Speaker 1: I guess what, mango, what's that? Well, So, over the years,
Speaker 1: we've been to so many good concerts together, also so
Speaker 1: many bad ones together. But we were just telling a
Speaker 1: friend the other day how we'd actually road trip to
Speaker 1: see Fish in college. Right, Yeah, We're at a bar.
Speaker 1: We were talking to any from Food Stuff. Well, and
Speaker 1: the thing is is, you know, she's a little bit
Speaker 1: younger than us, so I'm not sure she's as familiar
Speaker 1: with some of the bands that were big and the
Speaker 1: nineties or so. But I think she actually thought we
Speaker 1: were going to look at Fish, like one really pretty
Speaker 1: striped bass or something like that, But she did. I
Speaker 1: think it's because food is always on her mind just
Speaker 1: being the host that I didn't think about that. You're
Speaker 1: probably right because she rode trips to see Fish as well.
Speaker 1: But you know, just thinking back on the list of
Speaker 1: bands that we've seen, I know we saw Lady Smith,
Speaker 1: Black Mambazzo, George the Roots, maybe so many different shows
Speaker 1: over the years, but there is one I'm a little
Speaker 1: disappointed that we haven't seen, and that's the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra.
Speaker 1: So when I hear a name like that, I feel
Speaker 1: like it's got to be like the string cheese incident
Speaker 1: or some sort of like you know, lesser known jam Ben.
Speaker 1: This is not the case at all. I mean they've
Speaker 1: been around for about twenty years now and it's pretty
Speaker 1: incredible what they do. So the musicians actually go to
Speaker 1: a farmer's market on the day that they're performing. Then
Speaker 1: they pick out some vegetables in order to make their
Speaker 1: instruments out of Like they'll make trumpets out of zucchini.
Speaker 1: Then they'll slice up an eggplant in a way that
Speaker 1: collapsed together all of these other fascinating instruments, and they
Speaker 1: do this all the day at the concert. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, I mean your veggies have to be fresh
Speaker 1: when you're making instruments, you know, if you think about it.
Speaker 1: And and then they take the parts of the veggies
Speaker 1: that they don't use for instruments and they cook it
Speaker 1: all into a soup. So this just takes some like
Speaker 1: two or three hours to make the instruments, and they're
Speaker 1: cooking this whole time, and then they have this really
Speaker 1: long sound check because, as you might imagine, it takes
Speaker 1: a while to tune an instrument made of vegetables. But
Speaker 1: then they put on these shows and it's amazing mango like,
Speaker 1: they cover everything from class school music too, of course
Speaker 1: kraft work. You know, if you got vegetables about as,
Speaker 1: we'll play some craft work. Yeah, German electronic music. That's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah. And the best part is they feed
Speaker 1: the audience the soup at the end of every concert,
Speaker 1: so you get the music and the meal. And it
Speaker 1: just sounds like so much. But you know, hearing about
Speaker 1: these recorders made from carrots and these symbols made of
Speaker 1: green peppers, and it made me think, what are other
Speaker 1: unusual instruments that we should be keeping an ear out for?
Speaker 1: And that's what today's nine Things is all about. So
Speaker 1: let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, I'm Will Pearson
Speaker 1: and as always I'm joined by my good friend man
Speaker 1: guest Ticketer, and sitting behind the soundproof glass trying to
Speaker 1: turn his rotary telephone into a brass instrument. I believe
Speaker 1: he calls it a trump phone. That's our that's our
Speaker 1: friends and producer Tristan McNeil. What a weirdo. But I
Speaker 1: have to say I'm also a little envious that he
Speaker 1: came up with a tromphone. But uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: funny that we chose today to talk about weird instruments
Speaker 1: because I just saw this video online of a guy
Speaker 1: playing pocabell cannon on a rubber chicken. Did you see this? No?
Speaker 1: And how does he do that? So? I guess he
Speaker 1: holds it in various places as he squeezes, and he
Speaker 1: figured out how to get different tones out of this
Speaker 1: rubber chicken. And then he shot himself in like four
Speaker 1: different videos like doing each of the musical parts and
Speaker 1: he sink them all up. It is ridiculous, especially like
Speaker 1: when you consider that this is the song that people
Speaker 1: like march down the Aisle two for weddings and graduations
Speaker 1: and whatever. It's pretty infrontible. I kind of want to
Speaker 1: pause right now and go check this out and then
Speaker 1: come finished recording. But but I'll have to check that out,
Speaker 1: all right. Well, where do you want to start with
Speaker 1: all of these? Well? How about with the most basic
Speaker 1: and most annoying of instruments out there? The voos a lot.
Speaker 1: So if you're a sports fan, I'm sure you remember
Speaker 1: the long plastic buzzing instruments from the South African World
Speaker 1: Cup where the Zeila showed up and they irritated players
Speaker 1: and refs and basically anyone who was watching TV, so
Speaker 1: of course FIFA banned them from stadiums. But as I
Speaker 1: was looking into it, it turns out the Zeila actually
Speaker 1: has this murky origin story, like a number of people
Speaker 1: claimed to have invented it, but the person who gets
Speaker 1: the most credit is this guy named Freddie Saddam Make
Speaker 1: who claims he developed the first one in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties by taking off his bicycle horn and then adding
Speaker 1: a mouthpiece to it and blowing through it. And uh,
Speaker 1: I guess he used it as a signal to like
Speaker 1: call people over or to get people to meet. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like an annoying dinner gong or something. But
Speaker 1: over time it got extended, replicated, and now they are
Speaker 1: all these weird iterations of it, like um Hunda decided
Speaker 1: to build the world's largest one. It was a hundred
Speaker 1: fourteen feet long, which terrifies. Someone actually took a toy Bozela,
Speaker 1: bedazzled it with real diamonds and gold dusted it and
Speaker 1: then hold it to like a Russian oligarch for thirty dollars,
Speaker 1: which just feels ridiculous and amazing. But you know that
Speaker 1: the weirdest thing I've read about is that the plastic
Speaker 1: instruments are actually tuned to be flat, which is funny
Speaker 1: because to me, you know, they just sound like cacophony.
Speaker 1: But vouzelas are in B flat. And according to space
Speaker 1: dot com, so is a black hole that's out there.
Speaker 1: These astronauts at NASA at the Chandra x Raight Lab,
Speaker 1: they figured out that this giant black hole emits a
Speaker 1: B flat note that's fifty eight octaves below middle C.
Speaker 1: So if you lay your boozela and sampled this black hole,
Speaker 1: it would actually harmonize pretty nicely. We'll have to we'll
Speaker 1: have to try that out sometimes. That's pretty great. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: here's an instrument i'd love to visit. And when I
Speaker 1: say visit, that's because you'd have to go to Croatia
Speaker 1: and actually on the coastal Croatia. And it's called the
Speaker 1: Sea Organ and it was designed by this architect named
Speaker 1: Nicola Bassage, and it's a way to gently welcome people
Speaker 1: coming to port. And it's actually really beautiful. Now. On surface,
Speaker 1: it looks like these giant marble steps with greats, but
Speaker 1: beneath each one is a series of small channels that
Speaker 1: connect thirty five organ pipes, and the way it's designed,
Speaker 1: each step plays a slightly different musical cord. Now, because
Speaker 1: this thing is powered by waves and by wind too,
Speaker 1: it seems like it could get really annoying, but it
Speaker 1: actually makes these pretty gentle and kind of random sounds.
Speaker 1: That almost sounds like someone is touching the sides of
Speaker 1: a steel drum or playing the wind chimes. And it
Speaker 1: actually pairs really nicely with the calming view that's there. Oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds really lovely. So, speaking of unusual instruments that
Speaker 1: live on the coast, Eve's actually pointed me to the
Speaker 1: steam whistle, which I guess is technically a whistle or instrument,
Speaker 1: and I've never heard the origin story, and it's pretty fascinating. So,
Speaker 1: as you guess, lighthouses didn't work that well in super
Speaker 1: foggy conditions, like the light didn't always carry the fog bells,
Speaker 1: which is I guess what they used to use. Also
Speaker 1: didn't work as effective warnings over long distances. So there's
Speaker 1: the Scottish engineer are. His name is Robert Folis, And
Speaker 1: he was walking home on this foggy night, and as
Speaker 1: he got closer and closer to his house, he heard
Speaker 1: his kid playing the piano, and the higher notes were
Speaker 1: all muffled by the fog, so he couldn't hear any
Speaker 1: of those, but the low notes all carried in the fog.
Speaker 1: And so he goes home he thinks about this, and
Speaker 1: he realized, what if you created a whistle that was
Speaker 1: powered by this superheated steam, and if it made this
Speaker 1: very low noise, it would actually carry And the guardian
Speaker 1: called it a fog alarm. That's how we thought about it.
Speaker 1: And so he hooked the thing up to a clockwork
Speaker 1: valve so it could be set to admit these noises
Speaker 1: automatically every few minutes. And of course this's also this
Speaker 1: manual setting, and that was useful for sending out morse
Speaker 1: code when we wanted to do it through sound signals
Speaker 1: instead of light signals. Yeah, that's interesting. I never thought
Speaker 1: about lighthouse whistles being used to send out messages, but
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it makes a lot of sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. So where do you want to go
Speaker 1: from there? Well, I feel like we've been talking about
Speaker 1: instruments that are too mellow or beautiful or even safe,
Speaker 1: So I think this is why it's time to bring
Speaker 1: up the pyrophone. So I thought this was a lead
Speaker 1: in to talk about the capiano, which I know we've
Speaker 1: talked about before. For those of you aren't familiar with it,
Speaker 1: it's a piano where you press the keys, and they'd
Speaker 1: brought a little kitten behind them who would mew in
Speaker 1: different keys. I guess I forget why was it invented? Again, though,
Speaker 1: I think it was invented to cheer up like an
Speaker 1: Austrian prince or something, but it took us off topic.
Speaker 1: What's a pyrophone? Nice to be an Austrian prince and
Speaker 1: have that kind of instrument invented for you, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: a pyrophone. You know, when I first read about it,
Speaker 1: it sounded like an organ for pyromaniac that has nicknames
Speaker 1: like fire organ and explosion organs. So it sounds like
Speaker 1: a dangerous thing, and especially when you realize it needs
Speaker 1: propane or gasoline to run and to make it work.
Speaker 1: There's a certain part of it actually does need to
Speaker 1: be on fire, but it's actually way safer than that.
Speaker 1: And essentially it uses these glass tubes and when a
Speaker 1: fire is lit in the tubes, they vibrate to make
Speaker 1: a sound. I mean, that sounds so much better than
Speaker 1: like a aliment of tiny explosions, which is kind of
Speaker 1: what I was imagining. So I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: the suxophone, which isn't as weird as something like a
Speaker 1: taxidermy badger that's been turned into a theremin, which is
Speaker 1: a real thing that you can buy on YouTube. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some really cool electronic instruments. Like I saw someone
Speaker 1: on YouTube and created this cabinet where you open all
Speaker 1: the drawers and they play different notes, so that you
Speaker 1: could actually play a cabinet. How much fun would that
Speaker 1: p That's really awesome. I've also seen people, um they
Speaker 1: wire up books so that if you turn to a
Speaker 1: certain page, it has a certain frequency, so that when
Speaker 1: you flip through the pages it plays different notes. It's
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. But the suxophone, which I always loved because
Speaker 1: you know exactly where it came from. It's name for
Speaker 1: the American band leader John Philip SUSA. He actually commissioned
Speaker 1: the instrument. But if you've ever seen a marching band play,
Speaker 1: you know the suxophone because it's basically this distinctive tuba
Speaker 1: like instrument. It wraps around a player's body and it
Speaker 1: kind of blares the notes over everyone's heads and projects
Speaker 1: it pretty far. And the way I said that makes
Speaker 1: it sound like it's almost clunky or snake like, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a more elegant tuba for when
Speaker 1: you're on the move. I guess the reason I'm bringing
Speaker 1: up is that the suxophone players are basically the cards
Speaker 1: or jokers of marching bands. And I didn't realize this,
Speaker 1: but almost anytime there's a skit or some sort of shenanigan,
Speaker 1: it always seems to involve them. So here's a quick
Speaker 1: list of things I found collected at one place on Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: So when the Ohio Marching Band performs this traditional script
Speaker 1: Ohio formation, it's the suxophone that dots the eye. It's
Speaker 1: already like suxophones have this special place. So here's another thing.
Speaker 1: At USC, the suxophone players play John Williams Imperial March
Speaker 1: from Star Wars. They do this anytime they cross the street.
Speaker 1: They go single file on their way to and from
Speaker 1: performances on the USC campus. The University of Delaware Fighting
Speaker 1: Blue Hens do skits. I didn't realize this, but they'll
Speaker 1: break off from the band and run around the line
Speaker 1: and do all these skits around the field and Virginia
Speaker 1: Tech has their suxophones do the hokey pokey at games
Speaker 1: where they take their suxophones out, put them in, shake
Speaker 1: them all about. Basically, it sounds like, if you're a
Speaker 1: kid who's really into joking around but also into the
Speaker 1: marching bands, you should really take up the sun. That
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense actually, because it just sounds fun.
Speaker 1: All right. So this is a quick one and kind
Speaker 1: of a gross one. So have you ever seen a
Speaker 1: Macedonian gadget? Let me, I was prepared for you to say, now,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna pull up this up this picture for you.
Speaker 1: Here it is. Is he holding a goat? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: a gadget is strange because you actually keep the animal
Speaker 1: kind of intact, like the skin becomes the wind bag,
Speaker 1: and sometimes, like in this version, they keep the animal's
Speaker 1: head or hoofs attached. And these are found all over
Speaker 1: the region and Greece and Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania. But the
Speaker 1: sound is a lot like a bagpipe, Like it's just
Speaker 1: one that a fan of taxidermy might have around their home,
Speaker 1: you know, which seems like a particular person who both
Speaker 1: likes taxidermy and the sounded bag. You know, yeah, there
Speaker 1: there is a there's a cross section of those people
Speaker 1: out there. So we still got two more facts to go.
Speaker 1: But let's take a little break first. All right, to mego,
Speaker 1: I know today's shows all about weird instruments, and you're
Speaker 1: actually just telling me about this cool show you saw
Speaker 1: at the Guggenheim. I guess it was this this past summer, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I've actually forgotten about this until we started talking today.
Speaker 1: But there was this exhibit of all these Chinese artists
Speaker 1: called One Hand Clapping at the Gugenheim, and the art
Speaker 1: was fascinating, like, uh, there was a VR thing where
Speaker 1: you actually are the basketball and Jeremy Lynn is dribbling
Speaker 1: you around and then shoots you as a three pointers.
Speaker 1: It's insane and you're just sort of like flying through
Speaker 1: the air and you feel yourself going through the net.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. But there are all these incredible installations and things,
Speaker 1: and the thing that really kind of stuck with me
Speaker 1: was from this artist named Sampson Young. He had this
Speaker 1: giant mouthpiece that was just put on the wall and
Speaker 1: he had molded it for an enormous brass instrument, and
Speaker 1: if you built the rest of that trumpet. I guess
Speaker 1: it would have been like twenty ft long and about
Speaker 1: eight or nine feet high, and every five minutes or so,
Speaker 1: there was a concert where he'd created these programs on
Speaker 1: the computer to model the sounds, so it would be
Speaker 1: this like deep booming revelie for that trumpet that would
Speaker 1: just like kind of shake the room where um he
Speaker 1: had invented this bugle and wondered what it would sound
Speaker 1: like if you blew through it at a temperature of
Speaker 1: three degrees celsius. And it was really cool, but it
Speaker 1: was like a It was this mix of super fantastical
Speaker 1: and whimsical instruments that you could never build in real life,
Speaker 1: but with real sounds generated from computers. It was a
Speaker 1: really funny experience. I love the idea that you would
Speaker 1: just be curious, like I wonder what a bugle sounds
Speaker 1: like when you blow through it at a temperature of
Speaker 1: three hundred degrees Like this just such a I think
Speaker 1: he went to m I t hears something. He's he's
Speaker 1: definitely got this scientific mind as well. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I'm curious though, like was the music any good? I
Speaker 1: mean I wouldn't say good so much as interesting, but
Speaker 1: but it was definitely worth visiting anyway. But where do
Speaker 1: you want to finish this off? Well, speaking of interesting
Speaker 1: and theoretically possible but also hard to pull off, I
Speaker 1: feel like we should talk about the Helicopter string Quartet. Now.
Speaker 1: This was written by Karl Heinz Stockhausing and it's got
Speaker 1: this weird story behind it. So apparently stock Housing got
Speaker 1: this commission for a string quartet and he wasn't that
Speaker 1: interested in it, but then he had this crazy dream
Speaker 1: where he was at a party and someone snubbed him
Speaker 1: and he was so mad that he flew away, and
Speaker 1: beneath him were these four helicopters that each carried a
Speaker 1: member of a string quartet and they were all playing together.
Speaker 1: So then he has this follow up dream, of course,
Speaker 1: where he wanted to add bees to it. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if the bees ever make it in the
Speaker 1: real performance, but he liked that extra bu thing they
Speaker 1: added to the helicopter rotors. I think, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: this is how you dream when you're a brilliant composer.
Speaker 1: But the piece he finally wrote is this elaborate and
Speaker 1: very expensive to perform thing. But basically it starts out
Speaker 1: in a music hall with four pillars, and for some
Speaker 1: reason you need the pillars. And then the members walk
Speaker 1: into four helicopters and take off and circle a radius
Speaker 1: of six kilometers around the hall. And this is all
Speaker 1: televised down to the audience. Not Also, every helicopter needs
Speaker 1: a sound technician in it so that the sounds of
Speaker 1: the choppers are blended with the sounds of the quartet.
Speaker 1: And I know this all sounds very confusing, and it
Speaker 1: is very very confusing, but it's also fantastic. And the
Speaker 1: gist of it is, if you're writing a composition and
Speaker 1: you don't have helicopters in it, you're probably just not
Speaker 1: thinking big enough, you know, Mango, Yeah, that's probably true.
Speaker 1: I feel like it is a good way to get
Speaker 1: people into classical music though, right, Like, if you're into helicopters,
Speaker 1: you should be into music this But you know, because
Speaker 1: you did a composition, I think I'm gonna end mind
Speaker 1: with a weird composition as well. And this one's by
Speaker 1: John Cage who composed four thirty three, which is that
Speaker 1: composition of total silence and it's performed at a piano
Speaker 1: with no sound. You know, that was a response to music.
Speaker 1: The story is actually fascinating. People should look it up.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to talk about a different song he wrote,
Speaker 1: and this one's called as Slow as Possible, And while
Speaker 1: it's meant to be played slowly, there's really no specification
Speaker 1: on just how slow it should go. So the slowest
Speaker 1: current performance of this starting in two thousand one at
Speaker 1: this old church in Germany, and it's supposed to end
Speaker 1: in so it's actually gonna take six hundred thirty nine
Speaker 1: years to perform, and if you visit the church, you'll
Speaker 1: actually have to wait a few months before accord even changes.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's momentous when it does, and people
Speaker 1: are excited when that happens. But apparently the reason they
Speaker 1: chose that length of six nine years is partially because
Speaker 1: that's about the lifespan they could hope for for a
Speaker 1: newly refurbished organ, and the instrument might breakdown after that point.
Speaker 1: But you know, if that was the case, they might
Speaker 1: actually have tried to drag it out for longer. That's
Speaker 1: pretty great. Well, you know, I like the fact that
Speaker 1: you've given us something to look forward to over the
Speaker 1: next six d and thirty nine years. You know, we
Speaker 1: can check in on it every year. See how it's going. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know what I think. I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: today's fact Off Trophy. Congratulations. That sounds great. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, and thanks as always to Eaves Jeff Code
Speaker 1: for her brilliant research. Thank you guys for listening. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with a full length episode tomorrow