Okay, I’ve got a puzzler that I’m flying blind with.
Can anyone tell me what instrument is being played in the first 17 seconds of this video?
The source is 1977’s “The Mouse and his Child,” a very 70s-ish movie, and I think I’ve long associated this instrument with 70s-style music—I’m pretty sure it’s from a few of the later Vince Guaraldi “Peanuts” special soundtracks, and/or old Nick at Nite reruns. There was a “Nationwide” insurance commercial from a couple of years back that had the same, or a very similar instrument playing, I think.
My problem: I have no idea what kind of instrument this actually is. I’d guess that it’s some kind of metallic percussion instrument—maybe some kind of hammered dulcimer, or marimba? But this is so far from my area of familiarity that I can only say with confidence that I really don’t think it’s wind instrument. Probably.
But I actually have a semi-legitimate need to figure out what the devil that thing IS, and on my own I don’t have a better method of doing so besides looking up the name of every single possible musical instrument on wikipedia, and comparing sounds. Which is probably slightly inefficient.
So…can anyone here help me out in identifying this dulcet toned, probably bellbottom-wearing mystery device?
Modern folks will know it best from the Harry Potter theme music. I’m old enough to think of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” by Tchaikovsky. It is almost certainly a Celest - or an electric keyboard immitating one.
As long as we’re on the “What the Hell is that?” subject, in lots of Oater movies or Westerns, sometimes there will be a “rattlesnake” sound, a percussive rattle to indicate the hero is in a desert, and will soon be in deep trouble, seeing mirages on the horizon, or perhaps in a gunfight. What the hell is that?
(Or maybe Wurlitzer, played without digging in too hard.)
I say this as I long for the purity of the tone of the old Rhodes “Seventy Three” that I have sitting in a back room at my church, all packed up. Nobody but me knows what it really is, and everyone else wants to use modern keyboards at church.
The YouTube videos that demonstrate the Rhodes tone all seem to have reverb or chorus applied–the true tone is pure and bell-like in the upper register.
The vibraslap is a variation of the jawbone of a donkey, which is exactly that. The teeth rattle in their sockets when you hit it. Not exactly the same sound, but I could hear it being used in Westerns whenever a rattlesnake is encountered, or when some fiendish character confronts the hero, a sort of “death rattle” effect.
