by 7 people |
In my travels around the web as a musician, webmaster, and web researcher, I've discovered some highly unusual, sometimes even unique music, musicians, and musical instruments. The most outstanding are collected here for those who wish to explore this fascinating realm. These artists also produce some of my most favorite music.
You can explore further if you wish by checking the individual artists' web sites for additional links and resources. Also, if you know of other rare, unusual or unique musical instruments or artists, feel free to use the 'Contact me' link at right to send me their web URLs for consideration to be included in this lens.
Enjoy your visit with some of the most unusual artists in the world!
- Steven Miller
Unusual Musicians and Musical Groups
- Ancient Future
- ...a place where new cross-cultural music and dance is created by learning from the world's great ancient traditions. Ancient Future originated the musical genre now called "World Fusion".
- AXIS MUNDI
- World Groove Sonic Trance Chant - Recreating the psycho-acoustics and transformational energy of Vedic cave rituals in ancient India.
- Blue Man Group
- The enormously popular 21st Century megastar of creative rock music, with their many original instruments. A phenom for sure.
- Brent Lewis
- Brent's melodic Ikauma Drums create a uniquely magical style of percussion music.
- Burnt Earth Ensemble
- Armed with haunting flutes, growling didjeridus, raucous fiddles and thundering drums, the Burnt Earth Ensemble coaxes tantalizing music from the material of the Earth herself.
- Davide Swarup
- Enchanting music of the Hang Drum and Indian Santoor.
- Gamalan Galak Tika
- "An intoxicating tone of wave-like rhythms and ringing sonoroties... A cross-cultural, color-rich mix of mesmeric gamelan resonance and rock drama!"
- Girlz Of Zaetar
- Is it Jazz?? "...creating music that is at once excruciatingly pretentious and wonderfully listenable."
- Ian Bederman's Intuitive Music Orchestra
- Inspired and inspiring, Ian's seductive music is entirely composed "on the fly".
- John Morgan Newbern
- An unusual artist with an unusually sensual yet spiritual form of music, performed on the rare 12-string Guitarra de Maya.
- Jon Rose
- Critically acclaimed master of the musical wire fence, and other "relative violins".
- Karen Stackpole
- San Francisco gong virtuoso and renowned creative percussionist - "A journey to the center of sound."
- Kit Watkins
- Uncommon depth, subtlety and power characterize Kit Watkins' entrancing electronic/ambient music.
- Mark Deutsch
- Mark weaves a numinous soundscape on his mystical Bazantar, a double bass-sitar crossbrid.
- Michael Chocholak
- A fascinatingly deep and eclectic mix of electronics and acoustic ambient sounds.
- Michael Masley
- No one plays the cymbalom, a large hammered dulcimer, the way Michael Masley does.
- Neon Egypt
- Free-flowing saxophone melodies float gracefully over Taiko-like melodic drum lines, featuring the one-of-a-kind Shendai Ceremonial Drums.
- Scrap Arts Music
- With powerful original music, dazzling sculptural instruments and hyper-kinetic movement, the ensemble always leaves audiences wanting more.
- Tone Ghost Ether
- Exquisitely expressive live improvised electronic trio.
- The Tunnel Singer
- Performance artist Lee Ellen Shoemaker's singing in natural spaces with long natural reverberation has been a passion since childhood.
- Travis Wernet
- Didgeridoo and Poetry - haunting, organic and elegant.
- Walala
- Dulcimer, Oud, Saxophone, and Fretless Bass. Lyrical and enticing.
Unique and Unusual Musical Instruments
- Aeolian Wind Harps
- Aeolian Harps are rare and beautiful instruments designed to be played by the wind, free of the touch of human hands.
- Bent Circuits
- Reed Ghazala's "circuit-bending" techniques create some bizarre electronic instruments and sounds.
(Also see the "how-to" book from Amazon.com, below.) - Burnt Earth Instruments
- Barry Hall's original ceramic musical instruments, including unique hybrids such as the Didjibodhran and Stone Fiddle, with sound samples of each instrument.
- The Chapman Stick
- "The Stick" has strings ranging from the pitches of a bass through those of a guitar. It is played by tapping the strings on the fretboard.
- The Didgeridoo
- The didgeridoo is believed to be the world's oldest wind instrument, originating with the North Australian Aborigine.
- Neil Feather's Original Instruments
- Home of the Nondo, the Divynax, the Roto-zither, and Neil's classic Bowling Ball Instruments.
- The Hang Drum
- A modern percussion instrument of Swiss creation, the hand-played Hang (pronounced "hung") sounds like a soft-voiced steel pan.
- The Hurdygurdy
- The hurdy-gurdy is a stringed instrument in which the strings are rubbed by a rosined wheel turned by a hand crank, instead of a bow.
- Hybrid Visions
- One of the world's most unusual and innovative original instrument collections. Inventor Ken Butler specializes in stringed instruments and keyboards.
- Glen Peterson's Microtonal Instruments
- Microtonal guitars and other experimental tuning instruments.
- Les Sculptures Sonores
- French brothers Francois and Bernard Baschet create aesthetically beautiful and musically fascinating works of art.
- pi10k
- This online computer experiment, which you initiate yourself, converts the first 10,000 digits of pi into a musical sequence, beginning from a 10-note base scale you specify.
- The Serpent
- One of the most improbable wind-played musical instruments ever devised.
- The Theramin
- Invented in 1919 by Russian Scientist Leon Theremin (1896-1993), this unique instrument is the predecessor to the modern synthesizer.
- The Waterphone
- Eerie and ethereal sounds emanate from the Waterphone's bowed metal rods. Waterphones have been used in numerous film and TV sound tracks.
- Un Mundo de Bambu
- Argentinian maker of bamboo Saxophones, Clarinets, and other unusual bamboo instruments.
Other Sites and Resources
- Odd Music
- Oddmusic.com is for anyone interested in unique, unusual, ethnic, or experimental music and instruments.
- Experimental Musical Instruments
- An information outlet for interesting and unusual musical instruments of all sorts.
- Other Minds
- A global New Music community where composers, students, and listeners discover and learn about innovative music by composers from all over the world.
Titles to Explore from Amazon
Strange Sounds: Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop
Includes some of the biggest names in pop music from the 1950s to the present, explaining and illustrating what instruments were used - their history, how they were played, how the artists came to choose them.
Amazon Price: $18.96 (as of 12/30/2009) 
Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones: Experimental Musical Instruments
A classic that comes with a CD full of examples - actual pieces of music using these instruments, not just a demonstration of their sound. This book seems to be out of print, so if you buy a used copy, make sure to ask for the CD.
Amazon Price: (as of 12/30/2009)
Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments
Catalogs and expounds upon some mechanical music-making rarities you've likely never even heard of.
Amazon Price: $87.34 (as of 12/30/2009)
Musical Instruments of the Southern Appalachian Mountains
The roots of Bluegrass music developed for hundreds of years with dulcimers, fiddles, banjos, jew harps, and mouth bows from the Appalachian mountain region of America. Here is the illustrated story of each instrument and their use in the isolated hills to create a truly American style of music.
Amazon Price: $11.01 (as of 12/30/2009)
The Physics of Musical Instruments
Essentially everything you have ever wanted to now about the physics of musical instrument sound production, plus some.
Amazon Price: $80.95 (as of 12/30/2009)
Musical Instrument Design: Practical Information for Instrument Design
Explores the principles of acoustics and their relationship to instrument design in depth.
Amazon Price: $12.89 (as of 12/30/2009)
Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in Technology & Composition (Media and Popularculture)
Covers electronic music - what it is and how it is made. Includes resources, origins of computer music, origins of the Avant-Garde, pioneers and innovators.
Amazon Price: (as of 12/30/2009)
Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments (ExtremeTech)
The first book to cover circuit-bending - or just "bending" for short - the method by which an electronic toy or a device such as a keyboard is short-circuited and modified to create an entirely different sound.
Amazon Price: $19.79 (as of 12/30/2009)
Microsound
Below the level of the musical note lies the realm of microsound, of sound particles lasting less than one-tenth of a second.
Amazon Price: $55.00 (as of 12/30/2009)
Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology (Music/Culture)
Towards a new model for instrument design and music making in the digital age. Five Star reader rated.
Amazon Price: $18.96 (as of 12/30/2009)
On Sonic Art (Contemporary Music Studies, V. 12)
A wide-ranging look at the new developments in music-making and musical aesthetics made possible by the advent of the computer and digital information processing. The emphasis is on musical rather than technical matters.
Amazon Price: $58.50 (as of 12/30/2009)
Science of Percussion Instruments (Series in Popular Science)
A fine survey work on the amazing range of diversity within an entire class of musical instruments. Explores their various acoustic properties and principles in some depth.
Amazon Price: $30.78 (as of 12/30/2009)
Making Drums
Irish drums, Latin drums, drums from the Middle East and India: whether they're framed, staved, carved, or clay, the basics for making every one of them are explained and illustrated with colorful photos.
Amazon Price: (as of 12/30/2009)
Making Simple Musical Instruments: A Melodious Collection of Strings, Winds, Drums & More
Includes designs for some high quality, eminenetly playable instruments to make yourself. A moderate level of is craftmanship required.
Amazon Price: (as of 12/30/2009)
Rubber-Band Banjos and a Java Jive Bass: Projects and Activities on the Science of Music and Sound
Projects and Activities on the Science of Music and Sound, for Grades 5-7.
Amazon Price: $10.10 (as of 12/30/2009)
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Give us your feedback...
Let others know which of these artists are your favorites. Or perhaps you play one of these unusual instruments yourself and have a story about it. Post your blurb here.
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- amy1985 amy1985 Apr 19, 2009 @ 8:31 am
- Wow just had a listen to Illumination by John Morgan Newbern. Thanks for the lens would not have had the chance to listen otherwise. Will keep looking through your unusual musicians list - be sure to update if you come across any new ones.
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- stevem stevem Jan 18, 2009 @ 12:10 pm | in reply to Anthony Gianfrancesco
- Hello Anthony, thanks for the reference. Harlem 6 has a shared sense of mission and a solid, well-polished sound. I'm not well versed in Hip-Hop, but they seem to be good representatives of the genre, helping to cleanse the image tarnished by some other groups. I hope they are successful in influencing their niche culture positively. - Steve M.
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- Anthony Gianfrancesco Anthony Gianfrancesco Jan 15, 2009 @ 11:08 am
- Hello, I am wondering if you have ever heard of a group called the Harlem 6. Hip Hop kind of died in the 90's when it got really glittery, I think this group is going to bring it back. I consider it to be world music, but i guess that could be debated. They have a myspace page too if you would like to hear some of the music. Let me know what you think.
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- RolandTumble RolandTumble Oct 16, 2008 @ 12:38 pm
- This is very cool.
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- carmine carmine May 28, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
- Great lens - Your lens rocks!
