@mykie grabs ear muffs. LoL 🎻🤣

Oh and happy birthday.

@skyfire747 @mykie
Should have got a viole de gamba

Fiddle with frets strung like a guitar 🎸

If guitarist knew this, there would probably be a lot more players
#EarlyMusic

@AccordionBruce @skyfire747 @mykie

the fretless part isn't the part i struggled with. it's getting a clean, non-screechy tone with the bow. you have a beginning violinist's tone inches from your right ear. it's quite loud. :)

@paul_ipv6 @skyfire747 @mykie
Need a Cécilium

Lute-shaped reed organ from the 1860s

With a mechanical “bow” on the front that simply moved an internal bellows back and forth

A beautiful fingerboard of tiny buttons on the neck triggers a web of valved reeds inside 🎻 ⚙️ 🪗
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/504434
#EarlyMusic? 😹 #accordion #ClassicalMusic

@AccordionBruce @skyfire747 @mykie

i keep thinking about getting a hurdy gurdy. crank wheel instead of a bow, keyboard instead of frets, but effectively a hardanger fiddle in a box.

@paul_ipv6 @skyfire747 @mykie
Hurdy gurdy seems the most unlikely early instrument

They were really hurting for sounds!

I’d like to see someone pull out and play a portative organ someday

Actually #EarlyMusic I think
#organ #ClassicalMusic #Medieval

@AccordionBruce @paul_ipv6 @skyfire747 @mykie

I think the hurdy gurdy is a masterpiece. And I mean that literally. If you encounter odd medieval or renaissance instruments, there is usually a clear objective which seems technical rather than musical. Like the rackett, the krummhorn and the tromba marina. I cannot prove this theory, but I gave a talk about it at @why2025camp . You can see the talk at https://media.ccc.de/v/why2025-18-reinventing-woodwind-instuments .

When I look at a hurdy gurdy, I see a master giving the assignment of creating a stringed version of a bagpipe, like the tromba marina is a stringed version of a trumpet. That is also why they share details. The "buzzing foot" of the hurdy gurdy drone strings is there to mimic the reed of the bagpipe drone. In bagpipes, the reed is clearly audible because of the low tuning of them. In both cases it also allows silencing: you can pop the single tube reed to silence a drone and use the buzzing foot to keep the string away from the disk.

For the chanter (the melody pipe), the notes are higher and a bow will suffice, and the wooden disk is a bow which mimics the continuous airflow made possible by the bag.

In other words: the hurdy gurdy is a great exam piece. It is also easier to tune and maintain, and does not smell. And it is easier to make and cheaper than a portative organ. I think those are the reasons the hurdy gurdy survived as an instrument after the first instrument builder graduated on it.

@molenaar @AccordionBruce @skyfire747 @mykie @why2025camp

totally agree on hurdy gurdy. the two biggest technical challenges to playing a violin are left hand intonation and right hand bowing. the hurdy gurdy solves both, along with the volume that drone strings add. lots more folks at the dance can play one.

the rackett is also quite a feat of engineering. you get the low end bass of a bassoon in a much more portable format and using much less wood. plus, you can call it "the holy hand grenade". :)

do have to say that i've never been a krumhorn fan. sounds too much like a kazoo and very short total pitch range.

thanks for the video link; i'll check that out!

@paul_ipv6 @molenaar @skyfire747 @mykie @why2025camp
Through my #AccordionRevolution history project, over and over new technology drove shifts in instrumentation more than audiences taste or “desire to hear new things”

Musicians want to be heard and get paid (or the equivalent 🥖)

So whatever made the music 1. Easier to play, 2. Louder, and 3. Cheaper, almost always “caught on with audiences”

@paul_ipv6 @molenaar @skyfire747 @mykie @why2025camp
Maybe it’s similar for many big hits

But the #accordion got this on the way up and then while plummeting from popularity

By the 1860s squeezeboxes had gotten cheap, they were loud and so easy to play harpists were dying out in #Ireland, and pipers and fiddlers were emigrating to America for work

It didn’t help that anti-jazz racists outlawed #FolkDancing, killing their own culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Dance_Halls_Act_1935
#FolkMusic

@paul_ipv6 @molenaar @skyfire747 @mykie @why2025camp
And Paris only averted a gang war when the best young Italian immigrant accordionist married the best elder piper’s daughter 💕

If I could make an #accordion themed “based on a true story!” historical romance movie it’d be this one☝️

Can’t believe there isn’t one already

Leading to the French “musette” accordeón style, named after the goat-skin bag (often with head attached) they made the bagpipes out of 🪗 🐐

@paul_ipv6 @molenaar @skyfire747 @mykie @why2025camp
Then of course one century later electrical amplification changed everything ⚡️

Other instruments were louder, cheaper and arguably easier to play — well enough to fill a room and get paid anyway
🥁 🎹 🎤