Meet the Instruments

Nicknames: Dustbucket, Old Scratch

Species: Hammond L-102 organ

Origin: Purchased for forty bucks from my brother in law

Advantages: As the one true original additive synthesizer, a primo addition to any electronic musician's collection. We even discovered among S's inherited stuff from her mom a book of drawbar patches for Hammonds. Plus its tone generators, an arcane antique lovechild of a guitar pickup and a wheel-o, are a hoot for any technophiliac.

Disadvantages: I don't really play organ. Nobody I know plays organ except Serni the jazz guy who occasionally comes in and relives his teenage years rocking out on Green Eyed Lady. The poor thing is disconsolate for days afterwards.

Principal use: Wasting floorspace.

Nicknames: DP, #$%^$%#

Species: Digital audio sequencing software application

Origin: Donated by a dear friend who upgraded to OS X.

Advantages: Audio control beyond the wildest dreams of {insert favorite sixties producer here}

Disadvantages: Two words: learning curve

Principal use: Conquering the music world with my latest chart-topping smash hit produced entirely in the digital domain -- not. Not half shabby for semi-pro recording, tho.

Nicknames: Wonkawonka, Dylan Retainer

Species: Lee Oscar harmonica on neck rack

Origin: Material: the local music stores. Principle: a whole lotta old blues guys getting tired of the harp player never showing up for the gig.

Advantages: Be your own soloist. Be your own accompaniest. Get your mouth to do a little work for a change.

Disadvantages: One armed paperhangers have it easy.

Principal use: Causing yet more cognative dissonance in the audience by playing loopy jazz riffs to swing chords instead of the expected sub-Jesse Fuller/Bob Dylan wonk.

Nicknames: Flaptrap, piehole

Species: Oral aperture

Origin: Jes grew. My voice, on the other hand, required years of constant schooling via tape recorder to achieve anything remotely resembling timbre and consistent pitch.

Advantages: Voice is the most popular musical instrument. Nothing else in the sound department can substitute for a distinctive, well controlled, warmly emoted vocal.

Disadvantages: My voice is only so-so. My mouth, on the other hand...

Principal use: Singing nonsense syllables to guitar accompaniment as a substitute for growing an extra body.

Nicknames: Thaddie's Gameboy

Species: Roland Personal Musical Assistant

Origin: Traded cash and a drum machine for it at good ol' American Music on Fremont.

Advantages: When I was a lad in electronic music school, this was my fondest feverdream: a handheld device that records and plays sequenced music on a built-in synth module. More, it can make arrangements in about 100 styles out of chord arrangements, it's fully MIDI compatible and it's got the coolest brush-snare and standup bass sounds I've heard on any synth module in its price range.

Disadvantages: Eats batteries like heroin-laced candy.

Principal use: Just another specimen in my MIDI zoo, except when it gets to go on road trips (yay!).

Nicknames: The God Mic

Species: AKG 414 studio condenser microphone

Origin: Bought at a going-outta-biz sale by a musican/recordist. Got it perhaps 20% under market. Still worth the same.

Advantages: Instrument + microphone = new instrument. Instrument + very good microphone = very cool new instrument. Can be used for practically anything from a kick drum to a flute and hears everything.

Disadvantages: Some engineers find the 414 a little brittle and shrill on the high end, especially for vocals.

Principal use: Capturing and creatively reconstructing audio reality.

Nicknames: Natch, Blondie, The Board

Species: Cheap (actually, not so cheap) imitation Stratocaster by Epiphone by Gibson

Origin: Purchased for $100 at Al's Guitarville, my favorite guitar shop in all the world. Came with punky puny pickups that wouldn't shred damp tissue. Replaced them with a fat jazz neck and a screaming metal bridge. Disabled its nut-locking tremolo, which I don't use. Later added a MIDI guitar system.

Advantages: Makes versatile look specialized. Capable of playing anything from A to Zappa and most stops in between with the possible exception of Segovia, subject always to the skill of the operator.

Disadvantages: Too many choices.

Principal use: Anything.

Nicknames: Sticks

Species: Click Sticks (possibly Maori)

Origin: Legacy of my mother's extensive knicknack collection from around the world.. Not to be confused with Mexican claves.

Advantages: It doesn't get any simpler than this.

Disadvantages:Used in religious rituals. Not to be toyed with.

Principal use:Accompanying didjeridoo..

Nicknames: Ol' Ironguts

Species: Starr upright piano

Origin: Inherited from S's mother and grandmother, who spent the best parts of their lives playing church music on her until her felts were worn to a genteel perfection. Transported from the east coast in a utility trailer, she barely survived being bounced on her back by an untimely traffic maneuver and spent months and years in various storage lockers and basements before finally making it to our living room.

Advantages: It's a piano. What more do you need?

Disadvantages: Every time you move a piano, you lose at least one friend.

Principal use:Church music. She's experienced.

Nicknames: The Bengali Banjo

Species: Sitar

Origin: Languished in our favorite instrument repairperson's shop for several visits, after its owner died in mid-repair. Purchased for the price of said repair when deceased's spouse declined to redeem it. Languished in our storage locker several more years until I finally invested twice what I paid to get it properly set up. Now languishes on our wall (note dust).

Advantages: Just the words "My sitar teacher" give you unlimited clout with guitar players.

Disadvantages: Classical instrument -- if you start when you're five, you may be able to play it decently when you're 21.

Principal use:Clout, dust magnet.

Nicknames: The African Family, Gong, Aural Anemometer

Species: Windchimes

Origin: The obsidian chimes (background) are crafted by two dear friends from years of fairs. The largest ones were payment for playing their 20th anniversary party. The bamboo ones (foreground) are imports. Several together sound like a little marimba band.

Advantages: Powered by Mother Nature.

Disadvantages: Keep you awake on windy nights. O'course some people like that sort of thing.

Principal use:Ambient woowoo.

Nicknames: Didjiphone, Sewer Pipe

Species: Slide didj instrument

Origin: Constructed from ABS pipe and fixtures, plus a little beeswax for the mouthpiece. Erstwhile original design, though I've seen other slide didjes Named after our dear former President -- you don't inhale, you just blow it.

Advantages: Kickin' shock value.

Disadvantages: What the heck do you do with it?

Principal use: Prop in vaudeville routine about the origins of didgeridus from materials found in your indigenous environment. "My indigenous environment includes the plumbing department at Home Depot."

Nicknames: The Cute Thing

Species: Concertone banjo-ukulele

Origin: Received as a gift from our once and future drummer, Sally Cowan. She had owned it since a teen, and she had to give it to me twice before I'd take it.

Advantages: Tuned in 5ths like a mandolin, has the same range as a guitar. Plays old jazz with remarkable autheticity for an instrument made in 1950.

Disadvantages: Skin head + Pacific Northwest weather = the sags.

Principal use: Tradeoff instrument during Amber Tide shows (as contrast to the 12-string, trombone and gitarron).

Nicknames: Tinkerbell

Species: Jaymar toy piano.

Origin: Found in a thrift store for five measly dollars. Such a deal!

Advantages: A true chromatic instrument in excelllent intonation that can equally play The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies or Twelfth Street Rag -- and does.

Disadvantages: Can sound disturbingly like the Chuckie Cantata..

Principal use: Accompanying Uncle Pappy and his Funny Little Friends. Also, delighting visiting children.

Nicknames: (various) The Whale, the Dolphin, the Squealer

Species: Clay ocarinas by Clayzeness Whistle Works.

Origin: Received as gifts over years of playing at Pike Place Market, except the largest, which was custom commissioned.

Advantages: The sweetest sound this side of heaven.

Disadvantages: Small ones can call dogs.

Principal use: In progress: a series of Leetle Weesle Orchestra recordings: The LWO Plays the Sex Pistols, The LWO Plays Themes from Great Video Games, etc.

Nicknames: Grampy

Species: Turn of the century mandolin, manufacturer unknown

Origin: Procured by my grandfather when he was in college, cir 1910 or so. After his death, my mother gave it to me -- with the stricture that I make beautiful music with it. I've tried.

Advantages: Keeps S's grandmother's piano company. They have a lot in common.

Disadvantages: So old it's a little scary to play. But I do.

Principal use: Making beautiful music.

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Nicknames: Tea Girl, Dweeeeep

Species: Whistling tea kettle

Origin: Acquired at a pirate gift exchange at a Christmas party a random neighbor invited us to. One of the coolest gifts we've ever gotten.

Advantages: A musical instrument that makes tea -- or, conversely, a kitchen utensil that makes music. You decide.

Disadvantages: Steam powered, only one note. Or are those actually disadvantages?

Principal use: Making tea, cheerfully.

Nicknames: Li'l Bleater

Species: Sruti box

Origin: One of the few instruments I've ever purchased simply because I could, during a sudden gust of income last year. A small, keyless cousin of the harmonium, used in religious songs. Almost immediately S, recognizing its infirmity-friendliness, began playing it in shows, thus proving that there's no such thing as a useless instrument, even if you go looking for one.

Advantages: Drone instrument that can be played with one foot, instigating the One Initiate Love Orchestra.

Disadvantages: Combines the least desirable features of a bagpipe and an accordion.

Principal use: Solo ensembles, acoustic psychedelic noodlefests.

Nicknames: Mi Chiquita, Big Girl, Mine is Bigger Than Yours

Species: Guitarron

Origin: Ten or more years gone, a friend in Portland (now sadly deceased) showed me a guitarron he'd borrowed from an instrument repairing acquaintence. It had a trick bridge and orchestra strings. It had that sound, the standup jazz bass bump. Immediately I coveted it. Last year I spotted this beauty, complete with that sound, used in a sleazy corporate music store. I upchucked the entirety of the guitar jar and brought it home. A week later the store called and asked if I wanted a hardshell case with that? Did I not. S calls it the rocket launcher.

Advantages: A string bass you can hang on the wall or carry one-handed? What's not to love?

Disadvantages: Occasionally precipitates cognitive dissonance in the audience -- from appearance, I should be playing mariachi in a brocaded uniform and sombrero, but by the sound I should be hunched in a corner in a smokey (never mind what kind of smoke) coffee house with a beret and shades and soul patch.

Principal use: Coolness (*finger snaps*). Like, coolness, man...

Nicknames: Oom, Pah, the Hulk, BWAHAHAHAHA!

Species: Eb sousaphone of indeterminate manufacture

Origin: I first met Sri Oompah, the beloved chattel of one Rico Kempe, on the streets of Portland Oregon in the mid 70's as a participant in an irregular trad jazz band. At that time he had a case which the they used as a tip basket, exhorting the crowd to feed the giant clam. I played with the band for several years and brought Rico and Oompah to the Oregon Country Fair in 1976 for the second iteration of the Circus there. I lost touch with Boy and Brass after I got married, encountering them again in the early 80's when I borrowed Ooompah for the original El Mosquito Orchestra recordings. Several years after that, I came back to discover Rico using Oompah as a garden ornament, mouthpiece in storage to prevent children from instigating distressing disturbances. Rico willingly donated his prodigious toy to my own nefarious purposes. And the rest, as they say, is history. How little they know.

Advantages: Smaller, lighter version of the supreme outdoor bass instrument. No parade complete without it. Beat-up enough to be immune to minor damage. Duct-tape and chickenwire repairs inspire universal merriment.

Disadvantages: Can cause permanent skeletal damage.

Principal use: Putting the bottom on everything else. Also useful for terrorizing and/or engulfing children and small animals.

Nicknames: Bertha, Heavy Metal, Dying Cow

Species: Olds concert bass trombone

Origin: My most antique possession, accompanying me since I was 13.

Advantages: Loud. Very loud. Very very loud.

"In my opinion, the trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments, which I have named the 'epic' one. It possesses nobility and grandeur to the highest degree; it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. Directed by the will of the master, the trombones can chant like a choir of priests, threaten, utter gloomy sighs, a mournful lament, or a bright hymn of glory; they can break forth into awe-inspiring cries and awaken the dead or doom the living with their fearful voices."--Hector Berlioz

Did I mention it was loud?

Disadvantages: You can't valve-flap a slide.

Principal use: Surprisingly versatile -- like ketchup, it goes good on almost everything. Can perform both lead and bass accompaniment. Plus, of course, it gets attention on the street. Because it's LOUD.

Nicknames: Unk, beatbox, good ol' six-more-reasons -not-to-play-the- next-song-yet

Species: Sigma 12 string guitar

Origin: Purchased sometime in the last decade at Al's Guitarville after my previous 12-string Homer fell completely apart after ten hard years of service.

Advantages: Cheap enough to play on the street, solid wood top gives it a modicum of tone.

Disadvantages: No resale value (even less since it fell off the roof rack at 60 mph).

Principal use: Bashing out every song under the sun (literally), mostly at relativistic velocities.