Jim Cowdery writes: No doubt your followers have been clamoring for updates to the contrabass/contrabassiphone post from several years ago. I am happy to provide this demonstration of the subcontrabass saxophone; the lowest note seems to be A-flat, a major second lower than a contrabassoon and a major third lower than a double bass with a […]
Tag: instrument
The distance between musical notes
Today’s quick calculation exercise is to calculate the relative distances between different musical notes and a trombone player’s face. Watch this video of a trombone player playing a tune on a trombone. A GoPro camera has been affixed to part of the trombone, and aimed at the musician’s face: (Thanks to investigator Dorothy Bond for […]
The lowest of the low, saxophonally
Behold the subcontrabass saxophone, a musical instrument most people have never heard, or seen, or touched, let alone played. A saxophone instruction book, published by Wiley, says of it: Subcontrabass saxophone: This is the lowest of the low and has never been produced in large quantities. That’s probably fortunate, because you’d need a trailer to […]
The art of short-circuiting (a metaphorical coconut)
Qubais Reed Ghazala explains how he builds new kinds of instruments by carefully bending, twisting, or otherwise deforming or even breaking things that were designed to be other than what Ghazala eventually had in mind for them. He wrote a study: “The Folk Music of Chance Electronics: Circuit-Bending the Modern Coconut,” Qubais Reed Ghazala, Leonardo […]