#antique instruments

[hamishcat437]

Okay so I recently got a bunch of my grandmother's old things and one of those things is this:

I remember it used to sit in the old living area (That no one used) and it's been broken as long as I can remember

So I'm wondering 2 things:

1.) What instrument is this?

And 2.) Is there any way I can fix it?

[garden-babes]

Is there anyone who specializes in vintage/antique brass instruments who could potentially help me identify a trumpet I found at a thrift store? Message me here and I'll send pics of it. There's no visible brand name on the instrument or the case

[emmaklee]

moth wing through an antique microscope

[dustedmagazine]

Robbie Lee & Mary Halvorson — Seed Triangular (New Amsterdam)

Seed Triangular by Robbie Lee and Mary Halvorson

2018 might be remembered for many things, but for Mary Halvorson it’ll be one more year when she put out a lot of records. Seed Triangular is the fifth, following two Thumbscrew records, a duo with Bill Frisell and the complex, commanding song project Code Girl. It also represents a bit of a purple patch for Robbie Lee, a multi-instrumentalist who works often with other musicians but can go years without a record of his own. But this is the year he has decided to put a peculiar intersection of interests on display. Seed Triangular is actually his idea, and on it, as on Opalescence, his LP with Baroque flute player Norbert Rodenkirchen and double bassist James Ilgenfritz, he presents improvisations played on exotic instruments that encourage the listener to listen past the novelty of said instruments.

Lee and Halvorson are old friends, but while they’ve played together informally over the years they’ve never recorded before. This session was a bit of a dare. Lee invited Halvorson, who has spent most of her professional career playing a big hollow-bodied electric guitar through a fairly stable array of pedals, to come on down to the studio and play what he gave her. And while Lee’s showed up to plenty of other people’s sessions toting a guitar or a saxophone, he dug deep into his closet of curios for his own. He played antique flutes, chalumeau (Renaissance clarinet), soprillo saxophone (you didn’t know there was something higher than a sopranino?), and a common garden variety melodica.  And he gave Halvorson an 18-string harp guitar, a 6-string banjo, and an old Gibson acoustic. Each player picked up an instrument, they improvised, and then afterwards Lee fileted the good parts out of their jams.  

There are plenty of novel sounds on display. With its microtonal tinge and woody resonance, “Seven of Strong” sounds like a bleak campfire reverie played on Harry Partch’s invented instruments (none of which are on the record). The strings on “Potomogeton” reach impossibly low, and then leap up into a higher register like a flock of hungry birds chasing a flute-puffing prey. And the soprillo sax’s high, blurry tone pushes into places no familiar woodwind can go on “Rock Flowers,” almost obscuring the uncommon density of the strummed banjo. But the liner notes don’t break down what’s played track by track, and most likely the more you listen the less you’ll want to try. Instead, you might notice how quickly Halvorson seems to find a way to sound like herself when confronted with a totally alien signal chain, or how sturdy and graceful Lee’s lines are. His edits are well hidden, but one suspects that they have a fair bit to do with the cohesiveness of this record’s 15 mostly short-ish pieces. This music stands at least as much for the elegance of its construction as it does for the freakiness of the instruments used to make it.

Bill Meyer

[darklylocker]

CSS, Jukeboxes, and Flags

Today was one of those days where life quietly shifted direction without asking permission first. Nothing dramatic happened. No major announcement. No singular defining event. Yet by the end of the night, things somehow felt different. Dreamy Audio Yesterday had been long, and I woke up this morning feeling groggy and disconnected. I had an odd dream lingering in my head. It was the kind that…

CSS, Jukeboxes, and Flags

[chronivore]

Cornet-trompe, ca. 1862 attr. Alphonse Sax (Belgium) - Materials: Brass - Length: 33.9 cm - Other Notes: “This unusually wound hunting horn was designed to be more easily handled than the traditional large and unwieldy hooped horn used in the field to signal to members of the hunting party. Its ergonomic form enables it to be tucked snugly under the arm against the player’s body for safe and convenient carrying.”

[kpellinore]

The historic village/park of Barkerville was very near my harp workshop, so I continued to do my duty by this blog and documented (took photos of!) all the cool old instruments I could find.

(Never have I seen inlaid panels like that piano has! - Beautiful!)

[gootie]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a2tSJZ8NPU)

Saw this on Boingboing today. I think it’s a transmission from an alternate dimension where everything cool happened fifty years earlier than in our universe. Pretty frickin’ great.

http://boingboing.net/2016/03/10/blue-monday-performed-with-obs.html