Hurdy-Gurdy

I’d never heard of a Hurdy-gurdy but now that I’ve seen one I like it. It sounds great in the video. From my adminttedly uninformed point of view it’s something like a steampunk autoharp-violin that appears to be a total bitch to play. It’s at least as uncommon as the tragically rare Theremin.*

Hat tip to Chicken Feathers.

*Seriously, the world needs more Theremin; possibly within a heavy metal band that may or may not include Cellos. The Dr. Who Theme and a little bit of noodling on a single Zeppelin track? (Whole lotta’ lovin’ in case you’re wondering.) I’m calling bullshit! Either the Theremin is lacking in a way some musician needs to explain to me or we’re getting screwed out of something epic.

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Adaptive Curmudgeon is handsome, brave, and wise.
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23 Responses to Hurdy-Gurdy

  1. richardcraver says:

    That is a new one on me. The sound puts to mind of bagpipes with the sound of the drones beneath the melody. Interesting.

  2. Robert says:

    AC: You’ll want an oscilloscope to troubleshoot your theramin. 🙂

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      I’m terrible at music… just ask my poor guitars. But a theremin with an oscilloscope just screams mad scientist. Good idea.

  3. Matt says:

    There’s a pirate metal (that is a real thing) band called Storm Seeker who uses an ELECTRIC hurdy gurdy. That’s next level.

  4. JH says:

    More Hurdy gurdy for you…

  5. Anonymous says:

    I had to find out what a hurdy gurdy is. Now I have 1) fallen in love with them, and 2) learned my thing for the day. Since I learned about it late in the day, I am going to use it as my nugget of knowledge tomorrow. As I am a woman of a certain age, I can do that.

    After all, who is going to stop me? They’re not the boss of me.

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      It took me years to learn this but good women of just about any age cannot be stopped. Would one tell a sunset to be a slightly different shade of orange? They’re the perfect counterpoint to a proper man. A proper man is one who’s going to do whatever fool thing is in his head. Would one tell a fella with a wrench and time to kill that a ’39 International tractor can’t run on methane? Of course not!

      Here’s to Hurdy-Gurdy education of all who are around! The world needs it!

  6. forkboy088 says:

    If you’re looking for Cello metal you may want to check out a group called apocalyptica.
    They’re a Finnish ( I think) metal band, that plays cellos, here’s a video of them covering Battery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZFl0gQLz2k

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      Nice. I always like metal on Cello and this one is pretty chill. I have never understood the relation between Scandinavia and Metal but it’s there. (And don’t tell me Vikings because I know damn well they didn’t have amplifiers when they hit the British isles in 793.

  7. AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

    This guy reminds me of Steve Vai.

  8. Eric Wilner says:

    Amazing the things you can see and hear nowadays!
    I’d heard of the hurdy-gurdy before, probably back in my college days, by way of… Schubert? Yes, a quick search turns up Der Leiermann, from Die Winterreise.
    Never until today knew what one looked like.

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      I love that aspect of the internet. While everyone else is looking at cats and F***book I’m geeking out on weird old instruments and other errata.

  9. Dominic Hunter says:

    If you can pat your head and rub you stomach at the same time, you might be able to play it. As you can probably tell, the keys up the neck give you different ptiches, whilst the crank turns a wheel which acts like a continuous violin bow. The interesting thing are the drones which produce the buzzes – they have loose bridges which buzz against the sound board when you move the crank faster. A really good player can get six or eight per revolution of the crank. When I tried one, I could barely get the damn think to sound, never mind get the buzzing to work… The guy doing the teaching was:

    http://www.historicalmusic.co.uk/musicians/stephentyler.html

    who does medieval and breton folk music.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHn2kvUupfs
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcQMY-QbFhY

    He’s UK-based, and I couldn’t really find much of his stuff online.

    Oh, and if you _really_ want to get into it, hurdy-gurdies tend to be eye-wateringly expensive.

    Then really far down the rabbit hole is the two-man medieval version

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organistrum

    D.

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      I’m such a Neanderthal. As soon as I heard the Organistrum I thought Orgasmatron and thought “Yeah, I can see why that might be an expensive instrument”.

  10. Coyote Hubbard says:

    First time I heard a Hurdy Gurdy live was at a Plant-Page (IE: Led Zep fame) concert at Thomson-Bolling Arena somewhere in Tennessee… I heard the announcement during the show that they would be featuring the worlds most amplified Hurdy-Gurdy in the world along with the backing of this big ass Egyptian orchestra section.

    Here the kicker. I only went because a friend of mine wanted to go, but dreaded the 4 hour drive to get there and freaked out driving anywhere, much less into a big city. I got conned into going that if i would drive there and back, he would pay for the tix and expenses, and i agreed.

    To make this happen however, he got the cheapest tix he could, This meant we were way off stage left, and so far up that we went past nosebleed seats… we were in the realm of if a hole opened in the roof, we were sucked out into deep space seats…

    And the kicker, he was deathly afraid of heights… those narrow and steep seats at that level meant he had to be guided, pushed, and handheld till his butt was in the seat, and for the show, he had a death grip on the armrests…Getting him back down after the show was three times as hard.

    • AdaptiveCurmudgeon says:

      What a great concert story. I’m fairly allergic to concerts myself. I’ve been meaning to write the story of my last rock concert.

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