Certain kinds of saxophone in Jazz.
An example of what annoys me is the sax in the classic So What? by Miles Davis.
It’s an amazing piece, with the haunting bass tones in the beginning followed by Davis on the horn. Then at 3:26 an annoying sax kicks in and ruins it.
But there are guys who do it right. See how Stan Getz plays during this cool video of The Girl from Ipanema.. Or how about Gerry Mulligan and Paul Desmond.
Still, I can’t stand that sax from So What.
The jazz organ - I hate the artificial vibrato
Xylophone/Glockenspiel - Sound too much like the toys toddlers bang on
Whenever a vocalist does the <choke> sound in country & pop tunes - “<choke>Girl, you make me wanna <shoke> CRYYyyY…” Makes me cringe.
As regards bagpipes, I used to play B flat tuba in a British Brass Band, and we did a combined concert with the Pipe and Drum Corps. I sat in the center of the back row. Our last number was “Amazing Grace” with the Pipes and Drums. The bagpipes stood in a semicircle behind us on stage.
Bagpipes do a warmup pump before the music starts. Like I said, I’m center back, just in front of the middle of the bagpipers. They played the warmup tone, and it was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s like the sound of a fleet of supersonic jets, before they take off. Both bands then combined for Amazing Grace. To this day, thinking about it makes me break out in shivers.
The electric guitar. Sure, sometimes, in skillful hands, it can have extraordinary range and color. But all too often, it’s little more than amplified wanking.
That was John Coltrane “ruining” so what. John Coltrane.
Slide Trombone can be the worst. See Hard Headed Woman.
This is a pretty niche-y example, but I can’t stand the Blaster Beam, the instrument played by former child actor Craig Huxley. It’s like the aural equivalent of a sudden migraine.
It was featured prominently in the score of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, if you’re wondering what it sounds like.
Ruining indeed. Sounds pretty much the same as his sax on My Favorite Things. Not a fan of it.
ETA: Hey Knowed Out, I’ll take those spinning Leslie speakers and the Hammond organ from you if you take the Coltrane sax sound!
I really dislike the soprano sax, but it’s generally because of the musician playing it. I also dislike musicians who insist on playing a tenor sax “out of its range”, making it squeal. It’s a really annoying sound and contributes nothing.
Jazz organ, primarily because of the solo work, which often includes long interludes with the player holding down one note until you just want to open a vein. We get it: you’ve got soul; now shut the fuck up.
The kazoo, and no explanation needed.
It’s not the range or the repertoire that’s in issue. People either like the pipes or they don’t. I don’t argue with those who don’t like them. De gustibus and all that.
But you’re right there is a small range, which limits the repertoire. The chanter has only 9 notes on it: low G to high A (which are just conventional designations: the A has been creeping steadily higher over the years, and the other notes shift in tandem.
The drones are all tuned to the same note: A. The two smaller drones are both tuned to A one octave beneath the low A on the chanter, and the big bass drone is tuned to A two octaves lower.
There is a way to get harmonics, however. You just have to have two or more pipers. One piper or group plays the melody, and the others play the harmonica, which pipers call “seconds”.
Darn otto-kerrect: that should have read: "the others play the harmonics…
:slap:
Sounds like you just don’t like John Coltrane. Nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t like him myself. He’s got a pinched, unattractive tone.
Yeah, yeah, supposedly the greatest jazz genius since Bird. Feh. I’ll take Rollins, thanks.
As for the soprano saxophone in general: “The definition of a Gentleman is a man who owns a soprano sax and refuses to play it.”
Theremin
I can see it being used to make some special effects sounds, but as music it just doesn’t have a particularly pleasant sound and the slide from one note to another is annoying.
Sitar for me. I’ve always hated it in pop music, although I do generally appreciate a sitar intro as a useful warning that the next few minutes are going to be spend with rambly, self-indulgent, new-agey lyrics and little engaging melody.
But more recently, I’ve tried listening to quality players playing music really intended for sitar, and, well, I still mostly hate it. There’s something so jangly and noodley about it; it sounds like an instrument where the player is eternally warming-up and never actually gets around to the song.
Odd exception: I’ve heard it used to good effect a few times in electronic dance music, which is a weird exception because I usually can’t stand EDM.
I don’t think his genius was in the tone (Is that where it is anyway?) If you give up on him you give up on his imagination, his band and his compositions too. Miles had a portrait of Coltrane up in his home til he died I think.
I never could warm up to Sonny Rollins. I keep hearing that “St Thomas” song and I can’t take it. What an unfortunate signature song to have.
Come to think of it it’s got to be a soprano sax in that “Boogie On…” solo. Or, as you pointed out, it could possibly be a tenor saxophonist resorting to that ear-piercingly squeally shit (like in that solo).
(snicker, snicker)
Actually I totally dig the warm, humming, almost gently throbbing resonance of the Leslie speakers coming out of those old Hammond organs (the B3? is that what you’re referring to?). Put on some Jimmy Smith, fill up some Volcano bags or vape some live resin and bang you’re off to the sloooooowww races. (to borrow someone’s sign-off: “mmm”)
I can’t say I would be averse to that suggestion.
What really gets me all Frank Boothy is not so much an instrument but an engineering fucking abomination known as auto-tune, which, if it was a physical thing, I’d take either, say, a 7 iron or maybe a pitching wedge to it. I think I first heard it in that nauseating-beyond-redemption “Believe” by Cher, and ever since then it has made the pop industry get pooier, and pooier, and pooier. Tim and Eric do a good take on it and, appropriately, are totally fucking gross. (thumbs-up emoji)
Have you ever heard anything by Shaun Davey? He writes large-scale “festival” pieces, often for pipes and drums. His “Relief of Derry” symphony is wonderful, with some emphatic bagpipes work in the second movement.
Here is a YouTube link to a two-minute bit from Davey’s “The Brendan Voyage.” Jolly good stuff!
There’s no such thing as a limited repertoire if people are still writing the music!
Double-reed slide music stand, left-handed sewer flute, tromboon, and police trombone.
And rosin-coated balloons, which are hand-rubbed to give a most astonishingly odious “fingernails on slate” groan.
NC State University? I played in both the British Brass Band and the Pipes & Drums there.
And I was the percussionist who played the xylophone and glockenspiel from time to time!
I think it was a perfect fit for Good Vibrations, and that was it. It was the only song appropriate for theremin music.
Now I am worried that I am annoying folks at church with my fretless bass as I slide between notes. I’ll have to dial that back a bit.
That’s called the “strike-in” - as the bag inflates, it feeds air to the chanter (the part in the hands that the piper plays) and the three drones. Each one of those might start with a slightly different air pressure from the bag, which could be discordant, especially in a band with more than one piper; you don’t want them all just starting at various points.
So you blow the bag full but just short of the pressure needed to start the chanter and drones, and wait for the signal from the pipe-major. When the p-m signals, you all squeeze the left elbow hard on the bag, increasing the air pressure and starting all four reeds going at the same time. It’s often played on an E.
I agree about the effect - it reminds me of the orchestra warming up in the pit before the opera or the play starts. The anticipation, and then Bam! you’re going.