What's your favorite instrument that really gets through to you?
What's your favorite instrument that really gets through to you?
Mine's a bit of a strange one...
Music box/celeste
🧚♂️
a hurdy gurdy
A trumpet properly played cuts directly to that bittersweet, blue part of my soul.
French horn, for sure. You'd be surprised at just how prevalent it is in music.
Electric guitar, preferably with heavy distortion. Louder := better.
No but seriously I love heavy music so much. It's fun to listen to, fun to play, and it's just had a positive impact on my life. If you want to really tug on my blackened heartstrings, you gotta do it through distortion, preferably an HM-2, in as low a tuning as your guitar can handle.
Bass is so fun
Pipe Organ. The only instrument with the versatility of an orchestra at your fingertips. It can make the room shake or fill it with quiet whispers.
Sadly, Churches are one of the few places, in the US at least, where you can hear the organ regularly. Ones that can afford to maintain such a large instrument and pay an organist.
A Kora! It's an African instrument that is considered a guitar harp, with 21 strings ranging from the size of bass guitar string to fishing wire. The way it is played allows you to play the bass, lead, and rhythm at the same time. Here is a short example of a master kora player Toumani Diabate showcasing the instrument: https://youtu.be/8luhdxS2KuM?si=llpa2YVyIOf77_Nd
As a guitarist I found this guy who transcribed Toumani's work onto a classical guitar, very interesting listen https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=55QnOlXckOk
My other thing would be trippy out there instruments that seem to put you in a different state of mind like the Yaybahar or "The Beam" that the grateful dead likes to break out sometimes
Yaybahar example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_aY6TxC1ojA&pp=ygUWeWVoYWJhciBhdCBpbnN0cnVtZW50IA%3D%3D
The Beam example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0h8o-1IQ5G0&pp=ygUSZ3JhdGVmdWwgZGVhZCBiZWFt
otamatone
Clarinets. Absolutely love those when played right.
Piano! Call me basic, I do not care! Versatile, beautiful, fun to play. I could talk for hours about it.
I really appreciate strings in general, but no instrument can emotionally move me like the violin. A melancholic violin section in an already sad song is a surefire way to make me tear up. I've never been very good at playing any instrument, but I've been tempted to pick up the violin to see if it feels as good to play as it does to hear.
Pedal Steel. First time I saw one played live was at a Bright Eyes show when I was in high school. I know they’ve been around for a long time and are prominent in country music, but watching and hearing it played in person just blew me away. I feel like the instrument conveys so much emotion in its sound
Drums, but I may be slightly biased because I play them
A large Casavant. Any pipe organ really, but a large one with tones below the human hearing threshold really hit hard in person. They give me nonstop frisson. Almost can’t handle it, and tears stream down my face the whole time, but not from sadness; just a physiological reaction.
The sitar!
If it's got strings, it's good. This includes piano.
Hammond organ
synths, especially when using longer stretched out notes like in Kavinsky's Outsider
A mandolin.
A lot of my instrumentation works on LVDTs, and I think they are pretty neat anyway. Great for position sensing.
Most instruments played well grips my heart and holds. But steelpan. People see it as something carnival something something, but it fits well for a surprisingly wide span of music! The power of the bass pans in death metal as much as the "synthiness" in a melody from some NES game, it fits!
The instrument I want to learn to play (but have no reason to do so) is the hammered dulcimer.
The instrument that most makes me perk up when I hear it in a song is the bass (or contrabass) saxophone.
Vibraphone
Very cool too and vaguely consistent with my other picks. They're all metallic percussive keyboard type instruments involving mallets to some extent
Edit: Metallophones seem to be my sweet spot, in terms of instrument category
Only the scalpel gets through to me, because I don't believe in acupuncture.
:-)
It's simple, piano. It's funny, I've trying to learn this instrument since back when my late father bought one, yet I still can't play one.
I'm going with the Mellotron.
It's a keyboard that uses strings of tapes for each note. It pulls the tape over a head and plays that note until the tape runs out. When you're playing fast, sometimes the tape isn't all the way down, so it makes everything sound super custom.
Think Strawberry Fields by the Beatles. That's a Mellotron you're hearing.
For anyone looking to get into brass instruments, this is a great example of how a horn can be made to sing. It’s the first time I had ever heard someone put their soul into a horn.
To be clear, this isn’t something a novice can play. The notes he’s hitting are hard.
The Theremin and not just weird sci-fi/horror way of playing it. It can be a real instrument if it is played in a way that treats it as such.
As a musician the Monome Norns raspberry pi shield and lines community has been inspiring me a lot lately. It's a FOSS "sound computer" that can take on hundreds of uses.
Harpsichord. Below the streets of St Paul in (that) London.
If you know, you know.
Agree on music box. For me, it's also violins.
obsidian scalpel
My oma played a zither so I give that a mention for another thing I’ve not heard in nearly 30 years.
But, my serious go to for relaxation is the erhu. I’m surprised that hasn’t had a mention.
Uilleann Pipes
As heard on Bryan Adams, When You Love Someone.
Ronroco!
Synth.
Fight me.
The tekerő. It's the Hungarian version of the hurdy-gurdy.
Hard for me to choose just one. I love these three instruments because they are so peaceful and calm. Though people do use them to do covers of heavier music as well.
The Guzheng is a 21-26 string zither instrument. I love Zithers in general. There are many types from different countries.
The Guquin is a 7 string instrument.
The Erhu is a 2 string instrument. Part of the huquin instrument family.
The warm tone of an EP, mostly used in jazz and fusion. Second would be a distorted synth lead, like Derek Sherinian’s signature lead sound.
I can play this one and doing so has always felt pleasant.
Synth
Ukulele. It's so easy to play, C is just one string! And they're small enough to take in your carry on if you travel. I own 5...
(Recommend skipping to about 1:45.)