At first I didn’t think this was real. The sound is just too good to come out of a run of the mill bendy straw. But I did some research and found that it is indeed real. There are lots of YouTube videos about how to make them, you just need to cut them properly,…
Justin Johnson makes and plays an amazing three string made from a shovel.
As soon as I saw a Nyckelharpa I knew I had to post about it. It’s not the only stringed, bowed instrument with keys, the Hurdy-Gurdy for example is quite similar, though that uses a static wheel. The Nyckelharpa uses a more standard bow, though it’s quite small compared to something like a violin. Check…
A couple years ago I set out to learn what “metal” music is like in different cultures, just by typing in a country or people group and the word “metal” in YouTube. Thus I found Ningen Isu. I’ll just get out of the way that the music is GREAT. Listen below. But this first paragraph…
I really appreciate both music that is culturally specific as well as music that crosses cultures. I recently found this music on Youtube. Most of what I’ve listed to is from one band,Hanggai, but there’s quite a bit of it on Youtube. I’ll let Wikipedia tell you more about the band. Hanggai Band (杭盖乐队) is…
The Chapman stick was invented in the 1970’s. It’s essentially the neck of a 10 stringed guitar. It’s intended to be hammered, strummed, or stroked with a bow, but it’s most times hammered. I’ve seen many hammer style guitar players, but with the chapman stick there are far more fingers available, so you get many…
Welcome to the inaugural post of Eclectic Jams! Here I’ll periodically be posting links to non-mainstream instruments or performances, as I find them. Our first instrument is one I just learned about this week, it’s called the Hang, though sometimes called a Hang Drum. The name Hang comes from the Bernese German word for hand….