Musicians playing instruments in unusual ways

Cafe Society
21

Here’s one …

22

Is that considered unusual on a bowed string instrument? Pizzicato is more rare on the piano, cf. Henry Cowell.

23

Thanks. I watched that just last week while reading Country and Midwestern, but couldn’t remember the group’s name. I believe that’s Stan Laurel with them.

24

Or reaching inside the piano to strum the strings directly for “Just Take A Pebble.”

25

Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel plays his guitar with a violin here. Does that count?

26

I love funk, and Scary Pockets really knows funk. I especially enjoy Swatkins “playing” the talkbox (even though I’m not 100% sure about what it is)

27

These guys are doing all kinds of horrible things to a defenseless piano:

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Are “Funk Fingers” unusual enough?

29

Not sure if this counts since they’re not actually playing but still…

30

Buck Dharma and Eric Bloom doing their two guitar slash routine.

31

The parts where he did this on “Dazed And Confused” on all versions I know are the most boring parts in a tedious song in the first place.

32

Sonic Youth was known for its habit of jamming a stick or a screwdriver or whatever caught their eye under the strings of their guitars to see how that would influence the sound. Some of their songs they could only play on the one specific guitar that they had uniquely prepared.

33

Which many people (in my experience) who had never seen it done, assumed was an autoharp.

34

OK, seems like “prepared” or modified instruments are allowed. At any rate, this popped up on my YouTube feed the other day, and I was completely awed by it. Some dude modified his Clavinet with a giant whammy-bar type controller.

35

The Nice had a bass player (and singer) who used a violin bow.

36

Postmodern Jukebox - All About That Bass
Two musicians on a single bass, queued to the start of it. The song is pretty amazing in its own right.

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Apparently embedding means you can’t queue it to the right spot, or edit. The bass part starts at 144 seconds.

38

Sure you can !

39

I saw sax player Gilad Atzmon (who also plays with the Blockheads !) playing his
soprano sax into an upright piano. It gives excellent reverb !
Unfortunately i can’t find any video of him, or anyone else, doing it :frowning:

40

Stretching the category a bit: Rick Derringer and Mark Cunningham tossing their guitars to each other mid-song. They were one of the first groups to use wireless guitar transmitters.