Flaskedrengene: Beer Bottle Music

As most of us know (and have done), blowing over a bottle can make a very musical note. It's a pretty neat phenomenon, and I tend to take advantage of it whenever I have a bottle in my hands (...sometimes to the chagrin of my peers).

I've seen some youtube videos of people performing small pieces on pre-tuned bottles, but most of them are essentially stop-motion compilations, and usually with a limited range of harmony and complexity.

Enter Flaskedrengene, known in English as The Bottle Band. These guys actually perform this stuff live, in harmony. Unfortunately I know nothing about them except that they are street musicians from Denmark (the info on them in English is next to none, but if anyone else finds more info, please do share!). They even performed on "Denmark's Got Talent" last year. Something about the innocence of bottle blowing and the sheer oddity of it makes it highly enjoyable and a pleasure to watch. I'm also impressed that they can keep carrying bottles with water in them for several songs in a row... that's gotta be cumbersome and tiring.



The DK Talent show segment is here. Check out the creative use of thumbs around 2:14.



For those geeks out there, if you want to know more about the physics behind this phenomenon, go and check out this description.

As a bonus, I present to you Michel Lauzière and his use of beer bottles:

Mister Disc: The Portable Vinyl Player

Back in 1983, Audio-Technica created a portable vinyl player, a walkman for records if you will. Except you couldn't really use it in a moving vehicle, let alone walk with it. Basically any vibrations would disrupt/stop the audio. You would also want to avoid playing it in the sun, because the records would start to warp. And finally, even if the player is portable... the records are still bulky to carry around. So lots of limitations for sure, but it was still a pretty neat concept: It ran on batteries with a battery life of up to 12 hours (as well as an adapter). It played both 33.5 RPM records and 45's, and you could plug in 2 earphones directly into it.

Audio Technica released two very similar versions of this neat piece of hardware, the AT-727 sold as the "Sound Burger" and the AT-770 sold as Mr.Disc.

Pretty damn cool I think, and it's one of those things that audiophiles and geeks would probably want to get their hands on these days. Except most of us won't, because as of today, it was selling for $450 US on ebay! I have heard about people finding them for under $20 at second hand shops, so let us know if you end up finding one that way.

To see a bigger version of the pictures, click on the image and it will open up in a new window.





The Instruction Manual:


Here's a video of it in action:



The Sound Burger on the other hand, came in several different colours:







What do you guys think? I'll be posting a couple of other entries on other portable vinyl players, since this seems to be one of the most popular pages on the blog.

Drums Made of Ice

This is part of an ad for the Icehotel Jukkasjärvi in Sweden. It's pretty self-explanatory, but make sure you watch until the end when he trashes it all to pieces. The second video is a short "making of" video.

...It is taking me lots of self-restraint to not describe it as "cool"...

So this is what the most annoying and most enjoyable song sounds like...

This is well over a few years old at this point, but so is the Armonica, so who really cares? My non-existent readership? (That will either be slightly funny, or incredibly depressing...depending on your own opinion of this blog. hahahaha)

I'm talking about the Komar & Melamid and David Soldier compositions. It's an attempt at composing the most annoying/hated song, as well as the most liked song.

What they did was conduct a survey which tried to find out what instruments, topics, styles and so forth, that the general listener enjoyed/hated the most. Using that data, they combined all the most "enjoyable" elements into a song, and combined all the most "hated" elements into another song. The results? ...strange... very...strange.

The most unwanted song is statistically likely to be enjoyed by fewer than 200 people in the whole entire world. It is 25min long, with children singing holiday songs and jingles about Walmart, bagpipes, opera and rap etc.....dysfunctionally pieced together in abrupt changes. There's actually hardly any dissonance, which is pretty neat: They created the most "listenable" unlistenable music. It's totally fun to listen to, although yes, it's pretty bad. Check out the opera singer rapping. It's hilarious:


Right Click to Download "The Most Unwanted Music"

In comparison, the most liked song is statistically likely to be enjoyed by 72% of the population, plus/minus 12%. It is of radio friendly length, moderate tempo, with guitar, piano, low male and female vocals singing slow rock/r&b etc. So what does that all add up to? Easy Rock. Adult contemporary, easy-listening. I have to admit, the string-swells, the key changes, and the sax...kinda made me cringe. But don't take my word for it! Experience it yourself:


Right Click to Download "The Most Wanted Music"

I copied these links from the Wired blog, so for more information check their page.

For more detailed information about the compositions, check the composers webpage.

Instruments That Blow Your Mind

I haven't yet promoted a webpage on this blog, not because there aren't great resources out there, but because I want to focus on one sound, one aspect, one instrument at a time. Most webpages that are concerned with music tend to be of a wider scope than I could write about on any given post in this blog. However, I think I'm going to have to make an exception in this post though, because this is one hell of a resource.

The Oddmusic gallery is a wonderful project, in which strange/relatively unknown (new and old) instruments are showcased. Videos and sound clips are also available for many of the instruments listed in it's impressive list. Among some of the wacky instruments:

- A guitar with 5 necks
- The Guitarangi da Gamba: a 30 stringed guitar/viola/sarangi hybrid
- Didjibodhrán: Half didjeridu and...half bodhrán
- The Fire Organ: An organ that creates sound through propane flames
- The Sea Organ: A wind instrument that is "played" by the sea

And so on and so forth. Fun stuff to browse through. Not all of them are "serious" musical creations, but it's still pretty neat! I'll probably take up my favourite ones in individual blog posts... eventually.