Experimental musical instrument
Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) was an Italian Futurist painter and composer, and the author of the manifestoes The Art of Noises (1913) and Musica Futurista.
He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.
Throughout the 1960s the Canadian musician Bruce Haack created many electronic experimental musical instruments, including the famous Dermatron, which was played by touching people's faces.
In the 1960s, Michel Waisvisz and Geert Hamelberg developed the Kraakdoos (or Cracklebox), a custom made battery-powered noise-making electronic device.
It is a small box with six metal contacts on top, which when pressed by fingers will generate a range of unusual sounds and tones.
Walter Smetak was a Swiss-Brazilian composer, cellist , sculpturer, and instrument inventor, who was highly influential in Brazil and other countries.
He opened a workshop where he created musical instruments with vegetable gourds, pieces of wook, PVC pipes and plates, and other non conventional materials.
The neola is a tenor stringed musical instrument invented in 1970 by Goronwy Bradley Davies, Llanbedr, Wales.
‘Cello players would need to adapt their technique to accommodate the shorter string and body length, and use of the thumb position would not be the same.
Reichel has constructed and built several variations of guitars and basses, most of them featuring multiple fretboards and unique positioning of pickups as well as the same indirect playing technique as Branca's instruments.
The resulting sounds exceed the range of conventional tuning and add effects from odd overtones to metallic tones.
The location along the tongue where it is played will determine the frequency of its vibration, similarly to a wooden ruler held against the edge of a table.
Manohar Chimote with the combination of keys and sympathetic strings to create the tone most suitable for solo playing.
The bazantar is a five-string double bass with 29 sympathetic and 4 drone strings and has a melodic range of five octaves invented by musician Mark Deutsch, who worked on the design between 1993 and 1997.
Cor Fuhler (1964) is a Dutch/Australian improvising musician, composer and instrument builder, known for his pioneering extended piano techniques.
Iner Souster (born in 1971) is a builder of experimental musical instruments, visual artist, musician, fauxbot designer and film maker who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The Japanese multi-instrumentalist and experimental musical instrument builder Yuichi Onoue developed a two string hurdy-gurdy like a fretless violin, called the Kaisatsuko, as well as a deeply scalloped electric guitar for microtonal playing techniques.
[10] Solmania from Japan, and Neptune are noise music bands that built their own custom made guitars and basses.
In 2006 Neptune signed with Table of the Elements, an experimental record label that also has performers such as Rhys Chatham, John Cale, and Captain Beefheart on its roster.
The Blue Man Group also experimented with home-made percussive instruments, made from PVC pipes and other materials.
In the mid 1990s, Californian nu metal band Motograter invented the eponymous instrument in place of a bass guitar.
The Motograter is made out of 2 large industrial springs mounted on a metal platform, producing unique chunky guitar and bass tones with a strong "RRRRRR" sound.
It was the first documented professional ensemble to employ cell phones in such way: the players programmed music using the ringtone composing module built in the apparatus.
The loudspeakers were placed close to the player's mouth, so that the sounds could be modulated by the vocal tract, generating a musically interesting quality, with several timbre, amplitude and tremolo effects.
The mobile models used GSM technology , such as the Nokia 3310, and were discontinued in the following two years, for the newly developed smartphones by the same makers.
Concealed under these steps is a system of polyethylene tubes and a resonating cavity that turns the site into a huge musical instrument, played by the wind and the sea.
Light sensors were placed across seven floors of the building and fed by radio network into a computer music instrument analogous to a Mellotron.
As the sun rose the "Sunlight Symphony" played in the reverberant space of the Roland Levinsky Building's open plan foyer.
Logos Foundation, STEIM, Sonoscopia (Porto) and iii (The Hague) are organisations that focus on the development of new instruments.
Besides producing instruments themselves, these organisations also run active artist-in-residence programs and invite artists for developing new art works, workshops, and presentations.
