underestimated instruments

sheng.jpg

An unsorted and incomplete list of music instruments that deserve more attention than they get.

The monochord: used by Pythagoras in his investigations on harmony, that ultimately let to the fact that there is now not only a theorem but also a comma named after him (Pytagoras not the monochord).
Kazoo: besides singing into it you can wake up bus drivers and call dolphins with it.
The swedish bagpipe: with only one known player in the 1940’s they where as close to extinction as an instrument can be.

The sheng (pictured above): the mother of two other underestimated instruments:
akkordeon and melodica
VL70-m sort of a virtual monochord. A synthesizer that calculates a physical model of a plucked/bowed string or blown pipe (in the most simple approximation there is no real difference between a resonating string or pipe: Both can be modeled with a delay line).

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