►Regarding Walter Piston and two strange instruments

At university, we had a test in musical analysis last week, so I dedicated myself a little bit 😉 to studying for it.
As it mainly concerns analysis of orchestra music regarding instrumentation, timbre, articulation and so forth, some of us definitely needed some “upgrade” regarding knowledge in orchestration, so I started reading the book of Walter Piston.

This gentleman, who lived from 1894 until 1976 was a notable american composer, music theorist and professor at Harvard University, one of his students was Leonard Bernstein.
Very interesting and very well written, doesn’t leave out the smallest detail and all very easy to understand.
What I couldn’t resist, was to write about a quite unknown instrument he presented in the family of winds, I found really curious and had never heard of before:

The Sarrusophone

Sarrusophone
(Author Matthias Kabel)

It is a large transposing brass instrument played with a double reed mouthpiece like the bassoon.
It existed in various sizes, but the most common was the Eb version.
Having a strange sound, it was only very rarely used in classical music with some exceptions and seems to have been “forgotten”, although there’s a rumour of having been played by a Jazz virtuoso who later denied it… Read the full story on Wikipedia.

Now listen to a demonstration, it really sounds weird, I don’t like it 😛



Having scared you this weird “metal beast”, now it’s time for another strange instrument, altough much prettier and with a much nicer sound and also quite a little more common:

The Sousaphone

sousaphone
(In: rayfrenshamworld)

Click here to read the story about it, one could say it is a tuba in portable format.

Or should I say a mobile tuba? No, it doesn’t have Wi-Fi ahahaha 😛

Listen to it being played solo:

 

►The Squirrel got himself a Blog!

Hey!

Well, decided to get myself a Blog, so I can more easily share my thoughts, insights and ideias about music, my life and my work, but also news about my project – Jammin Squirrel Productions.

Some odd days you might even encounter totally non-related topics, possibly some funny experiences, rants about society, technology news (mostly music related but not only), perhaps some photos, interesting links, or maybe even some useless yadda-yadda (though I promise to keep that at absolute minimum levels)…

So I invite you to become my follower, by subscribing to this blog (you find a little form in the left sidebar enabling you to receive updates by email or subscribe to the RSS feed or by Google Friend Connect).

Btw, I’m thinking about creating a Links section, too, so if you’re part of the Blogosphere, writing about anything related to music and are interested in link exchange, let me know by commenting here and following my blog, I’ll make sure to follow back and add your link as soon as I open this section (will be in left sidebar).