Musical Instruments: Pikasso Guitar
Source: This Fab Trek
Another “world’s first”, this particular guitar convenes Pablo Picasso’s cubist perspective with the music world. Luthier Linda Manzer created the Pikasso Guitar after jazz guitarist Pat Metheny challenged her to design an instrument with “as many strings as possible”. The result is an astounding 42-stringed work of genius with four twisting necks that wouldn’t be out of place in a modern art museum.
Source: Manzer
Taking two years to build, the inspired instrument weighs 6.7 kilograms and combines the beauty of ebony fingerboards, mahogany necks and delicately designed decorative trim for the ultimate stringed instrument.
The Laser Harp
Source: WordPress
When thinking of harps, images of delicately carved golden instruments being plucked by rosy-cheeked cherubs—not lasers—often come to mind. Meet the laser harp. Also known as the ‘Infinite Beam’, the laser harp is created by splitting a single laser into several parallel beams which are then connected to a synthesizer.
Source: Greg Rybczynski
The laser harp has been making a comeback after it rocketed to fame in the 80s with techno artist Jean Michel Jarre. Some skeptics have tried to debunk the laser harp as a hoax, but a mystery malfunction during one of Jarre’s concerts quickly put that idea to rest.
Aside from providing a spectacular light show, this harp iteration has a made a pretty successful transition to the electronica genre, and the Michael Jackson style gloves that protect the user’s hands from being fried by the beams have become just as iconic.
Weird Musical Instruments: Singing Ringing Tree
Source: Tonkin Liu
The last thing you’d expect to hear when wandering through the English countryside is a musical tree howling to the wind. That is, unless you’re traipsing about Lancashire’s Pennine Hills. Wind powered and made from three meter tall galvanized steel pipes, the Singing Ringing Tree sculpture was designed in 2006 as part of an art regeneration project called Panopticons.
Source: Tonkin Liu
The tree’s pipes were structured and tuned so that when wind whistles through them, the tree sings across a range of several octaves. Aside from winning an architectural excellence prize, the tree is one of the world’s most mind boggling—and creepy sounding—musical instruments.
The Vegetable Orchestra
Source: Blogspot
Grocery shopping can be a bit of a chore, but for a group of eccentric entertainers in Vienna, it’s an excuse to stock up on some new and weird musical instruments. The Vegetable Orchestra works exactly as it sounds: they make instruments from whatever vegetables they can get their hands on, and after they’ve finished playing them, they turn them into soup for the audience.
Source: Festival Musica
Harnessing one of the most unique sounds in the universe, the groovy grocers have no musical boundaries and have played on everything from parsnip flutes to pumpkin bongos.
In fact, so popular are their creative concerts that they’ve played in concert halls across the world from the heights of Hong Kong to the halls of Huddersfield. Just don’t expect an encore after the soup’s been served.
