Instruments that are Overlooked and/or have Bad Reputation

You'd think the bass anything would get the ladies. Just that rich, deep, funky (at times) sound. There is a reason Barry White's music is synonymous with sexytimes.

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

Seemingly, they'll only enjoy certain types of bass.

What of the tuba? Or bassoon?

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Careful what you say about old drum machines; Roland TR-808 and TR-909 fans can be quite a rabid bunch thanks to the ubiquity of those models in early house, trance, techno, etc. recordings.

Personally, I don't think drum machines are inherently worse than an actual drum kit, provided it suits the music; for example, in most subgenres of electronic music, a mechanical-sounding rhythm section will usually sound right at home. On the other hand, in rock bands, you'll usually want a real drummer for a number of reasons.

Of course, when C Ds and digital recording were new, there were a lot of weird trends in audio production since people weren't accustomed to using this newfangled technology, so thankfully things like gated reverb (aka: that trend in the 80s to record actual drums and somehow make them sound like a drum machine). And, while there are definitely some annoying production trends these days (see: Loudness War), digital recording has thankfully come a long way since then.

Hmm. Not the bagpipes as such, which come from and are played in a lot of different cultures, but the specific Scottish version, the "Great Highland Bagpipes". In the hands of a player who isn't as skilled as he or she could be, they sound like strangled cats. In the hands of one who is on the ball, they are peerless instruments of musical dominance. In the hands of one who is touched by gods, they can even stop enemy soldiers shooting at the player in the middle of one of the hardest fought battles of all time.

C.F this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Millin

Organ in general. Always gets associated with church music but it's really quite a versatile and beautiful instrument in my opinion...

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

Billy Preston is the man.

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

On that same note, the hurdy-gurdy

"I could eat a knob at night" - Karl Pilkington

The clavioline. I'm not sure of the extent to which it was used in music, but I like the sound of it (also the name is cool, which doesn't hurt).

There were numerous variations on/knockoffs of that instrument: the Ondioline, the Pianoline (the only one with a full-sized keyboard) and the Orcheoline.

Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883!

That the same instrument used in Del Shannon's "Runaway"?

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

That's actually a Musitron, one of the first synthesizers ever made.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Interesting. I should look into that. Really like the sounds of early synthesizers.

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

The bandurria and laud. Both descended from the lute, just like the mandolin, and with a similar sound too. Then there's the octavina, with the same range as the laud, but with a guitar-shaped body.

The Pikasso 42-string guitar.

…How does that thing even work? ò.Ô Somehow the chord he makes on the neck affects strings that aren't even connected to the neck…

Flippé de participer à ce grand souper, je veux juste m'occuper de taper mon propre tempo.

x11 I do agree with the Organ some of my favorite bands like Deep Purple and Rainbow use/used an Organ sometimes people confused the Organ part for a Guitar.

Batman Ninja more like Batman's Bizarre Adventure

It's like a really extreme version of a harp guitar. Matter of fact, when you search for "harp guitar", a photo of this one appears on the first results.

I'd really like to see what Andy Mc Kee would do with it.

I'd vote for some of Peter Schickele's joke instruments, wielded in the "music" of P.D.Q. Bach. Obviously, some of them have extremely limited ranges or insurmountable technical issues (no point in composing for the musical hardart, lasso d'amore, or pastaphone), but I sometimes wonder if the tromboon could be deployed in an artistically worthwhile way.

"She was the kind of dame they write similes about." —Pterodactyl Jones

So apparently you can play guitar with a drumstick.

… No, really.

I just tried to listen to a PDQ Bach concert… that's peculiar.

Flippé de participer à ce grand souper, je veux juste m'occuper de taper mon propre tempo.

Yeah, I've seen Sonic Youth play guitar with drumsticks fairly often. Of course, they're probably the most popular noise rock band, so they're known for doing crazy stuff with noise/feedback, putting things like screwdrivers behind their strings, and so on.

Speaking of guitars, I kind of wonder why we (or at least I) don't tend to hear tenor or baritone guitars that often.

The tenor guitar is rare because it was really only popular with tenor banjoists who wanted to learn guitar to get with new trends in music but didn't want to learn a whole new system of playing an instrument.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

The 'playing guitar with drumsticks' thing was done by a No Wave band that influenced Sonic Youth, iirc.

I'd say, Sonic Youth was probably just the first band that came to mind for me because they're the most popular band I know of that did that fairly regularly.

You think that's interesting, wait till you hear about funk fingers.

They grew out of a Peter Gabriel song, when bassist Tony Levin let drummer Jerry Marotta drum on his bass sticks. The end result was the bassline to this.

The possum is a potential perpetrator; he did place possum poo in the plum pot.

The drumitar is just an electronic drum kit made in the shape of a guitar, but it's cool just for the fact that it gives the drummer a chance to dance around with everybody else. Futureman plays his with his fingers, but I'm sure you could still use drum sticks if you wanted.