Haymes calls himself a “utility infielder” in Ramblin Jug Stompers, responsible for many of the unusual sounds that don’t come from the typical stringed instruments in acoustic bands. At the band’s ...

Since the first of our ancestors discovered that banging a stick on a hollow log makes a jolly sound, we hominids have been finding new and unusual ways to make music. We haven’t come close to tapping ...

Stacy Tenenbaum’s film Pipe Dreams features four young organ players competing in the prestigious Canadian International Organ Competition, held every few years in Montreal. What’s striking is that ...

Musical innovation and uniqueness is what tends to set great artists apart from their contemporaries. Especially when it comes to the use of creative, unorthodox, or perhaps odd, instruments. Or ...

What’s the strangest musical instrument? How about the sackbut, the glass armonica, the theremin, the ondes martenot, or the Telharmonium, Trautonium, or Badgermin? What’s the strangest musical ...

Duck herders in Java have been using a traditional large bamboo object called a kowangan to protect themselves against the rain. The kowangan can be worn as a hat or be placed on the ground as a ...

Musical instruments are not always the first thing that comes to mind when you think of architecture, but they are often embedded into landmark buildings. This month, several other unique instruments ...

Music has a funny way of surprising us. Sometimes it's not the guitar solo or the vocal runs that stick with you. You know the ones. The tracks where you pause and think, what is that? That little ...

The slides and bells from about a dozen trombones are stacked like cordwood in the wall sculpture “Seussaphone.” Tarnished parts of old cornets, trombones and other instruments are built onto an old ...