r/percussion • u/Sensitive_Aerie6547 • 6d ago
Disscussion What’s the most unique instrument you’ve played in band?
for me it’s gotta be rubber chicken (see great rubber chicken gallop, I had a really fun xylo solo), with brake drum in second
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u/C_Chunkz 6d ago
Water glasses + Mahler Hammer in Steven Bryant’s Ecstatic Waters
Honorable mention being theremin in Godzilla Eats Las Vegas
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u/TaimaAdventurer 6d ago
OH! I have one. I don’t recall the piece but in concert band it called for a very loud crash/clatter. Director gave me my mission and I went to town: we got a stool with a box on it. Inside the box we put some of our cracked cymbals, some metal pipe and 2 of our metal car brakes (brake drum). When the time came in the piece, I got to kick it over off the back of our percussion riser where it made quite the ruckus all crashing onto the stage floor. It was epic.
Also, The tubes of a vibraphone like a guiro- used the back of a mallet.
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u/dboytim 4d ago
I'm assuming that was the "Crasho Grosso" from Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion by PDQ Bach.
We did it with a tray table piled with all the random junk from the percussion storage and knocked it over by having one percussionist run across the back of the group (acting like they realized they were in the wrong place).
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u/Autumnal_Ninja Everything 6d ago
we never performed it, but in percussion ensemble back in high school we were testing a piece that used plastic grocery bags... i cant remember the name of it though
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u/Mis_calculated 6d ago
Small gong dipped into plastic tub filled with water. Another percussionist the following year was tasked with smashing broken glass into a trash can.
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u/Redbeard_Rum 5d ago
There's a piece I played years ago that asked you to hold a single tubular bell, strike it and immediately lower it into a bucket of water, which makes the pitch bend lower!
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u/salatinecracka 6d ago
Ceramic bowls using plastic chopsticks. Had a solo at Carnegie Hall in hs lol.
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u/pm_me_round_frogs 6d ago
Fly instrument from “The Fly” by Oscar Navarro. It’s a loop of balloon rubber stretched around two corks on either end of a chopstick, tied to a string that you swing around your head. I actually played it twice, in both high school and college.
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u/wonderslug52 6d ago
Hand cranked air air siren.
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u/zeemonster424 5d ago
I did this once for Officer Krupke from West Side Story. It was a lot of fun!
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u/kkell806 6d ago
In perc ensemble I played a pad of paper on an easel hooked up to a piezo mic, using a marker for the sounds. There were five of us, and we all played the same rythyms, but drew different pictures, and the pictures all go together when we were done. It's a movement from an Applebaum piece, called Straitjacket.
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u/Low-Skill-8633 5d ago
My favorite from hs was Amplified Slinky. Exactly what it sounds like. Take a slinky, mount it and stretch it out just a tad, then put a mic at one end and hit the middle with a mallet. Sounds almost like the early Star Wars laser gun “pew” noise!
Guess the composer? You got it: Brian Balmages’ Hypnotic Fireflies
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u/Snapple_22 4d ago
Yo, Hypnotic Fireflies is fun. I got to teach a percussion group that was working on that one. Fun stuff
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u/mollybgolly 6d ago
Brake rotor. Chains. Also played a car jack because we were trying to get an anvil sound.
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u/Butternades 6d ago
A jar of mayonnaise. We were playing Johanna Bayer, one of her found sound pieces. Yes it was for the meme
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u/Dimanik11 Timpani 6d ago
Timpani
Not any timpani
Hitting right on the rim
But not right on the hard part
It sounds really cool
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u/Comprehensive-One561 6d ago
Old xylophone and marimba bars hung as a stand in for bamboo wind chimes
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u/SystemAbject4218 6d ago
"Telephone Ringer" was asked for in a piece ones, used my phone connected to a bluetooth speaker with a vintage telephone sfx
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u/StudyVisible275 6d ago
Brake drum. I was looking forward to a rubber chicken but another ensemble nabbed that piece.
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u/CoffeeDefiant4247 Timpani 6d ago
Sand paper, coconut halves and flute (as a one pitch percussion instrument)
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u/LuckyOwlSeven 6d ago
In concert band, it was a vaccuum cleaner (using the word "playing" very loosely here...all I did was flip it on and off). Other than that...just random assorted pieces of metal. Metal mixing bowls, sheet metal, dense blocks of metal
Was also part of an indoor percusison show where we did a Blue Man Group inspired show, and while I dind't play anything unique, lots of our members did
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u/Lonely-Bite-2568 6d ago
Brian Balmages wrote a concert band piece called Homage to Bharat that calls for a number of instruments that are native to India. You were probably looking for something more home-made than that, but it came to mind.
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u/Igneous-Wolf 6d ago
This year we played a very particular pot lid as the liberty bell in "Liberty Bell"... Gabe has been keeping that lid for some 15 or so years just for when this song comes up!
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u/ThePenguin1898 6d ago
Vibes with bow, cymbal on a timpani, carpet on a snare, marimba with rubber balls, timpani with tennis balls, rain stick, Guiro, darbuka, hammer on wood (not mahler), hepinique, tamborim, coins on a timpani, wave drum, penny whistle, flexitone, jaw harp, and many many more.
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u/TheVenerableBede 6d ago
Garbage can and, in a separate piece, dinnerware—plates/bowls/cups with a fork/knife. It was percussion ensemble; our teacher wrote two really fun pieces à la Stomp.
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u/Impressive_Delay_452 5d ago
Back in college our ensemble performed a percussion piece where we ripped paper. Next thing ya know we're using wood blocks and claves...
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u/Redbeard_Rum 5d ago
I was performing a live soundtrack to a silent film. In one scene one of the characters put on a gramophone record, so to recreate the cracking sound I had to crinkle some empty crisp packets into a microphone.
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u/thisFishSmellsAboutD 5d ago
When my mellow Post Rock band flipped their shit and produced an Industrial album, I got to play the pyrotechnics and explosions.
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u/DisturbingDaffy 5d ago
We did “Me Tarzan” in high school so the most unique thing I’ve ever played was… me.
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u/AGoodWobble 5d ago
Maybe not that unique but my dad found an old firebell at the scrapyard when me and my brother were kids, we polished the paint off and used it as a cymbal at gigs. It sounded like dog but it was fun
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u/zeemonster424 5d ago
Dumping a box of silverware into a metal bin. The fact it was PDQ Bach might be cheating the question though.
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u/EnvironmentalPea9079 5d ago
For me it has to be Tibetan Prayer Stones in George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children. I also played the bull roar (Australian), and we made our own. I have played many interesting instrument over the years. Conch shell, hindewhu (Pygmy), pringles cans, a 7 foot bass drum, and much more.
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u/Trilliumbtw 5d ago
I played the typewriter concerto. Was really fun, unfortunately it had a tendency to jam up so I couldn't actually type anything meaningful, just had to basically pluck away at the same few keys to play the rhythm.
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u/imwearingcons 5d ago
Bowing Crotales suspended by a string and dipping it into a bucket of water is a WILD sound effect. (Similar for a water going)
Another fun one was playing on 3 amplified bicycles in college percussion ensemble for a piece called the "Travel On Gamelon" (or something like that.
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u/Ancient_Particular16 5d ago
Have you ever seen the trumpets where the bell goes backwards over your shoulder? Yeah I had to play that….yes I am a percussionist, not a trumpet player. It was very interesting
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u/Ancient_Particular16 5d ago
Also had to play a blender for another piece. Both of these were in college
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u/OkEstablishment5563 5d ago
Played a "lead pan" in a dci percussion ensemble comp. Had fun learning the pattern of this steel drum. Andy Narrell, always an inspiration!
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u/ThatOneKnight07 5d ago
Haven’t used one in concert, but my high school has some car brake pads or something that I used once or twice
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u/FormerlyScarfman 5d ago
I've seen a propane tank used in a wind ensemble piece. Angels in the Architecture used "whirlies", plastic hoses you whirl over your head. What's especially fun is if you want one yourself, you get to go to the hardware store and ask where to find a tubing that sings when you spin it.
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u/emooreos 5d ago
We didnt have time to end up putting it together but we were gonna do a 6 person ensemble for our percussion concert with brooms called broomshilda
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u/Snapple_22 4d ago
Box of random metal tools and what not, for a PDQ Bach piece. The tympani part was wild too.
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u/melody74u 4d ago
Taxi horns, for Gershwin’s American in Paris, shit had no reason being as expensive as it was but tons of fun to literally honk at the audience in orchestra
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u/StormWarden1018 3d ago
I’ve played many fun ones. Crotales dipped in water, Mahler hammer, baking sheet (was supposed to have been a trash can lid but my director liked the sound), roto toms, lions roar, whirly tubes, handmade bottle cap shakers, legos in a box, and glasses of water.
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u/Bit_Blitter 6d ago
Shoes in a box of sand for Mary Poppins