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The French also have musical loonies


Happy Jack
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There was an entire plastic pipe 'orchestra' that used to do the festival circuit in the 90s.

They weren't officially on the bills but they'd find a bit of space in one of the fields, set up and start playing, often to a fairly large, if somewhat transient audience.

Edited by Cato
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That's pretty cool, and sounds surprisingly good when mixed together. 

Our drummer in the acoustic band made eight tuned pipes from 40mm waste pipe which you could hit/slap on the floor at 45 degrees to create a similar sound to the clip above.

The band did covers of all sorts in our own style. We used the pipes to do the intro to Ed Sheeran's 'Shape Of You', each band member having one or two pipes each. It worked really well and was a real attention grabber (gimmick) but there just wasn't enough volume to gig it, and rigging microphones for all the pipes was too much trouble so we never actually used them. 

A relief we didn't have to play Sheeran but it would've been cool intro. 

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I follow him on Instagram, he’s been posting amazing videos up for quite some time now. Definitely would love to play in a band with him 100%.
 

Not on bass, but maybe on Tupperware harmonica, or electric paper bag, or tuned cupboard handles or something. I reckon the gigs would be superb!

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5 minutes ago, meterman said:

I follow him on Instagram, he’s been posting amazing videos up for quite some time now. Definitely would love to play in a band with him 100%.
 

Not on bass, but maybe on Tupperware harmonica, or electric paper bag, or tuned cupboard handles or something. I reckon the gigs would be superb!

@meterman, your post just reminded me of a video I saw back in the 80's
A colleague of mine back then had borrowed a Camera and portable video recorder (pre camcorder days!) so that he could film a band, formed by his pals.
Anyhow, they played some really odd instruments - I recall the bass player had a home-made one string bass, made from one long side-piece from a metal framed bed. (The single string may have been piano wire....) The guitarist had a very rough, home-made guitar (I think maybe 3 or 4 strings) played through a home made amp head, built inside a circular tupperware tub! lol :) 

Oh how I wish I had a copy of that video now

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48 minutes ago, Marc S said:

@meterman, your post just reminded me of a video I saw back in the 80's
A colleague of mine back then had borrowed a Camera and portable video recorder (pre camcorder days!) so that he could film a band, formed by his pals.
Anyhow, they played some really odd instruments - I recall the bass player had a home-made one string bass, made from one long side-piece from a metal framed bed. (The single string may have been piano wire....) The guitarist had a very rough, home-made guitar (I think maybe 3 or 4 strings) played through a home made amp head, built inside a circular tupperware tub! lol :) 

Oh how I wish I had a copy of that video now

sounds like my kind of thing! 

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29 minutes ago, toneknob said:

No surprises that this lot are French. The repertoire also includes 21st Century Schizoid Man, Peaches En Regalia, Tubular Bells, Atom Heart Mother

 

There's something mildly disturbing about that, but in not sure what. 

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3 hours ago, Maude said:

That's pretty cool, and sounds surprisingly good when mixed together. 

Our drummer in the acoustic band made eight tuned pipes from 40mm waste pipe which you could hit/slap on the floor at 45 degrees to create a similar sound to the clip above.

The band did covers of all sorts in our own style. We used the pipes to do the intro to Ed Sheeran's 'Shape Of You', each band member having one or two pipes each. It worked really well and was a real attention grabber (gimmick) but there just wasn't enough volume to gig it, and rigging microphones for all the pipes was too much trouble so we never actually used them. 

A relief we didn't have to play Sheeran but it would've been cool intro. 

I have the schematics to build one of these kits somewhere...

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Lady M already thinks I'm a "totally unique instrument", without rummaging in other people's skips. 

I like to think of myself as a hybrid half womble, half Stig of the Dump kind of recycler and like the idea though. 

🙂👍

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