Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones: Experimental Musical Instruments

by Bart Hopkin

Book about experimental music instruments

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

96 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1996

Reviews

[Djll · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can you not love this collection of professional loonies and their fantastical noisemaking contraptions? Bart Hopkin deserves a Nobel Prize. Be sure to seek out the edition with the CD!!!

[Alicia Belle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found at a garage sale with accompanying CD for $10.., score. Bart Hopkin is fantastic, my fav song from the CD at the moment attached here

https://soundcloud.com/user-311843827...

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an outlandish tour! This book goes even farther than I suspected it would, including not only fire, water, air, earth, and electronic instruments, not only vehicular instruments, air cushion, and hat instruments, but instruments of sculptural beauty in and of themselves, among them wood and metal squares I barely would have guessed would be instrumental. Conceptual varieties are present that are very clever, including a fretted bow for articulating multiple notes, a round device capable of sustaining indefinitely long tones in its rotation, and a set of electronic wands programmable to respond to position, velocity, and acceleration. It featured instruments mostly of contemporary people from the Western world, but also a few historical musicians. The companion CD has a good selection from startling to soothing to swinging, ending with a hilarious and charming rendition of New York, New York on a car horn organ. The writing has a friendly, scholarly, and slightly dry tone that takes the music seriously but with a bit of dry humor, contextualizing the music in a sympathetic and respectful manner.

I have borrowed this volume from a good friend and appreciate it.

[Donovan Foote · Rating 2 out of 5]

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture — some people say Frank Zappa said that, but nobody wants to take credit, officially… I think that's true about so-so music writing. This book references the companion CD in every write-up, so it seems to me that it should be included with the book. It's not, but there is the internet. Tom Waits introduction is the most interesting part of this book as far as the writing is concerned, but the rest of the book is a whole lot of dancing about architecture.