Balloon Tunes And Tongue Grooves

In music, and particularly the realm of electronic or computer music, there can be a significant amount of ‘gear snobbery’ in some quarters. This stems from the notion that professional results can only be obtained by expensive high-end gear, that device X is inferior to device Y, and so on. However, here are a couple of instruments that are pretty much beyond compare…

Dax Entertainment

Whilst it is true that the quality of equipment does affect the quality of a recording, it’s important to remember that making music is essentially about creativity and self-expression, rather than an ego-stroking crusade of one-upmanship.

On that note, it’s refreshing to see the variety of innovative alternative instruments that are milling around in the great musical pond of humanity. The Oddstrument site is the place to go for such things as the Daxophone, a wooden friction-based idiophone with interchangable tongues. Each tongue creates a different sound, and sounds can be created in a variety of different ways, such as by bowing, bending, banging or indeed boinking.

Wind Instrument Blown Out Of Proportion

If that’s not quite your thing, then perhaps Judy Dunaway’s inflatable instrument will float your boat. Judy is often referred to as the ‘mother of balloon music’, as she creates music with latex balloons. She is an experimental composer and noise enthusiast, and you can listen to some of her balloon tunes here. As well as exploiting the sonic glory of balloons, she also complements her musical performances with a vibrator, amongst other things…