Have An Unused DIY Instrument? Send It On Tour With [Imogen Heap]

goofys a dog and plutos a dog but goofy can talk whaaa

[Imogen Heap] is well-known for performing with DIY and cobbled-together instruments, and now she’s teaming up with another famous DIY instrument musician for a world tour. That’s the cool part, now here’s the awesome part: they want to take your DIY musical instrument on tour for a scrapyard symphony.

Both [Imogen] and [Leafcutter] are semi-regular Hackaday features, with [Leafcutter] building hydrophones and [Imogen] doing some crazy stuff turning gestures into music. They’re both known for their strange and esoteric sounds that sends Rolling Stone writers scrambling for a thesaurus, and now they want your disused or discarded music machines to use live on their world tour.

The team is looking for video submissions of any musical creatures you’d like to send around the world. The only real guideline on what they’re looking for is, ‘the weirder the better’, with an apparent slight emphasis on physical machines over the purely electronic.

Video of the duo below.

15 thoughts on “Have An Unused DIY Instrument? Send It On Tour With [Imogen Heap]

      1. That’s your opinion and I respect you for it, but I feel the need to remark that the purpose of the post was to look for weird and unusual instruments, and they are rarely used in more serious genre, so it is to be expected (as I’m sure you must’ve already know) to see cirquesque acts. Either way, the point in case was to propose and/or inspire with such instruments, and in that aspect, the sheer creativity and originality is, in my opinion, brilliant.

        1. Perhaps I should have elaborated on this a bit further. I do not dislike alternative forms of music or instruments at all. Besides being train in “normal” instruments like piano, guitar and various percussion instruments, I also like more “unconventional” instruments like my beloved Moog theremin. Using home-made stomp-boxes and percussion instruments from beer-caps also isn’t beyond me.

          I just do not think that putting “anything-that-makes-a-noise” into a clavier like equal temperament tuning makes for something brilliant, just something obscenely superficial in this case.

          It’s really gimmicky and not really new, so I don’t think that an original and radical experimenter like Imogen Heap has any business for a fart-piano of a belch-organ.

          I would not even consider Blue Man Group, but compared to this video, those guys are pushing the envelope…

      2. @voxnulla
        Oh no, music that isn’t *serious.* God forbid any frivolity be allowed into this solemn and ceremonious art form.

        I bet you’re fun at parties.

    1. Indeed, musical creatures are sometimes like that. Choosing the path of least resistance, sticking with the boring talentless hack that build them rather than going to make a proper musical statement with artists who actually work at it and are successful.

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