com/konakart/Ocarinas/1_149_-1_9.do  I'll do some more pondering as we enter December, and talk about Native American flutes, thumb pianos, assorted drums, and electronic musical toys that make decent gifts. Anyone pondering gifting a music item feel free to consult here as well. I'm getting my sister a thumb piano, and bought a cousin an Irish tinwhistle recently, so I'm feeling these things out myself.
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Nov 28, 2014 08:57
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:- For something that's cool, probably not too pricey, and compact, is the hu, kind of a Korean end-blown ocarina. Somewhere between a ocarina and blowing across the top of a whiskey jug. drat you sir. Can these be got in the US? First pass at googling it up got me nothing.
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Nov 28, 2014 22:02
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slap me silly posted:drat you sir. Can these be got in the US? First pass at googling it up got me nothing. Amazon and ebay have the Chinese version. Search for a "xun". No idea what the differences are from a hu though.
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Nov 28, 2014 22:13
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Well after lurking this thread for a while, I've ordered a Songbird ocarina. Can't wait for it to arrive. However, today I was in one of the local fair trade shops, and they had a bunch of instruments, mainly toys I think - little ocarinas, drums, and some flutes, even a couple of thumb pianos. I ended up getting a wooden toy six hole fipple flute (only $2) and have had a good time toodling around on it. It's hard to find songs to play though - its range is just an octave. I can overblow it sometimes to get into the upper register but it seems tricky - I guess toy flutes aren't meant to have a great range. If anyone knows of any good resources in terms of music I could play on it that would be awesome. I think I'll get my partner a thumb piano for Xmas.
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Nov 29, 2014 05:24
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Good timing, I've been meaning to do a small writeup on thumb pianos as gifts. A thumb piano makes a great gift in that they're pretty affordable (as low as $20-30), are eye-catching, are very easy to play (as in even a total novice can sound good on a pentatonic-tuned one in the first few minutes), durable, and basically never need tuning. This is among the instruments I'd have no qualms giving to someone with zero musical interest or inclination, and indeed I've done so a number of times to good effect.  A few key takeaways: - If you're buying something that someone is going to play a lot seriously, get a modern-type sturdy/simple one. The weird ornate ones with gourds and whatnot can be a little impractical, and some of the folksier hand-hammered tines and whatnot the same. Not that there aren't great quality instruments of those types too, but not that you're going to casually run across at low prices. So stick to ones with sturdy bodies and mass-produced tines. - For manufacturers, like a lot of things I'd skew away from the ones made in Pakistan, China, etc. unless you have strong reason to believe the specific item is well-built, like has a lot of good Amazon reviews that seem reasonably informed about music. Thumb pianos are pretty inexpensive anyway, so there are a lot of cheap import ones that are actually cost more than decent US-made ones. I did just recently order a cute little $12 5-tine solid body from China, so will report on that when it arrives though it could be a few weeks, but if cheap is a high priority, rolling the dice on a little solid-body Chinese one (I'd still avoid Pakistan) may be worth the risk. - For suppliers, in the US "Kalimba Magic" is a serious quality place, but does also carry some pretty affordable models as low as $35. They do also ship to Europe, though that's only worth doing if you're getting a nicer model due to shipping costs. Amazon and Thomann.de carry a decent range of some imported cheapies if you just can't find an independent shop. Tracey and Goshen are both carried by a good scattering of other independent music stores, but Catania I think sells mostly through KM. - For brand names, Hugh Tracey is the big heritage "produced in Africa for the Western world" maker, and widely imitated. Personally I find them a little pricey, but depends what you like. I have not owned products by the German shop Hokema, but they have some really cool models and look great. The California company Catania makes a great electric I have, and their simpler acoustic models seem good and reasonably priced. Among the best-priced US makers is Goshen, some kind of art collective in the Appalachians that makes some of the most inexpensive kalimbas out there, but I've been pretty pleased with the ones I've tried. If you're flush with cash and want to get something very well made and artsy, Thoma Bothe are around $100 but gorgeous little things, and available in a wide variety of tunings.  - If you're buying for someone who's a somewhat experienced musician, you can get a larger diatonic or chromatic instrument. However, if you're buying for someone who's not too musically inclined, or even for a musician but something they can use more for meditation than melody, look for the term Pentatonic. That is, a musical scale with gaps in it so you only get a few key notes, with the upside being that it's almost impossible to sound bad on a pentatonic instrument. If you can establish any kind of pattern at all, it'll sound good. So I'd highly recommend pentatonic kalimbas for a lot of gift-giving, and would recommend you give the recipient some encouragement to just explore the instrument and not be intimidated by it. Here's a good clip from KM showing a little $35 Catania pentatonic and shows how easy they are to work with, and pentatonics actually play just fine even in the tiny variants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVnkll0IA5Q NOTE: Kalimba Magic, and some other sellers, are not good about explicitly using the word "Pentatonic" which would be really helpful. But most of their models that are small are pentatonic, so just take a look at the listing for the instrument and see if it mentions having an unusual scale or no. Or you can ask me if unsure; I'm going to email the owner later and ask that he more clearly use the word "pentatonic" or even maybe have a pentatonic section clickable from the frontpage. The Hokema Pocket Sansula, for example, is pentatonic. - In contrast, if you're buying for a skilled guitarist, piano player, etc and think they'll actually want to play melodies and harmonies of specific songs rather than just improvise and chill, err towards the larger sizes with more tines. Here's an example of a HT chromatic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHGreHNN-q4 
TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Dec 1, 2014 |
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Dec 1, 2014 18:21
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Paladin posted:It's called a Danso. I found it more difficult than a cheapie pvc practice shakuhachi, but I'd never done much with end-blown flutes beforehand so that may have been the main problem. I won  in some goon event! Yay! Well, in Paypal money. Ugh... What can I spend that on?Happened to be exactly the shipped price of this random plastic Danso: http://www.ebay.com/itm/161082276804 I no longer have . Fastest spend ever, about 15 minutes.Also made good progress on PVC shakuhachi. I can play it now... Well, both notes it has currently. No holes yet, you see. But it sounds lovely. Well spent money! [Not pictured: Many terrible hours of trying to blow the pipe and getting nothing.]
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Dec 2, 2014 09:15
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TapTheForwardAssist posted:The California company Catania makes a great electric I have, and their simpler acoustic models seem good and reasonably priced. Is there much difference between an acoustic and an electric without power? Since I do diy electronic junk its always fun to run a gadget through all kinds of silly processing, but would still be fun to just goof around with an acoustic too.
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Dec 2, 2014 09:24
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Base Emitter posted:Is there much difference between an acoustic and an electric without power? Since I do diy electronic junk its always fun to run a gadget through all kinds of silly processing, but would still be fun to just goof around with an acoustic too. Best of my knowledge, electric thumb pianos are not generally magnetized, but instead use a transducer/piezo pickup. So the only mod to an acoustic is adding a pickup which absorbs vibrations from the material. I don't know for positive, but as I understand it you can turn any acoustic into an electric just by adding a piezo in. Either pasting one onto the soundboard of a hollow-body, or either pasting it onto the body of a solid-body or drilling a small hole into the solid body to insert a piezo. The last method is basically what Catania does to make their solid-body electric, just drilling a hole for a piezo and a jack. On the lines of vibration, is there anyone following this week who's up to write a short megapost on buying harmonicas as gifts? One minor comment I wanted to emphasize, the Suzuki Airwave is a simplified/ruggedized harmonica made for the child market. It's only $10, and I've bought a few for friends and they've said they're hella durable even with small kids. Moving on to other potential Christmas gifts. Buying drums as a gift Drums are potentially a solid gift for the right recipient, in that basic drumming has a pretty low skill baseline, but if they take to it there's huge potential for learning more skills. Or they just casually play basic drums for years, which is also cool. My suggestions are largely for recipients with some vague musical interest, casual guitar players, etc. More experienced music folks the range broadens a lot, but that's a separate issue to work out with them in detail. Similarly, I don't have as strong opinions as to get with kids under, say, 8yrs or so, though happy to bring up the issue here. For the middle-of-the-road, tweens/teens to adults, with some possible broad musical interest, here are some basic categories of possibilities broadly in the <$100 category which are quality. - Djembe: these are hugely popular drums amongst hippie types, and really versatile drums for anyone interested in global hand drumming. Broadly available/affordable, tons of tutorials online, fit into a wide variety of music - Bongos: if you have anyone into Latin or jazz, these are classic, pretty compact and durable, and again plenty of online tutorials - Dumbek: this mainly applies if you have someone that might be even slightly into Middle Eastern music, though they are also a really applicable drum for a ton of other styles, good body of tutorials, durable, etc. - Native American drum: if you have anyone particularly hippieish or meditational these are pretty compact and affordable. Remo has synthetic-head NA drums around $50 or so. They're 1-handed mallet drums, so not as useful for intricate rhythm, but again more of a spiritual thing. - Cajon: the larger cajones tend to run over $100, but there are a large number of smaller wooden boxes to pound on, lap-sized "cajon bongo" and other small boxes to beat out a rhythm. - Bones: mainly useful for folks into Irish or Old Time music, nice and affordable/durable/compact  Materials: just as a broad rule, do a little thinking on materials as you consider the recipient. The younger the giftee, the more you should lean towards synthetics, since kids don't take care of anything, and it might get put in the closet for years and then hauled back out again. With teen/adult audiences, synthetic can still be a good choice is you think the recipient is only going to be casually into drumming. The main reason to go natural heads or bodies is if you think the giftee's estimation of the gift will really jump up. So if someone is a stoner Rasta type, a wooden djembe with rope-tuning might come across as a lot more natural, things like that, in huge generalities. If you're buying for a kid "pre-tuned" is fine/prefereable, that is a drum with a non-adjustable permanently fixed head, since that's one less thing for a kid to worry about. The more experienced/serious the potential player, the more you want something tunable so they can actually adjust the drum as needed. Size: This is a big issue to pay attention to. For a number of kinds of drums, there are "mini", etc. sizes. In large part, the "mini" versions of drums kinda suck except as a toy or novelty. For djembes, for example, if the drumhead is 9" or less, it's probably a small size toy-ish drum. So make sure you're well aware of the size of the drum you want, vice the standard full-size, before ordering. There are some good YouTube clips showing smaller djembes, and though not necessarily terrible, they don't really perform like a larger one. For djembes for example, 12" head and 24" height is pretty common, so watch for items notably smaller. Check the measurements before buying. Dealers: Overall I like X8 drums for being pretty helpful and selective. But for the major brand-names, you can't go too wrong with a mass-shipper, so long as you carefully check out the product as it arrives. Amongst dejmbes, the Toca Freestyle jumps out at me for good reviews, synthetic bodies but goatskin heads, and $79 or so. Remo also makes some affordable pre-tuned djembe in that range, as well as the all-synthetic tuneable Remo Advent. And like for most percussion Meinl makes some decent starter stuff. EDIT: Meinl produces a number of 10"x20" wooden rope-tuned djempes for under $100; those are slightly smaller than a lead drum, but not toy-small, and look pretty cool. The brand Nino makes more kids' stuff, but a lot of it really affordable for a number of instruments. For bongos, if you sort by price there are quite a few in the <$100 range, with a lot of offerings by LP. For bongos though, I'd particularly avoid non-tuneable ones except for small kids. Overall, drums provide an afforable option that even novices can have some fun with. 
TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 19:06
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We're allowed to brag about cool finds, right? I got a Sharpsicle, nice padded case, strap with leather ends, lap stick, extra strings, and tuning wrench for $250. It's just natural maple color, and sounds great (for what it is) once I got it tuned. I'd been combing craigslist for months, expecting that I'd have to eventually bite the bullet and plunk down at least several hundred bucks. The timing couldn't be better either, as I'd just had my first harp lesson, and was needing to make a choice SOON about buying vs renting. Just had to pick up a Snark tuner and now I'm all set. I don't know that I would have held out hope if not for a post many, many pages ago about a harpsicle/ sharpsicle with awful camo paint, but at a good price. That stuck with me, and everything is all rosy now.  In time, I might put it on craiglist and upgrade, but for now this is a great fit!
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Dec 3, 2014 05:46
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Thanks to ocarina-talk I have learned about Giorgio Pacchioni's multi-chamber ones, which have a uniquely intelligent fingering. If I accidentally buy one I'm sending you fuckers a bill. I dug out the Night soprano C I bought in Japan years ago and have been loving around on it. Very nice but also pretty shrill.
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Dec 4, 2014 05:42
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Man, I love this thread. Based on a whim, I'm ordering a härjedalspipa from Gunnar Stenmark. I figure I already play enough Swedish folk that I may as well add another weird instrument from there. Thankfully, my local library has some nice archives of immigrant performers thanks to a really dedicated folklorist, so I can listen to some actual performance and adapt some of my tinwhistle technique to it. Aulos is going well, apparently - should be ready soon, and then I pay. Not gonna end up with another talharpa experience.
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Dec 6, 2014 20:26
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My husband picked up a digeridoo to help with his sleep apnea (this is a thing, apparently?). I currently only play a little piano, but since he's getting into awesome world music that I might as well too. I'm hoping to find something that will sound okay with the digeridoo so we can play together. I've been looking around at some different percussion instruments and I honestly have no idea where to start. What would you musical types recommend for a starter percussion instrument that might sound decent with a digeridoo? I was playing around with a nice big djembe at a music store and it had a really great range of bass-y and not-so-bass-y sounds, but I'm hoping for something a little smaller. The cajon was fun as hell and VERY versatile, but I think it's a bit too complex for a beginner like myself. Looking for something in the $140 range, if that helps. I want to limit myself to the cheaper end simply because this is just a starter thing. Any ideas?
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Dec 6, 2014 21:02
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Doumbek maybe? It has a different range of tones (less bass-y stuff) but is versatile. You can find guides on the internet for the basic strikes if you haven't done much hand drumming before.
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Dec 6, 2014 21:33
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Yeah, I love this thread too. Two shakuhachi flutes now... One PVC and one made out of an old sunflower stem that I grew in my garden two years ago. The sunflower one is seriously pretty. It even plays quite nicely. Third one will be in the pelog scale. I guess it isn't a shakuhachi anymore at that point, but well... Making flutes is seriously easy. Really. Easy.
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Dec 7, 2014 03:00
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Thanks, slap me silly, I checked out a couple of videos of doumbek players and that's pretty much the exact sound I'm looking for. I was able to find a decent priced one on Amazon with some really great reviews. It's going to be my Christmas present to myself.
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Dec 7, 2014 03:52
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No Gravitas posted:One PVC and one made out of an old sunflower stem that I grew in my garden two years ago. The sunflower one is seriously pretty. It even plays quite nicely. Yeah, there are some pretty cool materials in the US and Europe that are overlooked for wind instruments but traditionally served that (or similar) purposes. In parts of the US, sunflower stalks as mentioned, river cane/reed, or yucca stalks. In both the US and Europe you can find elder brambles, and those you can cut into pieces and dry in the shed/garage for a year, and then hollow them out by reaming out the soft interior pith to make a bore. Elderberry is like Nature's PVC pipe.    SamLikesCake posted:Thanks, slap me silly, I checked out a couple of videos of doumbek players and that's pretty much the exact sound I'm looking for. I was able to find a decent priced one on Amazon with some really great reviews. It's going to be my Christmas present to myself. Excellent, that was a quick conclusion. Somewhat surprisingly, it looks like there are a lot of clips of didg and dumbek on YouTube, seems a relatively popular match-up. What make/model did you decide to get? 
TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Dec 8, 2014 |
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Dec 8, 2014 05:16
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Nice. I'm gonna do this now, just as soon as I find an elderberry whatsis.
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Dec 8, 2014 05:20
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slap me silly posted:Nice. I'm gonna do this now, just as soon as I find an elderberry whatsis. Good on you for avoiding the obvious Monty Python references. For both you and Gravitas, if you get tired of making shakuhachis, side-blown flutes, quenas and the like, I don't think anyone has made any of the sharpened-rim end-blown flutes like the kaval. I believe they're pretty easy to make of PVC, and very different playing style from the notch-type endblown.  Improvisation on PVC kaval: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meRvcFNvzV4
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Dec 12, 2014 03:52
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Clarineos are on amazon for 90$, new seller though: http://www.amazon.com/national-Nouv...8371077&sr=1-23 http://www.amazon.com/National-Nouv...8371131&sr=1-22
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Dec 12, 2014 09:02
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If folks are looking for last-minute musical stuff, just want to put in a plug for the High Spirits "pocket" Native American flutes. If you're buying a full-size flute there are quite a few options, covered at length earlier in this thread. Some makers may have current stock on-hand to ship now, while others just make on demand so not really timely for a gift. As discussed earlier in the thread, NAF is quite possibly the easiest wind for a novice/dabbler to play. It has a double-chamber making it really hard to mess up the breath pressure since the flow is really moderated by the construction. They have decent volume but aren't piercingly loud like a tinwhistle, and tend to have a lower pitch for their size than recorders or ocarinas. Most importantly, NAF are generally in a pentatonic scale, meaning that they only play five notes per octave, making them extremely easy to improvise on without sounding bad. Like a pentatonic kalimba, you can do pretty much anything with a semblance of a pattern or flow on it with a pentatonic instrument, and it'll sound good. But if you want a relatively inexpensive and compact NAF for someone with a casual interest in music, or who plays music but might want to dabble a bit in NAF, the "pocket" flutes are reasonably priced, really cute, and play well. Overall good rep online, and I've tried a couple and enjoyed them. I don't have anyone this year that I intend to give one to (though am gifting another kalimba/thumb-piano) but it's on my backburner list for future gifting. The ones keyed in "A" (one octave above the big flutes) are $40 and offered in several woods (9" long), and $60 for the larger ones in "G", just one step lower but a couple inches longer (11"). They also have a 25% off coupon on their site's frontpage right now, and also have 99c ground shipping that can still arrive before Christmas if ordered by Wednesday, and after that shipping prices get higher for safely pre-Christmas arrival.  G flute here  Allen Bruce Ray is that crazy American dude in (iirc) Korea who has like a zillion NAFs and records himself playing them in pedestrian tunnels. The guy has a ton of YT clips, always worth watching (especially the huge drone flutes he plays), but here's him on a little Pocket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr7zVLwICX8 As always, unpaid plug, I'm just doing last-minute Christmas stuff and thought I'd throw another really accessible idea out there, and these things are just really cute. EDIT: Just ordered a Hokema Pentatonic Kalimba; if anyone else is ordering from Kalimba Magic, ping me first since I have a 14% Off coupon code for them. TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2014 20:05
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Packing up my stuff in DC, trying to get down to a minimal amount so that I can store stuff at my uncle's house without tying up too much space, and also getting rid of things that might not do well in storage. Realized that I have about 7 Appalachian dulcimers at the moment... and more sobering realized that's actually a little low for me. I keep saying "I should do dulcimer workshops again, and this time I should just get a bunch of cardboard dulcimers rather than muck around trying to buy beaters off eBay". And for about three times in a row I've accumulated eBay beaters, and then never ended up doing workshops in the past few years. Ah well, they'll soon be out in the hands of other DC musicians, so at least I'll be spreading some dulcimer love.
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Dec 17, 2014 05:13
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So my wife is an amazing person and got me a neat little pipe and tabor to start playing with. I have to say, it's definitely a cool instrument combo - the ability to play percussion while also using a whistle for melody is kinda great. Not sure if there's a write-up, but I'm willing to sit down and do one. Even better, however, is the good ol' three-hole pipe; it's a one-handed instrument, and there's a cheap Generation model that's about the same cost as a tinwhistle. Mine needed a bit of tweaking, but I've done so with tinwhistles before, and they're fairly close, instrument-wise. I can say that it's a pretty neat little instrument, albeit a bit loud and less useful for softer stuff until you hit the less shrill stuff. Here is a dude demonstrating badass skills on what is basically a one-handed pipe with three holes and a tiny drum.
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Dec 22, 2014 18:31
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Hey weird music thread! I'm really experienced in classical music (have ~11 years training in clarinet and bass clarinet, similar amounts in piano though I'm not great at it, ~5 years of operatic voice, about a year of cello) and have a BA in music, so I'm by no means a beginner, but I'm honestly kind of embarrassingly bad at improvising or music that isn't from a notated sheet. I have TONS of knowledge of woodwinds (have played every clarinet you can imagine, flute, tenor and alto sax, a bit of oboe and bassoon) and some passing knowledge of strings. I am, however, on a really strict budget, being a grad student. If I want to pick up a weird instrument that will challenge me, what would be a good thing to go with?
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Dec 26, 2014 08:04
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Panic! at Nabisco posted:I am, however, on a really strict budget, being a grad student. Hi, fellow grad student. You have played flutes, but have you built any? A PVC shakuhachi is 25$ for five flutes, and that includes buying some equipment. 40$ if you want to buy your own drill too. After this you pay about 13$ for every next 5 flutes that you make. Being pentatonic you cannot screw up with improvising. And with a shakuhachi there is a lot that you can do. I mean, a LOT. And once you are bored of the minor pentatonic, just build one in the fire scale for example. (http://www.navaching.com/shaku/scale.html) Or slendro. Or pelog. Or whatever the hell set of sounds you want it to play. Or try different bore diameters. Or maybe scrape your bore for a dark sound. You won't be bored. The possibilities are endless, just don't expect the first few to come out perfect. The mouthpiece is critical. And don't heat your PVC, no matter what that navaching website tells you to do.
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Dec 26, 2014 08:17
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Panic! at Nabisco posted:Hey weird music thread! No Gravitas has a really solid suggestion there, if you like the DIY scene. For a few bucks of PVC (or whatever scrap you can salvage), and then a few bucks in very basic hand-tools (needle files are like $5, a decent small/sharp knife, a nice Fiskars manual hand drill is like $12, or get a nicer used one on eBay), you can churn out dozens of flute-type instruments.  Shakuhachi is one good option, but I'd suggest surfing around to see what all the other variants are, see what appeals to you. There are of course always sideblown flutes, but those might be less novel for you as a silver flute player, other than that you can make cool custom scales on PVC. I wonder if you could avoid the hassle of making the blow-hole by just using a headjoint off a cheap silver flute, and making a number of different bodies for it out of PVC? So aside from shakuhachi and sideblow flutes, the Andean quena is also a notch flute, but plays a more standard Western scale. And then you have sharpened-rim flutes like the Balkan kaval (known by a dozen other names). But if you have PVC and some tools you can try making one of each style and see which embouchures you prefer. And then don't feel restricted to making the standard fingerings, experiment with pentatonic scales, Pythagorean intonation, stuff like that. Though there are some folks that don't like working with PVC, there's a body of argument that PVC concerns are largely hipppie-wooh "not natural, maaaaan" objections and PVC is perfectly safe except when exposed to high melting heats. So yeah, you might want to favor the designs that just involve drilling/shaving PVC, not melting it. Also note that CPVC and ABS plastic, and probably a few others, are available as pipes as well, and have different tooling properties. But setting aside "make your own flutes" for the moment, a few other options that jump to my mind are - Spend $10 for a tinwhistle in whichever key (D for Irish), pick a genre of music, and work on learning its standard tunes purely aurally, without sheet music. Irish is easy for this, but works great for plenty of other genres. - You have a pretty melodic background, if you want to challenge yourself in a different direction by working on polyphonic/harmonic stuff, I'd recommend getting either a ukulele or mandolin, and learning to both chord and play melodies on it, so you can work at improvising chord progressions, solos, etc. Uke is really fun, but mandolin has more complex melodic possibilities (on some levels) and also imitates violin patterns really well while avoiding the whole bowing hassle, and I find mandolin is really applicable to a wider variety of styles of ensemble music, so you'd have an easier time hopping in to say a jazz open jam, or Irish seisun, and keep up in speed and volume. There are perfectly playable beginner mandos for around $100, thanks to the magic of Chinese mass production. quote:So my wife is an amazing person and got me a neat little pipe and tabor to start playing with... Not sure if there's a write-up, but I'm willing to sit down and do one. Definitely do so! I once bought at auction a lovely little Sweetheart tabor pipe and matching little snare drum, both in birdseye maple. Really lovely, but I didn't play it enough, felt bad for hogging it, and sold it off some years ago. Did you get a Susato, or which? 
TapTheForwardAssist fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Dec 27, 2014 |
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Dec 27, 2014 23:00
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So you freaks have made me decide to buy a small instrument to play when I'm out in the bush and I'm thinking an ocarina is going to be the way to go. Given I live in Australia and will be paying way more money for shipping than I will for the instrument paying a bit more for something that sounds awesome really isn't a problem. It will be my first instrument in a decade and, to put it bluntly, I am poo poo at music. Some quick Googling led me to to this Songbird thing that looks light and seems to sound good. I know the plastic ones recommended in the OP look good but if I'm paying 5x the price of the item in shipping I may as well splurge a bit. Also, I'm open to suggestions of other instruments that could be taken on multi day hikes (when I'm most likely to want to use it).
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Dec 28, 2014 12:07
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| # ? May 28, 2024 13:21 |
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A tinpipe is tough enough to hike with and also handy for signaling for help if you end up in an emergency. You could also consider a set of bones or a pocket didgeridoo. Depending on how ultralight you want to be, you could even consider a small kantele.
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Dec 28, 2014 13:28
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