# General Mandolin Topics > General Mandolin Discussions >  What's the weirdest MUSICAL thing you've ever done?

## Jess L.

I once put a mandolin under my chin and then used my fiddle bow to bow the mandolin. LOVED the sound,  :Grin:  at that time the sound reminded me a little of Scandinavian nyckelharpa, kind of open and haunting sounding. 

If you're not familiar with nyckelharpa, here's one from someone else's YouTube page:



But my bowed mandolin it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing and I didn't pursue it, would have required making a round-top bridge (like on fiddle) to play single notes on 2nd/3rd strings, otherwise they're all double-stops with adjacent strings. I think I was about 15 or 16 years old at the time. 

*Caution:* If you have a prized Lloyd Loar or something, you might not want to attempt that because the rosin from the fiddle bow might not be good for your instrument's finish, I don't know, it doesn't seem to hurt violins though as long as it isn't allowed to build up. Back then I was playing a very bad-quality old plywood-top mandolin so there wasn't much risk involved.

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## FLATROCK HILL

I'm gonna have to think on this one and get back to you.
In the mean time, welcome to the forum. 
Oh and congrats on a (the?) most unusual debut post!

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Jess L.

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## journeybear

The weirdest thing? Besides using the sweet gentle mandolin to play searing psychedelic blues-rock?



(Actually, that can't count, because that's normal to me, AFAIC.  :Wink:  ) Maybe it's playing leads behind my head. There are a couple of songs I do that on, regularly. It has to be a simple melody, one I can nail every time without fail, because it's all too easy to look like a fool when out on a limb like that.

  

Maybe the weirdest thing of all is me picking up the mandolin in the first place. I've got some nerve. What was I thinking?!?!?  :Disbelief:

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Chris W., 

Denman John, 

Jess L.

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## Charles E.

This could get interesting....... :Popcorn:

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## Barry Wilson

I traded for this instrument. I need to replace a couple strings but my goal is to learn wanted dead or alive on it since it is D major tuned

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## Charles E.

Mighty fancy cheese slicer you've got there Barry.

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Barry Wilson, 

k0k0peli, 

MysTiK PiKn

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## journeybear

It's a _mandoline_.  :Wink:   :Grin:   :Whistling:

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Barry Wilson, 

MysTiK PiKn, 

objectsession

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## JeffD

I don't know about weird, but a different experience. More than a handful of musical friends have passed on in the last several years, and we all play at the funeral. Standing there crying my eyes out while trying to play the Rochester Shottish because it was his favorite tune, well its a little strange anyway.

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MysTiK PiKn

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## allenhopkins

Jeff, whose favorite tune was _Rochester Schottische?_  And did you play the three parts in three different keys?

On the topic: weirdest _gig_ I ever had was playing for a guinea pig race.  But I played "normal" music in a conventional fashion.

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## almeriastrings

Played "Old Daingerfield" live on stage with a Djembi player from Ghana providing the backup. 

What Bill would have thought, I can only begin to imagine.

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## objectsession

I can't read this thread title without thinking "this one time at band camp . . . "

Anywho, I've made some musical pieces with recordings of drinking water and lightbulbs and many other things. Guess that's pretty weird to some people. Made a piece with a mandolin hit by in-ear headphones (those ones with the rubbery outside) - that actually sounded pretty good but was very quiet. 

As for live performance, I once played a 1-hour harmonica piece. I was outside. The other harmonica performer was inside a building. But it was freezing and windy (unexpected for Santa Barbara, CA) so all the audience members were inside. It was so cold that the harmonica stopped playing well but I kept playing anyway . . . actually, that was more miserable than weird.  :Laughing:   :Crying:

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## journeybear

I'm thinking the question relates more to a single act than an entire gig. I mention that just to keep this thread distinct from the several weird gig threads that have come along now and then. I don't recall this question being asked before, and I find that intriguing. And deserving of its unique identity.

That doesn't mean there aren't some great stories to be found in those threads. Allen's story is there (possibly the best), my pig races story is too, and plenty others. Have a look and a laugh!

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## Petrus

I can also play the Star Spangled Banner on the mando (and on the electric bass too), though I also learned Di*ie this past week.  I've also bowed various instruments, with mixed results.  I also commonly use a slide on the mandolin and it sounds great.

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Jess L.

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## mrmando

Wrote a "Sonata for Prepared Mandolin" in composition class. Preparation involved sticking a pencil eraser between a couple of strings and a tie tack between a couple more; techniques involved plucking both below the bridge and above the nut, and sliding the pick up and down the fretboard along one of the string pairs, and goodness knows what else. 

On viola, I was part of the orchestra for a student opera at Cal Arts called "The Medicine of the Spiral." There were some notated quarter tones and whatnot, maybe some other Penderecki-style notation.

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## Bertram Henze

Tilting my house 30 degrees eastward for a SAW group video, 5 years ago:

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## Grommet

Playing lap steel a long time back, I would switch between open D and open G tunings depending on the song that our group was playing. At one practice session I got lost between the two alternate tunings and noticed that suddenly everything i played sounded Hawaiian. I guess I must have stumbled on C6 or E6 tuning. We started using it to perform I'm a Lone Cowhand.

Scott

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MysTiK PiKn

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## Jess L.

So many intriguing replies!  :Smile:  I also love the idea of Petrus' slide mandolin, I bet it sounds fantastic, and objectsession's musical lightbulbs are a neat idea too.  :Mandosmiley:  

Oh! you guys have reminded me of something, a link sent to us last year by a car club, at first I thought the following video was actual auto-shop people (which would have been totally awesome) but even as done by professional performers it's kind of entertaining (that is, assuming it's real and not dubbed/synced,  :Confused:  still not entirely sure), anyway it's Carmen opera-something supposedly played on ordinary materials repurposed into serving as musical instruments:

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## Ivan Kelsall

Start playing banjo !,
                            Ivan

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## journeybear

> I also commonly use a slide on the mandolin and it sounds great.


I do too, a little. In the band I play slide on one song only, "Dead Flowers" by The Rolling Stones. It makes it more country, and varies the sound a bit. I look forward to it when it comes up. But I don't think it's weird. Then again, I'm weird ...

I love music being played on found objects - or as you said, repurposed. I'm impressed they found a way to sneak the composer's name in, sort of. The box with nails in it played with a bow - it's from a company called "Buzet," which is almost Bizet.  :Wink:  I suppose "Habanera" from "Carmen" being played by car men is another pun ...  :Whistling:

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## SGraham

When I was in college, every year at the music majors' end-of-the-year banquet, there would be an hour or so of odd musical performances. One very straight-laced old professor would stick a metal funnel into the end of a coiled length of garden hose. He'd put a mouthpiece into the other end, vigorously twirl the last 3 feet of the hose and play "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder." I recall four young ladies gargling a tune in 4-part harmony, complete with well-timed spits and swallows. Two theory profs played a six-part jazz harmony version of "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" by simultaneously playing two flute-o-phones each and humming through their noses. My part came in a group of 40 or so hopelessly horrible beginning string techniques students playing a musak arrangement of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" on our violins. I still wake up in a cold sweat sometimes with that ringing in my ears.

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## Gary Leonard

Deciding, at age 51, that my first musical instrument would be a mandolin.

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Ddd, 

Gandalfa, 

Timbofood

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## Bob Clark

> So many intriguing replies!  I also love the idea of Petrus' slide mandolin, I bet it sounds fantastic, and objectsession's musical lightbulbs are a neat idea too.  
> 
> Oh! you guys have reminded me of something, a link sent to us last year by a car club, at first I thought the following video was actual auto-shop people (which would have been totally awesome) but even as done by professional performers it's kind of entertaining (that is, assuming it's real and not dubbed/synced,  still not entirely sure), anyway it's Carmen opera-something supposedly played on ordinary materials repurposed into serving as musical instruments:


This reminds me of the movie _Sound of Noise_ about a band of rogue percussionists.  A pretty entertaining romp that relates to this thread.

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## jerrymartin

When I was a graduate student at Minnesota (circa 1975), a buddy who worked on a big mainframe computer asked me if I knew any computation-intensive calculations he could use to test out some new system software. I asked him to generate a couple thousand digits of pi (= 3.14159 etc.), but to do it all in base 12 arithmetic, so that it could be played as a 12-tone piece of music. It was pretty random (duh), and no secrets of the universe were revealed. I ran across a short sound file out there somewhere recently - someone else's, not mine - if you're curious enough to surf for it.

Jerry M.

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Dave Martin

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## Timbofood

And I think Jerry may win the cookie! That's pretty weird.
My band used to do a full band behind the head thing, we did it once on the orchestra riser at a theater while some girls were doing double Dutch jump rope; they were behind us as the riser went down. The crowd thought it was hilarious! So did the rope jumpers!

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## mrmando

Ha! I wrote a composition based on pi in high school, but it was diatonic ... I didn't think of doing it as a 12-tone piece.

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## k0k0peli

I created a Bonfire Symphony with piezo transducers (old record-player cartridges), selenium solar cells and kludged oscillators, etc. The amps and speakers were old radios I hacked into. Symphony setup: Insert the piezo carts into cracks in dried driftwood. Artfully stack the wood in a fire pit and wire the carts to amplification. Set the solar cells on stakes around the fire pit; wire them into the oscillators as variable resistors controlling the pitches generated. Now, pour on some firestarter and ignite the blaze. Flickering light makes ominous oscillations. Cracking of burning wood via the piezo transducers provides a rhythm track. When the piezo carts burn, they shriek and go silent. It all simmers down to silent ashes. A metaphor of life, I guess. Pass the moonshine.

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catmandu2, 

Charles E., 

Jess L., 

journeybear, 

mrmando, 

MysTiK PiKn

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## bobby bill

> In the band I play slide on one song only


Many years ago, I was doing an outdoor gig and had a glass slide in my shirt pocket intended for a middle section on one song.  Somehow, in my attempt to grab it, slip it on my left hand pinky, and get back to business in one incredibly deft and economical swoop, it slipped off my finger, flew about twenty feet in front of me, and shattered into forty pieces in the middle of the crowd.  I can report that I did get the crowd's attention.  But I also took this as a sign and never purchased a replacement slide.

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## catmandu2

Wish I was there for that one k-peli





> I traded for this instrument.


Barry - I've long wanted a zheng.  If/when you're done exploring with it - I've got a bunch of CBOM gear I'll trade you for it ..

I've not done anything off the wall musically - other than choosing as my primary instruments harp, oud and charango.  But I love to hear "weird" - I've got a library of over 3K CDs of avant/art music ..

I would love to experiment with electric sound - but I spend all my time studying trad playing: http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...-project-(NMC)

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## Austin Bob

I once performed in a Filipino/American Christmas pageant at the state capitol building.

I was dressed in a Barong, and sang (or tried to sing) Christmas carols in Tagalog , whilst playing the bandurria part on my mandolin.

Ten years later, I can still remember the first verse of Pasko Na Naman

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## Randi Gormley

There's a scene in "Caveman" where everybody is sitting around a campfire and suddenly, from banging rocks and stepping on someone's foot, there's music. If someone could find the Youtube video, that would be great -- I'm not adept enough to find it and post. It think it's called "banging on sticks and rocks." that's sort of in the same vein as the musicians in a metal shop post.

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## journeybear

> Ten years later, I can still remember the first verse of Pasko Na Naman


Oh my!  :Disbelief:  Pretty scary. I trust your arrangement was a bit more, ah, festive.  :Whistling: 

And k0k0peli, thank you for your effort and inventiveness, and also, your descriptive powers. I felt like I was there. I wish you had recorded it, though. That sounds fascinating.  :Cool:  A video would go viral.  :Cool: 

Randi, here 'tis. The guy banging two sticks together keeps a steady beat, may have some real talent.  :Wink:

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Jess L., 

Randi Gormley

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## mandroid

Using the drum patches on a Midi sound source  triggered by a  Synth access Electric Mandolin
 is pretty curious a thing to do .

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## k0k0peli

> Wish I was there for that one k-peli


 You would have been underage. Other details of the performance were sufficiently illegal -- various substances; no permit; etc. (It happened on a beach near Mendocino, California.)




> And k0k0peli, thank you for your effort and inventiveness, and also, your descriptive powers. I felt like I was there. I wish you had recorded it, though. That sounds fascinating.  A video would go viral.


 Super-8 was about the most advanced consumer technology of the time (ca. 1970) and that was beyond my thrift-shop budget. But yeah, it should be re-created and recorded. Not by me. Some adventurous whippersnapper should be able to use my account as a blueprint, right?

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## journeybear

I daresay so. You laid it out pretty clearly. I wonder which will work better, solid-state or tubes. Perhaps a mix.  :Cool:  And for visual effects, there are things you can put in the fire that change color and such. Just no mandolins.   :Disbelief:  Please!  :Crying:

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## Steve Lavelle

The nerdiest, and perhaps weirdest thing I ever did musically was to program a mainframe computer (HP 9000 F*(?) ~1974 time shared with 16 different high schools) using machine language to play the melody to a Bicycle Built For Two (a la Hal 9000 from 2001 Space Odyssey). This was in high school, as a demo for Parent Teacher night, using paper tape as the programs storage medium. CRTs were just starting to become a user interface to the time shared mainframe, the  system hard disk was a bout 16 inches wide, we didn't even have a card reader , yet. Bits were converted to tones on circuit board driving a speaker made in the electronics class by some other nerds.

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Jess L., 

MysTiK PiKn, 

objectsession

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## journeybear

Yes, but ... Did it have a good beat? Could you dance to it? On a scale from 1-100, what would you give it?  :Confused:   :Wink:   :Whistling:

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## k0k0peli

> I daresay so. You laid it out pretty clearly. I wonder which will work better, solid-state or tubes. Perhaps a mix.


 My setup was all solid-state although I also built ultra-distorting high-voltage amps using neon glow tubes. But an adroit tinkerer might build tube-based oscillators that would be modulated to drive solar cells controlling yet other oscillators. One might also incorporate small motors -- but that violates the purity of the concept.  :Wink: 

CORRECTION: The variable resistance solar cells were cadmium, not selenium, IIRC.




> And for visual effects, there are things you can put in the fire that change color and such. Just no mandolins.   Please!


Q: Why is a bouzouki better than a mandolin?
A: It burns longer.

Meanwhile, I recall my 'Nam-era Army days, in a field artillery battalion, a certain BS session where one gun-bunny suggested playing shave-and-a-haircut with a battery of 155mm self-propelled howitzers. (Those look like tanks but with bigger guns firing 6-inch-diameter shells.) That would require close coordination between the gun crews. It would be trivial with modern computer-controlled artillery, but it would have been a nifty trick then. Alas, DivArty didn't go for it. Spoilsports...

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## Kevin Stueve

> My setup was all solid-state although I also built ultra-distorting high-voltage amps using neon glow tubes. But an adroit tinkerer might build tube-based oscillators that would be modulated to drive solar cells controlling yet other oscillators. One might also incorporate small motors -- but that violates the purity of the concept. 
> 
> CORRECTION: The variable resistance solar cells were cadmium, not selenium, IIRC.
> 
> 
> Q: Why is a bouzouki better than a mandolin?
> A: It burns longer.
> 
> Meanwhile, I recall my 'Nam-era Army days, in a field artillery battalion, a certain BS session where one gun-bunny *suggested playing shave-and-a-haircut with a battery of 155mm self-propelled howitzers*. (Those look like tanks but with bigger guns firing 6-inch-diameter shells.) That would require close coordination between the gun crews. It would be trivial with modern computer-controlled artillery, but it would have been a nifty trick then. Alas, DivArty didn't go for it. Spoilsports...


The Pride of Wildcat Land the KSU Marching Band regularly plays the 1812 overture with percussion assistance provided by howitzers from Ft Riley.

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## k0k0peli

> The Pride of Wildcat Land the KSU Marching Band regularly plays the 1812 overture with percussion assistance provided by howitzers from Ft Riley.


 That's new! (For me, anyway.) I hope it's my old unit, 1/5 FA of the Alexander Hamilton Brigade, doing the honors. Our motto: *Field Artillery means never having to say, I missed.* I do recall someone miscalculating and sending a couple shells into a KSU dorm parking lot. Oops.

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## Jeff Hildreth

I designed and built a nyckelharpa from scratch back in 1978-81 using only a small photograph as a guide.

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## Beanzy

Although we didn't think of it as a musical project around 1981 a friend and I programmed a BBC micro computer as a radio telescope receiver fed from a chicken wire antenna V frame, with the output to a screen so we could watch the sky above on a monitor. Then we decided to take that analogue scan to control some variable oscillators. It was UHF so we down converted it and then could listen to a slow-scan of the screen which was very SciFi sounding whooshes and swooshes with the silent gaps being the stars. We could alter the scan rate and the frequency response to get weird effects.

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Jess L., 

k0k0peli

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## JeffD

Does tuning a mandolin in DDAD tuning count?

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Timbofood

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## RobinAronson

I used to have a long boring car commute to work so I got a 2 - octave chromatic harmonica and learned Stars and Stripes Forever in its entirety (didn't go so far as to buy a second harmonica for the key change - I just stayed in the same key)

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## journeybear

It's like being cool or hip - If you have to ask, you'll never know.  :Wink:  Besides, it's not all that weird, IMO. Try harder!  :Grin:

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## Bob Clark

OK, here's my weirdest musical thing.  This goes back a ways, but I used music to teach the concepts of genetic mutation to undergraduate students.  

I brought an electronic keyboard into class and played a simple tune everyone would know.  Any common tune will work but waltzes work best. I would then alter the tune in a way that demonstrated each of the following types of genetic mutations: base substitution-transition; base substitution-transversion; frameshift mutation-deletion; frameshift mutation-addition; codon deletion; trinucleotide repeat. The use of music in this way increased student interest in the forms of mutation, thus they payed more attention when I demonstrated the changes using genetic code on the board.

I also demonstrated actual examples of mutations musically after writing them on the board by assigning the nucleotides musical tones and playing genetic code portions of wild-type genes and their common mutations such as sickle cell anemia or cystic fibrosis. 

It was fun for the students and for me, and provided an alternate way of demonstrating genetic code even if it was not particularly 'musical.'

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Jess L., 

k0k0peli, 

objectsession

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## Timbofood

Buddy of mine plays the piccolo part to "Stars and Stripes" on the mandolin, quite well actually! Fun as all get out to hear when you least expect it.

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## msargent

I regularly use my telecaster as a tunable reverb unit using a bone conduction transducer system of my own design. Sounds great with cello.

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catmandu2, 

Jess L., 

k0k0peli

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## catmandu2

Excellent msarge-  inventive, effective, cool; tele is a helluva tool.

I just thought of one thing I do that's just plain weird: entertain with banjos and accordians.  :Redface:

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msargent

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## LA Mando

I showed up at a traditional jam with an Otamatone. For some reason, I wasn't asked to come back.  :Laughing: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxLB70G-tRY

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bradlaird, 

Fretless, 

Jess L., 

Jim Adwell, 

k0k0peli

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## bratsche

I was once hired, along with a bunch of other musicians, not to play, but to mime playing along with a soundtrack.  It was some commercial product rollout/presentation, they wanted us to "look authentic", and the soundtrack was as tacky as you can imagine, played at earsplitting volume.  That was certainly up there in my "weird" list.  Hopefully never to be repeated...

bratsche

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## journeybear

Somehow I forgot this. Rock conch? Why not? I did get satisfaction, winning the adult male competition. I also played "Smoke On The Water." Note strategic use of Mandolin Café cap.  :Mandosmiley:

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bradlaird, 

Carl Robin

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## Petrus

I also play occasionally above the bridge, on the short length of strings between the bridge and tailpiece. They can't be fretted but they make a very high-pitched sound when strummed harp like or just plucked, generally as an exclamation or coda at the end of a piece.  You can also gently flick the short length of strings between the nut and the pegs.  It's particularly effective with the E string. You just give it a quick flick with your left index fingernail.  It's sort of like a "ding!"  Again, it creates a slightly comical period to a piece.

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## objectsession

> The nerdiest, and perhaps weirdest thing I ever did musically was to program a mainframe computer (HP 9000 F*(?) ~1974 time shared with 16 different high schools) using machine language to play the melody to a Bicycle Built For Two (a la Hal 9000 from 2001 Space Odyssey). This was in high school, as a demo for Parent Teacher night, using paper tape as the programs storage medium. CRTs were just starting to become a user interface to the time shared mainframe, the  system hard disk was a bout 16 inches wide, we didn't even have a card reader , yet. Bits were converted to tones on circuit board driving a speaker made in the electronics class by some other nerds.


Cool! Kind of a Bell Labs homage. (That song was used in 2001 because it was programmed into a computer at Bell Labs earlier.) I once had the honor of meeting Max Mathews, who was one of the people that worked on that. Seems like he probably always got requests to play that, and he had it ready (on his laptop, not a mainframe). He was a really friendly guy.

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## Polecat

Enjoying this thread immensely, thanks to all contributors.

I once got thrown out of the lobby of a bank where I was providing the music for an art exhibition opening, with a fiddler, for playing the Soviet National Anthem on an electric mandolin (yes, I was doing the Hendrix thang...)

I thought long and hard about whether to share this, as I would like other cafe members to still take me seriously, which seems unlikely:

http://picosong.com/mLbw/

Recorded circa 1998 on one of those 4-track cassette recorders, two tracks for voice, and two for electric mandolin junked up using an ART Multiverb rack effect unit and a few distortion stomp boxes, plus a home-made valve amp. 
Believe it or not, I actually wrote this piece, or at least sketched out what I was trying to accomplish - I was listening to a lot of John Zorn and Japanese noise-core bands at the time (I'm feeling much better now :Wink: ). Fortunately, I never found anyone else who shared my enthusiasm, so all that remains of this phase in my musical development (?) are a few hours of appalling racket on cassette tape.
BTW, anybody who manages to listen to the whole 6 minutes of this trash has both my profoundest respect and deepest sympathy.

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bradlaird, 

Cobalt, 

objectsession

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## sgrexa

No idea why I spent hours trying to arrange this on mando? I guess I learned a few things in the process, but the problem is I have since forgotten almost all of them now.




Sean

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## farmerjones

Probably heard it before:
I used to be side-man for this couple. They were nice and very supportive of me. 
They used to get a few gigs. They never brought a PA system. A couple times we'd show up and start playing only to have the PA, mikes,  & stands taken out from under our very noses. It teaches one grace. But the hardest thing is to see the looks on an audiences faces, as they were just getting into us. Disappointment of the highest order. One incident, we really had the crowd & were really engaging them. The previous group started taking down the mikes & stands. One of the fellows started striking up a conversation with me. Totally unrelated to what was happening. I tried to be as nice as possible to let him know I was a little busy. You see, I didn't know or understand the system belonged to them. I can't remember if we even got to finish the song. Weird & Educational all at the same time.

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## bradlaird

The weirdest thing? That is tough for me to decide. There was the "playing the Sears ratchet wrench on a rap version of The Ballad of Jed Clampett"... Oh, so many to choose from. For a limited time only I have posted a few of my strangest musical moments here:

http://www.bradleylaird.com/blog-art...nge-ideas.html

Enjoy them while they last. My better sense is telling me to delete that page now.

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Jess L.

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## bradlaird

> I was once hired, along with a bunch of other musicians, not to play, but to mime playing along with a soundtrack.


I've been there. A couple of times. The WORST was sitting on the iron cowcatcher of The General (a real locomotive... look 'er up.) for nearly 3 hours wearing some ridiculous checkered shirts, "train hats" and a red bandana while "the star" screwed up her lines about 89 thousand times. I don't blame her though. The director had her playing the fiddle, narrating, and crossing a real gravel railroad track in heels. Not many could pull that off without looking down. I was in such a hurry to leave there that I literally ran out of the place, ripping off that bandana and hat, jumped in my 79 Dodge Colt and floorboarded it. Exactly 1 mile down the road I was pulled over for speeding by the Kennesaw PD. My hurry cost me $75.

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## grassrootphilosopher

Since I am a bluegrass picker:
- failing in a turkish jam session
- playing funk in a nebraska bus station
- playing a st. patrick´s day gig (irish music [me] trying not to sound irish)
- playing along with my father singing (he sang wonderfully [a beautiful soul too] except his rythm revealed is WWII participation)
- siging the Tennessee Stud on the bus because my daughter ordered me to (she sang along of course)
- continuously (at present) trying to find comon ground with a german classical trained (very good too) musician concerning various musical styles (he got bit by the bluegrass bug, thank god; it took me long enough; on the other hand I am willing to play baroque music bluegrass style...)
- (many more)

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Jess L., 

MysTiK PiKn

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## journeybear

> ... I was pulled over for speeding by the Kennesaw PD. My hurry cost me $75.


Did you explain the unusual circumstances? Seems to me he might have let you slide out of sympathy for your suffering.  :Frown:

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bradlaird

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## MysTiK PiKn

once upon a time, I "wrote" an Irish song, or perhaps better described as a Gaelic song.  I wrote the chords on paper.  And I sang the words, in Gaelic.  It was difficult to write the words because I don't speak Gaelic, let alone write it.  I don't read Gaelic either, so putting words on paper made no sense.  But I rehearsed this song for a week or two, and then abandoned it.  The singing was difficult to memorize for the above reasons. However, I was somewhat successful in singing and playing it although it was different every time.  I realized eventually the whole thing was too embarrassing.  I later discovered a similar song called 'several species of small furry animals living in a cave and grooving with a pict'. but my song was definitely gaelic and not pictish, if there's such a thing, and there might be.  But it lacked a clear theme, and clear words, and clear meaning.  I think it was expressionist music.  It had emotional appeal; and people likely never would have realized that the whole thing was a gutteral noise fake of an ancient gaelic chune.  I still recall one line that I memorized - but, for the above reasons, I can't tell you what they were.  Another fear was that I might have become a gaelic rockstar, with people crying for more more more - and, for the above reasons, that would not have worked, since I only had one set of chords.  I could attempt to revisit this - but I will wait for a further immersion in another more appropriate thread called my entire gaelic reportoire revealed at last.  It was actually quite good; but I don't speak gaelic.  I have heard it spoken - two old men on a bus on the isle of skye, scotland; while the bus stopped for sheep crossing the road, the entire herd. I think the herdsman knew the bus driver. the sound is all i know. if you ever see the album, it's me, at last revealed.  be sure to buy it, you will love it. really it's an english translation of something unknown, but it exists as a memorable experience, and for now, remains as it was, until further notice. you'll know when you hear it.  stay tuned.
NFI.  :Popcorn:

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## Bertram Henze

> ...a similar song called 'several species of small furry animals living in a cave and grooving with a pict'. but my song was definitely gaelic and not pictish, if there's such a thing, and there might be.


The words on that song (Pink Floyd) are in a somewhat exaggerated Lowland Scots (I doubt the Picts spoke that). And yes, it is not Gaelic. And I wouldn't exactly call it a song...

----------

catmandu2, 

MysTiK PiKn

----------


## Jess L.

I love all the experimentation and cool ideas that people have done, great stuff!  :Smile:  

Found this yesterday while looking for something else, looks like *resonator mandolin*, resonator guitar, banjo, and a hydro-powered hydraulic ram water pump serving as the percussion section:


Hydraulic ram water pumps require *no* electricity nor fossil fuels. When I was a kid the nearest neighbor had that type of system that she'd used for many decades. My dad tried one briefly but it kept needing parts or something (vague recollections of problems with leather seals) and he didn't have time to keep messing with it so we strung electric wire all the way down to the creek, the wire running right alongside the black plastic pipes (ugh), put the electric pump in place, good to go. This was for irrigation of a small field to keep down the fire danger during summer. Ironically, the old 65-foot dug well couldn't handle the increased load of irrigation at that time of year (must not have been much of an aquifer), but the creek had good flow year-round.

----------

Mike Barber, 

Randolph

----------


## MysTiK PiKn

> The words on that song (Pink Floyd) are in a somewhat exaggerated Lowland Scots (I doubt the Picts spoke that). And yes, it is not Gaelic. And I wouldn't exactly call it a song...


ummagumma = imho, best they ever did. but they did a lot of great stuff.  possibly the best was that they could do it live, even tho they used some recorded fills, soundFX, etc. /darksidemoon, etc.

I saw a great documentary recently, w much detail detail and detail.  Before it was called Scotland, many cultures w their own language - picts, norsemen vikings, and gaels, etc.  The Gaelic princes (brothers) exiled for protection, raised by grandparents I think, to north of Ireland - they returned - much war.  Somewhere the evolution of the word Scotland appeared, and the Gaelic dominated all, and became the popular language.  Too many details to remember it all.  Before the Gaelic dominance, there were about a half dozen little countries, with their own language and customs.  There were wars through all this period; but the Gaelic princes returned and stabilized everything, which eventually led to modern day Scotland - and yet, it's in their history, the Scots still seem to want to be a separate country - recent referendum almost made it, and they may try again, or so I recall from a brief news item a few months ago.  My background is Irish; but I always felt an affinity to Scotland.  I also have an affinity for Single Malt Scotch Whisky.  If it isn't Scotch, it isn't whisky.  And when they simply say "whisky", they mean Scotch - people really need to learn that - rye??? what's THAT crawp???? Aye, get it rrwrwr-rightt lawdeee.  :Wink:   Personally, I love Scotch; and rye is like sody pop.  And then there's Irish, which is another animal entirely.  I'll stick to a goood Scotch, aye.
But it was fun to watch Floyd crash an airplane onstage live. Watch That Axe, Eugene.  I remain disappointed that Floyd broke up.  I was lucky to see them twice. Roughly '73. Buffalo, NY and Hamilton, ON.  They remain unique.

----------


## zedmando

I tried playing a guitar by hooking a pen over the low E string and bouncing it off the strings while I played chords--it sounded awful.

----------

catmandu2, 

MysTiK PiKn

----------


## catmandu2

Well...it's a hard act to follow Pink Floyd    :Wink:

----------


## Mike Crocker

I sang the part of The Great King Rat in a little theatre production of The Pied Piper. "The king of all the rats am I, a rodent proud and free..."

I've recorded a cello part and a bodhran part in two different recording sessions and I don't actually play either instrument.

Converted a Telecaster Thinline to fretless. 

Played at a biker club with a Neil Young tribute band. Awesome gig, and I'm a very long way from the biker lifestyle.

Subbed for a pipe organist's page turner.

Overdubbed a single bowed low C on a de-tuned double bass on some recording or another.

----------

MysTiK PiKn

----------


## Chris Browne

Played uke to accompany our mayor singing Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree at the YMCA

----------


## Toni Schula

Playing Duelling Banjos with three melody instruments is quite weird. Every phrase is repeated once as usual, but as there are three musicians this stating the phrase and repeating it goes round and round in circles. You really need to concentrate, not to miss your part!

----------


## Kevin Stueve

> ummagumma = imho, best they ever did. but they did a lot of great stuff.  possibly the best was that they could do it live, even tho they used some recorded fills, soundFX, etc. /darksidemoon, etc.
> 
> I saw a great documentary recently, w much detail detail and detail.  Before it was called Scotland, many cultures w their own language - picts, norsemen vikings, and gaels, etc.  The Gaelic princes (brothers) exiled for protection, raised by grandparents I think, to north of Ireland - they returned - much war.  Somewhere the evolution of the word Scotland appeared, and the Gaelic dominated all, and became the popular language.  Too many details to remember it all.  Before the Gaelic dominance, there were about a half dozen little countries, with their own language and customs.  There were wars through all this period; but the Gaelic princes returned and stabilized everything, which eventually led to modern day Scotland - and yet, it's in their history, the Scots still seem to want to be a separate country - recent referendum almost made it, and they may try again, or so I recall from a brief news item a few months ago.  My background is Irish; but I always felt an affinity to Scotland.  I also have an affinity for Single Malt Scotch Whisky. * If it isn't Scotch, it isn't whisky*.  And when they simply say "whisky", they mean Scotch - people really need to learn that - rye??? what's THAT crawp???? Aye, get it rrwrwr-rightt lawdeee.   Personally, I love Scotch; and rye is like sody pop.  And then there's Irish, which is another animal entirely.  I'll stick to a goood Scotch, aye.
> But it was fun to watch Floyd crash an airplane onstage live. Watch That Axe, Eugene.  I remain disappointed that Floyd broke up.  I was lucky to see them twice. Roughly '73. Buffalo, NY and Hamilton, ON.  They remain unique.


Uh I think you misspelled Bourbon there.

----------

MysTiK PiKn

----------


## Willie Poole

My band was hired to play on a yacht going up the Potomac river and on that day it started to rain and the river got pretty rough and the boat rocked back and forth and we had a hard time keeping our balance and I ended up playing in front of different mics at various times...

   Another thing I tried once was to install unwound strings on the D and G courses on a mandolin along with the normal wound strings, much like a 12 string guitar would have....I didn`t care for the sound so I gave up on that idea, I`m sure others have tried it and maybe liked what they heard...

----------


## Colin Lindsay

> There were wars through all this period; but the Gaelic princes returned and stabilized everything


Love that phrase no doubt the smaller tribes and kingdoms were glad of the stability  :Smile:  

Anyway Im a hybrid - Ulster-Scots, which means my ancestors came from the Anglo-Saxon area of Lindesey, moved up through England (Lincolnshire) into Scotland and then across to Northern Ireland around 1700 - 1800 and have remained ever since. Notwithstanding those who claim there is no such thing as Ulster-Scots culture, the music involves bagpipes and other local instruments such as the huge Lambeg Drum, which has dozens if not hundreds of localised rhythms depending on where the player comes from, interspersed with more-wodely known Irish and Scots tunes. The best of both worlds, probably.  
Incidentally if I drink enough whisky I can speak fluent Ulster-Scots, an example of which Ive added below (taken from some local government website or other): 

Wed be ableeged gin yed gie us aa tha wittins ye can anent tha ootfa yer makkin pleen o, takkin in thïngs tha like o:
tha day, oor, date an richt bït whar thar wus tha ootfa
whut the caa tha offyser or yin frae tha darg-ban yokkt intilt, an thair shoodèr nummer an tha leuk o thaim
whut the caa onie yins remairkin whut cum aboot, an thair bakkin an langblr nummer
tha registratin nummers o onie motors at wus yokkt intil tha ootfa
onie ither helplie or effeirin pruif, tha like o leknesses or soon or video recoardins
Dinnae fash yersel gin yell can gie nae mair nor a feck o this wittins.  Wer fur ettlin at fynnin whutiver wittins we reck tae be effeirin til yer pleen.
Ye maun mak yer pleen athin a towmond o tha ootfa yer taen wi.

Total gibberish, but when drunk it all makes perfect sense. So: the weirdest thing Ive ever done musically, apart from phonetically singing a Greek song in Greece before a Greek audience, has to be either playing along with a pipe band on my hurdy-gurdy (great drones for pipe band tunes) or else playing jigs and reels accompanied by Lambeg Drum players at an Ulster-Scots concert, and trying to work out if those speaking the language actually liked it or not.
For some info on Lambeg drums and their rhythms see the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51MClt_FW0s

----------


## journeybear

> Uh I think you misspelled Bourbon there.


Really? That's all you found bewildering in all of that?  :Disbelief:  Oh, wait, you meant - ummm ... never mind ...  :Whistling:

----------

Kevin Stueve

----------


## Bertram Henze

> Uh I think you misspelled Bourbon there.


...indeed he did. No idea why he spelled it rye.

----------


## Jess L.

> Another thing I tried once was to install unwound strings on the D and G courses on a mandolin along with the normal wound strings, much like a 12 string guitar would have....I didn't care for the sound so I gave up on that idea, I`m sure others have tried it and maybe liked what they heard...


I didn't mind that sound on actual 12-string guitar, but it wasn't really one of my favorite sounds either, never tried it on mandolin though. When I was about 15-16 I had a 12-string guitar that I'd retuned in fifths, for playing fiddle tunes. I vaguelly recall I didn't like the *flatpick behavior*, the pick didn't glide as smoothly as on mandolin, probably because (1) some of the strings were really slack (loose) after I retuned them, and (2) in each pair of strings, the wound string sat up a little bit higher than the plain string, it was hard to do fast fiddle-tunes and have them sound halfway acceptable. But that guitar was really hard to play even in standard tuning, the action was very high (old warped neck, no truss rod), one of those trapeze-tailpiece flat-top cheap plywood guitars where there isn't much string pressure on the bridge to start with (even without the high action) so it was, um, tonally-challenged  :Wink:  even under the best of circumstances. It was an interesting experiment though. 




> playing along with a pipe band on my hurdy-gurdy (great drones for pipe band tunes)


Cool!  :Grin:   :Mandosmiley:  I'll bet that sounded really nice. I like drone sounds, they're mesmerizing (in a good way) and relaxing.

----------


## Petrus

> I once got thrown out of the lobby of a bank where I was providing the music for an art exhibition opening, with a fiddler, for playing the Soviet National Anthem on an electric mandolin (yes, I was doing the Hendrix thang...)


It's actually a pretty impressive work of music (I know, that'll get me kicked off certain fora I frequent) but I doubt if anyone recognized it ... you probably got booted for the excessive loud playing.  And by "the Hendrix thing," do you mean you set your mando on fire at the end?  :Grin: 




> I thought long and hard about whether to share this, as I would like other cafe members to still take me seriously, which seems unlikely: http://picosong.com/mLbw/


I also enjoy (if that's the word) experimental and noise music. It's said (by me mainly), if you can't play music, play experimental music.  Seriously though don't put down your own work ... just put it out there without comment and let the public decide if it's Grammy material or not.   :Cool: 

BTW, if you're not familiar with this, you should check out this documentary on the Portland noise music scene.

----------

Polecat

----------


## Bertram Henze

> anybody who manages to listen to the whole 6 minutes of this trash has both my profoundest respect and deepest sympathy.


All my life I had waited for a version of Jane Birkin's _Je t'aime_ with Serge Gainsbourgh throwing up - here it was, at last.

----------


## MysTiK PiKn

> Love that phrase no doubt the smaller tribes and kingdoms were glad of the stability  
> 
> Anyway Im a hybrid - Ulster-Scots, which means my ancestors came from the Anglo-Saxon area of Lindesey, moved up through England (Lincolnshire) into Scotland and then across to Northern Ireland around 1700 - 1800 and have remained ever since. Notwithstanding those who claim there is no such thing as Ulster-Scots culture, the music involves bagpipes and other local instruments such as the huge Lambeg Drum, which has dozens if not hundreds of localised rhythms depending on where the player comes from, interspersed with more-wodely known Irish and Scots tunes. The best of both worlds, probably.  
> Incidentally if I drink enough whisky I can speak fluent Ulster-Scots, an example of which Ive added below (taken from some local government website or other): 
> 
> Wed be ableeged gin yed gie us aa tha wittins ye can anent tha ootfa yer makkin pleen o, takkin in thïngs tha like o:
> tha day, oor, date an richt bït whar thar wus tha ootfa
> whut the caa tha offyser or yin frae tha darg-ban yokkt intilt, an thair shoodèr nummer an tha leuk o thaim
> whut the caa onie yins remairkin whut cum aboot, an thair bakkin an langblr nummer
> ...


A friend, of background Angleterre, never mind thawt crawp, but a felloo drinkaar of wis kee ya no, tauldmee anauld tayle of hown in auld daezze o how the warrs nsuch wid the soljarrs thed paws ferah wee drawm, and drrannk frum a bohll.  aye. twasa sigheen of peass ta awffer a bowl wid tooo hawnds, and ta rahceevv et the seeamm way, as, do yoo nut no, if yer aahnds wer boat holden yonwee bohll, it was seeaff, aye - cos thawt was a sign thawt yer warnt holednn a niyfe wid the o'er. aye. streeanjj tymes them un's. Ya no ahcoood abeenyar neeawborr wenahwas abowt thrreee.  ahwas faaraway awfter thawt. aye. cheers ta yeeoootoo. aye.  :Grin: 

Lambeg drum?  Isn't that like a bass drum only larger diameter, and thinner side to side.  I saw some of those in one of those infamous parades after the 11th night. aye.  bonefires middle of the bulfawwst streets all over. an sawndeerow too. wee bit o drinkin there too, aye. and some of them go crazy on the black bush.  I heard warnings about that one.

Cheers.

----------


## Bertram Henze

> Total gibberish, but when drunk it all makes perfect sense.


This made me curious - listening to a sample of Ulster-Scots assured me that it's close enough to Lowland Scots (which I am somewhat familiar with) so I understood most of it.  :Smile:

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## Polecat

> It's actually a pretty impressive work of music (I know, that'll get me kicked off certain fora I frequent) but I doubt if anyone recognized it ... you probably got booted for the excessive loud playing.  And by "the Hendrix thing," do you mean you set your mando on fire at the end?


No, I didn't burn the mandolin, but there was a fair bit of feedback and distortion involved. The tune was familiar to at least some of the prominent people present (this was in Karlsruhe, Germany in about 1995, when the Soviet national Anthem was still fresh in many peoples' minds - it got played so often at the Olympic Games). The performance was a deliberate provocation - we started off with Bartok's violin duo 44 ("Transylvanian Dance") played way too slow, which sounds very dissonant, then a composition of mine which consisted of long rests, punctuated by bursts of purposely wrong-sounding intervals and counterpoint. We had contracted to play for 30 minutes, about 5 short pieces, but after the second I noticed that we were losing the audience's attention and suggested to my partner that we jump straight to the finale (said Anthem), which we did, regaining the listeners. Some looked horrified, some laughed, and of course some didn't have a clue, but as soon as we were finished, the _Direktor_ of the Bank shoved me to one side, and used my microphone to announce that the buffet was now open. In spite of censoring us, we got payed in full and I signed the reciept for our fee (this was a german bank - they do everything very correctly) with the illustrious name "Ronald Biggs", which nobody seemed to notice, but still makes me giggle.
Thanks for the video - I will watch it when I have time.

----------


## David L

> Ha! I wrote a composition based on pi in high school, but it was diatonic ... I didn't think of doing it as a 12-tone piece.


I wrote a composition for a music theory class in high school based on the Fibonacci series.

----------


## David L

> That's new! (For me, anyway.) I hope it's my old unit, 1/5 FA of the Alexander Hamilton Brigade, doing the honors. Our motto: *Field Artillery means never having to say, I missed.* I do recall someone miscalculating and sending a couple shells into a KSU dorm parking lot. Oops.


That unit from Ft. Riley would bring cannons to Lawrence every summer for "1812" by the Lawrence City Band (in which I play percussion). Haven't been able to the last 2 summers, since the government sequester.

----------


## David L

Being a percussionist means playing some pretty weird stuff over the years. I played a typewriter with orchestra on Leroy Anderson's "Typewriter" and played tuned wine glasses for Saint-Saen's "The Swan". Got to play the Spike Jones part in "Tribute to Spike Jones", which included, among many other things, a blank pistol.

----------

k0k0peli, 

zedmando

----------


## Jess L.

One time many moons ago, I selected a house to move into, based almost *solely* on the wonderful acoustics and *natural reverb* that one of the larger rooms had. (Well, that, and it was cheap, I wouldn't have paid extra for good acoustics.) I figured it'd be a good place to practice and get the kind of sound I liked. At that time, I was into low-tuned nylon-strung fretless-banjo oldtimey stuff, and flute etc, and I always liked practicing/jamming anyplace that had a natural reverb, the more the better. But that house had literally no other redeeming features (I was living by myself at the time, no harm done). Of course I had to resist the temptation to put a bunch of furniture and window-coverings into that room, would have ruined the empty-room effect of the hardwood floor, high ceiling, and hard plaster-and-lathe walls. I suppose (guessing) that for some types of musical instruments, such a setting might be undesirable, but for the stuff I was playing then, it was good. 

Before that, a friend turned me onto a couple of nice reverb-y pedestrian-only *tunnels* that had good acoustics. One of the tunnels was in an isolated area about 4 hours from where we lived, that particular tunnel had no nearby residences so no worries about disturbing any neighbors, we'd sometimes stop there and play music for a few minutes when we were already driving through that region. I would play flute or sometimes tinwhistle (Celtic stuff mostly), my friend played mellow classical guitar - natural reverb sounded good with all of those. 

Another jam spot, at a music *festival* - was in a rather large otherwise-unused public *restroom* which had jam sessions that went well into the early hours of the morning. Same reason, nice reverb. Couldn't get that lovely a sound anywhere else on the premises. Ironically, you couldn't actually use that restroom for its, um, intended purpose, because its fixtures were inoperable. 

That was all during my extended super-strict acoustic-only mode. I hadn't yet discovered the creativity-boosting (and economical) wonder of electric instruments+effects etc.  :Grin:  

Anyway, what reminded me of this, was *another person's* (llamela) wonderful post at Mandolin Cafe Song-a-Week playing in a bathroom of some sort I guess, *great sound*.  :Mandosmiley:   :Smile:  But I think his pickin' would sound fantastic anywhere, reverb or not.  :Smile: 

---
P.S.: I might be just a little bit off-topic here, but since I was the one who originally _started_ this thread  :Whistling:  maybe it's alright, eh.  :Smile:

----------


## Bertram Henze

> I selected a house to move into, based almost *solely* on the wonderful acoustics and *natural reverb* that one of the larger rooms had.


You need one of those...





> One of the tunnels was in an isolated area about 4 hours from where we lived, that particular tunnel had no nearby residences


No use running away. Nobody will hear you scream.  :Cool:

----------

Jess L.

----------


## Sterling

I bought a Moog Thermin last year and brought it to school. My 5-7 grade band students loved it!

----------


## Jess L.

> You need one of those...


 :Laughing:   :Grin:  Yes a *cathedral*, that would do, rather nicely...  :Smile:  





> No use running away. Nobody will hear you scream.


 :Cool:  Cool pic, I see different possible interpretations of the picture, the person standing there could be friend or foe, enemy or hero rushing in to save the day, or just a curious passerby wondering where all the centuries-old flute music was coming from.  :Cool:  The tunnels we played music in weren't spooky, although I've seen a couple of *other* tunnels since then, urban settings that don't look particularly safe, wouldn't recommend those. I've become somewhat lazy  :Wink:  in my old age, nowadays when I want reverb I turn up the knob on the Roland MicroCube.  :Grin:

----------


## Jess L.

> I bought a Moog Thermin last year and brought it to school. My 5-7 grade band students loved it!


Cool!  :Smile:   :Grin:   :Cool:

----------


## DavidKOS

During a misguided attempt to transfer my keyboard skills to accordion, I was playing the accordion in a Gypsy band....and someone dared us to play "Inna Gadda da Vida".

What the "customer" didn't know is that the whole band were also classic rockers.  So they got a version on squeezebox, fiddle, flute and dumbek!

Complete with "organ" solo and dumbek drum solo. The folks listening loved...the folks that hired us, not so much.

I also had to good sense to stop playing accordion, making me a true gentleman. I know how to play bagpipes and accordion...but don't.

----------

Jess L., 

journeybear, 

k0k0peli

----------


## journeybear

I've been overlooking the obvious. The weirdest musical thing I've ever done was pick up an instrument in the first place. But then, it got even weirder. The instrument of choice (albeit a gift) was the mandolin, which at the time no one around me, including me, knew what it was. But it got weirder still. I thought I could make a living and win the hearts of lovely ladies through playing it. What was I thinking?  :Confused: 

So here I am 47-odd years on - and there have been some pretty odd years - and I'm still bashing away on the blessed, beleaguered beastie. It was uncannily wise of me to have relocated to this odd duck of a city, Baghdad By The Sea as it's been called, where when the going gets weird, the weird go pro. Apparently I've been able to get away with it, to sneak one past a lot of people, and will again in just a few hours, playing barely rehearsed material in front of unsuspecting strangers at on of the most prestigious places in town. And you can tune in to verify this assessment for yourselves at www.schoonerwharf.com/webcam, 7-11 PM EDT.

The main thing is, there could very well be a great deal of truth to the assertion that I have no real musical talent whatsoever, but have perhaps some facility with this one instrument, and my great love of music and proclivity for problem-solving have gotten me this far. It's fair to say my willingness to venture into the unknown musically has been the cause of some merriment and entertainment for those paying listening. You can't tell what is going to come next out of that instrument: heck, I often have no idea myself!  :Laughing:  For 2 1/2 years at this same establishment I played every Monday night, and the main reasons this went on so long were the lead singer had a good ear for material, a charismatic stage presence, compelling voice, and I was all too willing to try out all manner of musical and non-musical possibilities with my instruments and gear. It was musix for the curious, and apparently we did all right with it.

My most recent venture, the Professor And Mary Ann, was a real odd pairing of two people from different generations with powerful loves of and similar tastes in music. I have no idea how we managed to convince ourselves that a duo could be formed by such an unlikely couple playing mandolin, ukulele, and glockenspiel, but we had a "Why not?" attitude, and had so much fun playing together, that hopefully that translated to others and won them over, despite falling somewhat short in the talent category.  :Whistling:  Our first gig was at the annual conch shell blowing contest - which we won, in the group category - but our first real gig was a disaster, a poor choice of venue - an Irish pub - where we got the hook less than an hour in. But our second gig went fine, playing at a seaside Mediterranean/Caribbean bistro, with a slightly more sophisticated and certainly more receptive clientele. I can't tell for sure, being all caught up in the moment. But the staff liked us and asked us back - can't, as my partner is leaving town to become, a Disney princess on a cruise ship, but it sure was an uplifting ending to what had been a tumultuous and very strange ride. I like to think we were kindred spirits who connected in spite of rather obvious outward differences, united by a true love of music. Most of what we produced was in the moment and has dissipated into the ether. But we did take a little while rehearsing the day before and then after the gig to record a few songs on my cell phone, so at least there is some rough idea of what we were up to. I think it's pretty weird, but it makes me smile. But then, my judgement is skewed, being so weird ...  :Whistling: 

PS: Well, looks like you're going to have to take my word for it. I've converted these m4a files to mp3 files, but they're not uploading. Sigh ...  :Frown: 

PPS: Oh wait - they finally took!

----------


## Explorer

I don't think of this as weird, but others have, so...

Years ago, I owned a small lap harp. One spring day, when it was breezy, I was playing outside, and I heard a distant church organ. I damped the strings to listen, but the organ stopped abruptly. The same organ started playing when i undamped and started playing again.

Then i realized that it was the wind blowing through the strings which was making them sound. That's how I discovered the aeolian harp.

I've lived in places with windy times of year, so my unusual musical passion is to climb trees and to make improvised aelian harps with cotton string and resonators like found capped 2-liter bottles or frisbees. They're not noticeable from the ground, but when the wind picks up, there is a low hum from various trees, with shifting harmonies depending on the direction of the wind.

I've done it a few times in more urban areas, improvising a "bridge" under the string to drive a wood or metal sheet panel which is part of a structure.

The tree installations are the most interesting to me, because the shifting of the limbs in the wind alters the tension on the string, and thereby alters the pitch.

----------

Jess L., 

k0k0peli, 

objectsession

----------


## Jess L.

> www.schoonerwharf.com/webcam, 7-11 PM EDT


I couldn't get the above link to work, try this instead: *http://www.schoonerwharf.com/webcam.htm*
You guys sound good! Looks like there's about 15 minutes left of your set as I'm writing this, so I'll only be able to listen to a few minutes of it, but what I hear sounds good! At least I *think* it's you guys, the picture is blurry and doesn't include the entire stage. I do hear a *mandolin* though. And you got 'em *dancing*! Cool.  :Mandosmiley:   :Cool:   :Smile:

----------


## journeybear

Thanks for tuning in! Sorry about the link; should have double-checked that. Yeah, we got a few live ones toward the end. We did this song, "Old No. 7," from The Devil Makes Three, about, well, Jack Daniel's and other things, after which I made an aside over the mike to the effect that I keep hoping someone is going to hear that and buy the band a round of shots. For once, someone took the hint and brought up four shots. She also bought a CD, tipped us, and danced for a song or two. People like that are always a joy. Its not just the generosity (gratefully accepted, of course), but their having so much fun. Beats the hell out of a roomful of stiffs to have even just a few people really having a good time because of the music.

This was a pick-up band of sorts. The bass player and drummer started the gig a few months ago with a couple of other guys, who had since left. Their places have been filled by an ever-changing cast of characters. I filled in for the fiddler in this lineup four weeks ago, and got asked to do the same again this time. Next week the female singer and drummer are both going to be out of town and someone else will be doing the front man chores, a guy I don't even know. It's pretty nutso what goes on around here sometimes. The funniest thing tonight was seeing how many people came up and bought CDs. One is from an earlier lineup of this band, back when it was supposedly stable; the other is from my old band, that I was in with the bass player and drummer, which was recorded over a year ago, with a different lineup from the final one - which included tonight's female singer. (Have I lost you yet?  :Wink:  ) The thing is, those people are going to go home listen to these CDs, and they won't sound anything like what they heard tonight! Oh well!  :Grin:  Take the money and run!  :Whistling:

----------


## Jess L.

> During a misguided attempt to transfer my keyboard skills to accordion, I was playing the accordion in a Gypsy band....and someone dared us to play "Inna Gadda da Vida".
> 
> What the "customer" didn't know is that the whole band were also classic rockers.  So they got a version on squeezebox, fiddle, flute and dumbek!


Cool,  :Grin:   :Mandosmiley:   :Smile:  would've loved to have heard that! 

In the '70s I was at a fiddle festival where the goal was to form little temporary student-bands and then play at a contest (onstage in a proper little theater) a week later, to see which 'band' had made the most progress. Someone in my 'band' (not me, I swear) came up with the idea of trying to dazzle the judges with our brilliance  :Whistling:  by playing a few measures of La Gadda Da Vida as an intro to a normal oldtime stringband tune.  :Disbelief:  It was the very first time I'd played anything even remotely related to rock-n-roll, so at first it was a challenge to learn... involved going up the neck, I wasn't used to playing past the 5th fret. Our little 'band' practiced enough that the transition between tunes went pretty well. Come contest time, the audience was OK with it (they were mostly other musicians anyway, fairly supportive atmosphere, everyone was there to learn new stuff), but the judges weren't impressed,  :Whistling:  we didn't get a standing ovation  :Wink:  and we lost to the Cajun band (as usual, back then). We had a lot of fun though.

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DavidKOS

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## DavidKOS

> Someone in my 'band' (not me, I swear) came up with the idea of trying to dazzle the judges with our brilliance  by playing a few measures of La Gadda Da Vida as an intro to a normal oldtime stringband tune. .... but the judges weren't impressed,.


That tune gets around, huh?

Cool story.

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Jess L.

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## Jess L.

> Years ago, I owned a small lap harp. One spring day, when it was breezy, I was playing outside, and I heard a distant church organ. I damped the strings to listen, but the organ stopped abruptly. The same organ started playing when i undamped and started playing again.
> 
> Then i realized that it was the wind blowing through the strings which was making them sound. That's how I discovered the aeolian harp.


Cool.  :Smile: 

I spent some years driving semi-truck (mostly hopper bottom trailers, set of doubles; old Kenworth longnose). On some runs, I'd pull up to loading site (or unloading site, as the case may be) last thing at night, so that I'd be first in line the next morning.[1] One night I was parked just outside the gate of a big grain elevator on the river (where they load wheat onto barges), nothing else around but sagebrush and coyotes, *windy* as usual, clear night sky overhead with a bunch of stars, you know how it is out in those semi-arid/desert regions with no city lights, the night skies can be amazingly clear... 

I'd picked a couple of tunes on banjo - always carried an old junky banjo with me in the truck, then I was ready for some sleep so I crawled back into the sleeper - one of those small old "coffin" type sleepers, not the modern big fancy ones - and was *almost asleep* when I *heard something*. 

It sounded like a flute!  :Disbelief:   :Confused:   :Disbelief:  What the heck? No one else was around. It was well after dark and I was still the only truck there. The grain elevator employees had all went home many hours earlier. So where was that music coming from? It seemed very near, like someone/something was right outside the truck. 

Huh, a pretty *unimaginative flute player*, there were only *two notes*, both fairly low pitched like a bottle or something, which kept alternating back and forth with just those two notes...

Being not too long out of music-theory class I noticed that the notes seemed to be a "perfect" interval apart (can't remember now whether it was a perfect 4th or a perfect 5th). No other notes, just those two notes, and not in any discernable regular pattern. Huh.  :Confused:  A _drunk_ unimaginative flute player? No. 

I finally put my boots back on[2] and got out of the cab to investigate. Right behind the cab, between the sleeper and the first trailer, was the usual hollow metal pole a few feet high that held up the air lines to the trailer - the idea being that the air lines (going to the trailer) were attached up near the top of the pole so that they could still have enough slack to move when the trailer turned, but they didn't drag on the deckplate and become damaged. Anyway, that pole had a number of different *holes* in it, to attach things to. The pole's top was open. 

The *wind* had picked up a bit more and become gusty, and it was the wind acting on that *hollow* pole with the holes in it, that was making the alternating-note flute sound I heard. Apparently the gusts caused the pitch to change, never did figure out the exact mechanism but I surmised at the time that it had something to do with natural *harmonics*  :Confused:  *or* that the gusts were blowing the air lines around a bit and allowing access to, or blocking, certain of the pipe's holes, depending on how strong of a wind gust it was. Pretty trippy sound in any case, I was kind of awe-inspired. 

I thought it was pretty cool that an old truck could create music on its own  :Mandosmiley:  with a little help from the wind. 

*Footnotes:*
The reason for parking in line overnight, was because in that type of driving, pay was percentage, not hourly. If the truck wasn't making money, I wasn't making money. So getting to the loading or unloading site early (if they weren't open 24/7 as many of them weren't) was a good arrangement for me because it didn't cut into my income and I didn't have to sit around bored waiting in line the next morning.No, not cowboy boots, I never wore those (nor big belt buckles), these were regular lug-sole Red Wing work boots. 




> I've lived in places with windy times of year, so my unusual musical passion is to climb trees and to make improvised aelian harps with cotton string and resonators like found capped 2-liter bottles or frisbees. They're not noticeable from the ground, but when the wind picks up, there is a low hum from various trees, with shifting harmonies depending on the direction of the wind.
> 
> I've done it a few times in more urban areas, improvising a "bridge" under the string to drive a wood or metal sheet panel which is part of a structure.
> 
> The tree installations are the most interesting to me, because the shifting of the limbs in the wind alters the tension on the string, and thereby alters the pitch.


Great idea, that is totally cool!  :Smile:   :Grin:  I love it! I never would have thought of _deliberately_ trying to creating such sounds, but it's a very intriguing idea.

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## Bertram Henze

> Great idea, that is totally cool!   I love it! I never would have thought of _deliberately_ trying to creating such sounds, but it's a very intriguing idea.

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Carl Robin, 

Jess L.

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## Ausdoerrt

Well, my main instrument is a 7-string e-violin played through a high-gain tube preamp, so weird is kind of normal here  :Smile: 


Musically, one of the bands I'm playing in did a re-imagining of the classic Irish ballad "Ride On" into a happy/dancy/jazzy tune. We also redid the "Star of County Down" as a parody of Neue Deutsche Haerte (think Laibach/Rammstein)  :Cool:

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## Fretless

Ha! Some good contenders for the weirdest of the musically weird here. Great thread!

I'll put myself near the bottom  :Crying: . I strung up an old fiddle with octave strings just for fun. It's great for blues and droning behind Scottish music but not much else. Oh, and I own glow-in-the-dark rosin, if that counts.

While we wait for more weirdness, here's a neat clip:

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DavidKOS

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## Bertram Henze

That Walk Off The Earth cover is very famous on the web, and many have tried to outweird them:




...including themselves:

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DavidKOS, 

Fretless

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## Purdy Bear

As I've only just begun to learn the Mandolin the wierdest thing I've done was connected to another instrument - the Flute.  When I was doing my grade exams I took the instrument to work with me, and played during the lunch hour and brought it home to practice again.  Some of those in the building didn't know I was playing and thought the old place was haunted by a phantom musician!  RFLOL

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## DavidKOS

Wow, best I ever did was a guitar duet on one guitar. these guys are cool!

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## Phil Goodson

I think I put a D7 chord in a Bluegrass song once..... :Whistling:   :Laughing:

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## T.D.Nydn

I don't know if it's musical,but I've detuned instruments and called to bullfrogs with them.....

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## journeybear

Well, it's weird, anyway ...  :Whistling:

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## objectsession

> I don't know if it's musical,but I've detuned instruments and called to bullfrogs with them.....


I'll admit there's very close to a 0% chance I'll ever want to call to a bullfrog, but what instruments did you use and how were they (de)tuned to attract the bullfrogs?

Those are serious questions. Less seriously, what animals can I attract with a detuned mandolin?

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## Bertram Henze

> what animals can I attract with a detuned mandolin?


I'll say cows. A harmonica works wonders on them, so why not a mandolin.

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objectsession

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## k0k0peli

> I'll say cows. A harmonica works wonders on them, so why not a mandolin.


 I'll have to try both on my next trip to town past verdent pastures. Cows, horses, sheep, goats, llamas, I'll see who responds. Hope I'm not trampled.

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## Purdy Bear

Cows love music, here's some examples

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTQD7imxd8o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKRfHoY-PRY

We do have farm animals round here, but no cows, I'll have to try it out on the horses and chickens once I'm good enough and let you know.

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Carl Robin

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## T.D.Nydn

I was born and raised living on a lake,so,when I was a kid,I used to take a banjo into the bogs with me and practice.i learned mandolins don't do well in swamps.after awhile I discovered if you detuned it,I mean really detune it,like the strings almost like rubber bands and pull and slap them against the banjo head ,it makes a blunt type sound similar to a bullfrog croak,,they respond alright,,

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objectsession

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## journeybear

You've got to know your audience and give them what they like.  :Grin: 

There's a fellow 'round these parts somewheres who's played to turkeys and has posted some videos of their, ah, interchanges.  :Chicken:

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## T.D.Nydn

Hey journeybear,your right,because I never got a lot of response playing " the ballad of Jed clampett",and "foggy mountain  breakdown" just seemed to piss them off......

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## Toni Schula

> Played "Old Daingerfield" live on stage with a Djembi player from Ghana providing the backup. 
> 
> What Bill would have thought, I can only begin to imagine.


Bill combined so many musical styles and he also did so many experiments when eventually creating that new style. Once there was even an accordion in his band. So why not a Djembi?

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## Jess L.

> Bill combined so many musical styles and he also did so many experiments when eventually creating that new style. Once there was even an accordion in his band. So why not a Djembi?


Agree.  :Smile:  No harm in musical experimenting, sometimes great things  :Mandosmiley:  are created/discovered that way. 

Speaking of unusual instrumentation, I found this while looking for something else today, this is bluegrass played on liuqin, mandolin, bass, pipa, guitar, sanxian, banjo, and ruan: 


I like it.  :Mandosmiley:  But I think if I was going to play those things I might prefer geared tuning pegs,  :Grin:  already did my stint with steel-string fiddles and old 1890s ebony-fiddle-peg banjos... my workaround for my *banjos*, was to put Suzuki-style violin fine-tuners between banjo bridge and tailpiece... yeah they're _supposed_ to be for fiddle but they can be used on other instruments too... worked good (for steel strings anyway, the nylon-strung fretless didn't really need fine-tuners) but had to make sure the fine-tuners didn't contact the head and buzz.

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Carl Robin

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## Heady

idk if this is weird, but 30 years ago at orchestra camp my quartet coach gave us Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - we were insulted.  She said if we proved it was beneath us she'd give us something better.  We knocked it out of the park in less than an hour, but she didn't actually have anything else so she said it still needed more.  We were pissed.  So every time she left the room we traded instruments.  Then we started trading parts.  Then while playing for her we started modulating.  I'm the viola player and at one point I'm playing the 1st violin part on a cello and in the wrong key.  She kept saying something sounded "off" put she couldn't "put [her] finger on it]."

Joke was on us in the end, we kept screwing with her so she never gave us better music to play.

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T.D.Nydn

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## Jess L.

> idk if this is weird, but 30 years ago at orchestra camp my quartet coach gave us Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - we were insulted.  She said if we proved it was beneath us she'd give us something better.  We knocked it out of the park in less than an hour, but she didn't actually have anything else so she said it still needed more.  We were pissed.  So every time she left the room we traded instruments.  Then we started trading parts.  Then while playing for her we started modulating.  I'm the viola player and at one point I'm playing the 1st violin part on a cello and in the wrong key.  She kept saying something sounded "off" put she couldn't "put [her] finger on it]."


Lol!  :Laughing:  That sounds like fun!  :Grin:   :Smile:

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## MikeZito

I'm over 4 years late for the party - but sure, I'll play . . . .

Probably the *weirdest* musical thing I ever did happened back when I was writing radio jingles and music for corporate presentations .  A guy from some vitamin drink company came to me and said that he wanted '_traditional Chinese music_' for his training tape - but he wanted it to be '_danceable_'.  Being a dumb Italian guy from Connecticut I obviously had no idea what I was doing when it came to traditional Chinese music, so I just laid down a nice drum beat and surrounded it with gongs and other strange eastern-sounding noises . . .  and the guy LOVED it!   I wish I still had a recording of that.

The most *miraculous* thing I ever did was; _once_, I played a song all the way through, without screwing up!  I wish I had a recording of that, too . . . .

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## Bob Buckingham

At a gig, several years ago commemorating a defunct textile mill, that made material for the first moon landing, a woman came to us with a "bluegrass opera", her words for the band to play. It was in Ab and was rich with weird time signatures. It was among the strangest gig ever, her voice was, shall we say, unforgettable.

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## Chris Cochran

My former band recorded a lot of originals back in the 80's . Every so often  I would hack up one of our tunes. No apologies.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tbjgreel4j...0Away.mp3?dl=0

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## Greg P. Stone

I guess the weirdest thing was learning to play the guitar in 1985. When I told a buddy that I had bought a guitar he asked me to start playing with him on a weekly guitar duo gig because he had just lost his partner. I protested, "shouldn't I learn to play it first?" "No problem." He gave me a half hour of instruction playing two Grateful Dead songs which we never played again.

I played with him for several years and literally learned to play guitar in front of an audience.

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## DevanBennett

I don't know if this really counts, but in college I was involved as a singer and guitarist in all of these projects at the same time:

* pop-punk band
* jazz octect
* madrigal choir
* church choir
* handbell choir
* a stage musical that was reviewed (correctly) as "one of the most overpoweringly dull musical dramas of all time."
* Peter, Paul, and Mary tribute band

Many years later, I've almost learned how to limit my commitments, but I still don't have a good answer to, "so, what kind of music do you play?"

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## Jeff Mando

> I guess the weirdest thing was learning to play the guitar in 1985. When I told a buddy that I had bought a guitar he asked me to start playing with him on a weekly guitar duo gig because he had just lost his partner. I protested, "shouldn't I learn to play it first?" "No problem." He gave me a half hour of instruction playing two Grateful Dead songs which we never played again.
> 
> I played with him for several years and literally learned to play guitar in front of an audience.


My cousin had a similar story in the 60's.  He was friends with a popular local teenage garage band who was gigging a lot.  Their organ player quit and they said he could join the band even though he couldn't play and they taught him the "three" chords.  Somehow he talked his folks into buying him a $1400 Fender portable organ.  He played with them for quite a while.

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## Paul Cowham

> I don't know if this really counts, but in college I was involved as a singer and guitarist in all of these projects at the same time:
> 
> * pop-punk band
> * jazz octect
> * madrigal choir
> * church choir
> * handbell choir
> * a stage musical that was reviewed (correctly) as "one of the most overpoweringly dull musical dramas of all time."
> * Peter, Paul, and Mary tribute band
> ...


Wow, I thought I had a fairly "eclectic" musical diet. Respect to you Devan  :Smile:

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## Simon DS

Sort of weird.

I was once in a French singing class -but it wasn’t that. 
There were eleven or twelve of us, I wasn’t sure exactly, plus the instructor. She switched the lights off and told us to walk about the room. 
She said don’t stop walking. 
Of course it was chaos with everyone talking at the same time, arms and fingers jabbing each other in the face -‘why did you do that? someone shouted, and bumping into the walls of the large round room.
Shortly afterwards there were bitter complaints. ‘Pourquoi?’, ‘Oh, la, la!’ ‘Arretes’.
Then, still in pitch blackness, the instructor began to hum a low ‘ooommmm’ sort of sound.

It was like switching on one small light and I thought, well at least I’m not going to bump into the instructor. Then someone else made a higher frequency sound, ‘aaaaaahhhhh’. Then someone else... and someone else.

Now this is the weird bit. 
Suddenly I could ‘see’ the other people. I could ‘see’ them moving,  but I was seeing them with a part of my mind that I don’t often use.
More people sang, and passed me, like sailing at night and seeing ferry lights on the other boats, and I would change direction to avoid them. I ‘knew’ where the walls were because most of the sound came from the centre of the room, and also because you can hear your own echo as you near a wall. I mainly listened and had this map in my mind. 
Then, with the others and the instructor we started to share tones and little riffs -though I was still mainly listening and could make out all the other ten people in the room. With confidence we all began moving faster around the room.

Then ‘bang’ I collided into someone. A listener, the one other invisible person in the room.

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## Charlie Bernstein

Bought a mandolin!

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## Hudmister

Our little bluegrass trio once managed to get a gig at a topless bar, The Pirate's Chest in Oceanview.  The girls would perform to juke box music for 40 minutes and then we'd take the runway for 20 minutes, me on banjo the other two guitar and bass, from 8:00 o'clock to eleven.  Audience loved us.  Owner said he could no longer afford to continue paying us so gig over.  I miss that gig.

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## David L

The weirdest MUSICAL thing that I HAVEN"T done: many years ago, a lady approached us during a break and asked if we would play naked. It seems that her swinger's club was interested in having music at one of their get-togethers. We said yes, but never heard back, alas!

We used to play at a place that had strippers during the week and dancing on weekends. I had to set up my drumset around the pole, which I also played on with my drum sticks.

When I was in high school, a local strip joint had a drummer that played along with the juke box for the dancers. Interesting gig!

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## JeffD

A few years back I took my electric mandolin, a four string MandoStrat, out to the park. Under a  pavilion I played the gigue from [COLOR=var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-color, var(--yt-spec-text-primary))]Victor Kioulaphides Suite for Ali, through the amp, and a heavy metal fuzz pedal, and an octave pedal. [/COLOR]

Hey it was more interesting than loud angry fiddle tunes.

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## catmandu2

> ... I've long wanted a zheng.  If/when you're done exploring with it - I've got a bunch of CBOM gear I'll trade you for it ..


Well, 3-4 years ago i _did_ trade for the guzheng and subsequently undertook study of trad chinese music.  Compared with western forms, I guess it _is_ a bit weird.  Here's an old clip 










> I once put a mandolin under my chin and then used my fiddle bow to bow the mandolin. LOVED the sound,  at that time the sound reminded me a little of Scandinavian nyckelharpa, kind of open and haunting sounding. 
> 
> If you're not familiar with nyckelharpa, here's one from someone else's YouTube page:


Another "weird" thing I did is go all in for hardingfele and Scandinavian music (adapting to playing fiddle on my chest/cradled in the crook of my arm in the traditional manner _was_ weird feeling at first  :Smile:   )

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## Jess L.

Great replies in this thread!  :Mandosmiley:  Thanks everyone!  :Smile:

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## Bob Clark

I don't actually do anything I think of as weird musically, but I will offer this.  I play my mandolin for feral cats.  My wife is heavily involved in trap/neuter/return (TNR) of feral cats and when she has feral cats who are especially scared, I play for them.  I play quiet, soothing music near where they are being held.  The effect is remarkable; really calms them.  It's a real treat to observe.

I also like to play in one of my sheep barns for the barn cats who live there, especially on winter mornings when the sun is streaming in and they are having their breakfast.  They seem to like it.  No reaction at all from the sheep though.

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## bratsche

I love that, Bob!  You should post some videos!   I also love your tagline - I have a sign in my kitchen that says the same thing.   :Wink: 

bratsche

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Bob Clark

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## Denny Gies

Back in the '70's we played a bluegrass festival outside of Tallahassee, FL.  It had rained for days and the place was a mud hole....we named it the Mud and Geek Festival.  Anyway, one of the bands had an American Indian leader who played a seven string Martin D 28.  That's right, a seven string D 28.  He had added a tuning peg in the middle of the headstock.  It was weird to say the least.

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## catmandu2

Yes and animals seem to like that "spark" or gleam of steel strings in motion - that jl277 is talking about .. they probably like it more than me, and I love it  :Mandosmiley:   birds too seem to like metal reed resonances.  Ha humans certainly sometines do emulate birds with _any_ type of reed.  This is the thing with mndlns and hardingfele and harps and horns..!  Listening to the new david s ware release -

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## Joel Glassman

Strung up a 3 story building from basement to ceiling with aluminum wires for an
art school project. Through the stair well. Played it with a big home made bow strung 
with fishing line. It sounded strange and frightening.

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## Bob Clark

> I love that, Bob!  You should post some videos!   I also love your tagline - I have a sign in my kitchen that says the same thing.  
> 
> bratsche


Thanks Bratsche!  If I can figure out a way to video this, I will give it a try.  I should at least be able to get some pictures.  I'll let you know.

Best wishes,

Bob

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## Jonathan K

In the Spring of 1989, I was in my 4th year at university in California and traveled to Leningrad for a semester to study Russian (my major.) This was the last year of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev and glasnost were in full swing, but still, it was the Soviet Union. One did not step too far out of line if one wanted to avoid trouble. Trouble not from the government but from the little old ladies who wielded (and still wield) great power across Russia.

Of course, I had brought my mandolin.

There was another American in our group who had brought his guitar and wed jam in our dormitory rooms periodically. A few other people in our group - Americans and assorted Europeans - started to join us to sing classic rock tunes.

One Friday after classes, our group decided to take a commuter train to the suburbs of Leningrad for the weekend to stay at a Russian friends summer home (his dacha.) This was illegal as foreign visitors to the Soviet Union were required to spend every night in the location where they had registered with the police. Of course, I took my mandolin and the other guy took his guitar. When we all arrived at the train station, we found out wed missed the train we needed and had an hour or so to kill.

Hey, lets go play some tunes in the station!

So we walk into the waiting area, took out our instruments and launched into John Barleycorn in front of hundreds of bewildered Soviet commuters. All culture in the Soviet Union was heavily controlled by the government, especially pop music, and there was a good likelihood that the police would show up. Its possible they did but realizing we were foreigners, may have been confused as to what to do. Back then dealing with foreigners was the responsibility of the KGB. 

In any event, we played for like 20 minutes. No one clapped. Everyone looked nervous, expecting the authorities to show up.

A few months later, the Soviet Union collapsed. Today people busk all over Russia. I like to think my mandolin and I played a small part in that.  :-)

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Chris Cochran

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