HN Explorer

16 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 37.6 ms ] thread
Sosh101
Interesting instrument, but I dislike this journalistic style. We didn't really get to hear the instrument even.
DFHippie
Well, a few notes. As she said, it isn't really a solo instrument.
elihu
She plays some notes at about 1:10 without the high-pitched flute backing track.

Kind of surprised it has a lot of harmonics. Flutes generally produce something that's at least close to a pure sine wave, but apparently not this one.

dylan604
I like how the melodic line is the backing track to you. This instrument would be the backing track of the music.
elihu
Given the story is about a particular instrument, it was kind of annoying that you can only really hear it by itself for a brief segment. If I was listening to the music just to listen to music, then yeah, the extreme bass flute wouldn't be what I would be focusing on.
paisawalla
Does anyone know about the PVC pipe comment? Is there some common knowledge about how to DIY build bass flutes?
mmmrtl
Haven't watched yet, but there seems to be a whole world of PVC contrabass flutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK_CJeAavpA
EvanAnderson
Holy crap! That's Dave Benham[0] who has answered metric buttloads of questions on Stack Overflow re: CMD.EXE. If there's anybody who knows about arcane and idiosyncratic behavior in CMD.EXE it's him!

He wrote a really fun snake implementation in batch, too[1].

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/users/1012053/dbenham [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EZeDoZjnsc

mmmrtl
Wow, what a cool set of obsessions! I love that he used his own flute improv as the soundtrack to his batch snake video.
dylan604
I was going to suggest the Blue Man Group, but then remembered they are percussive instruments.
robbedpeter
Overtone flute tutorials are very common and easy to make. There are a lot of traditional cultures that used contrabass woodwinds as the foundation for overtone instruments.

https://youtu.be/-dB8DDjCU14

This guy's channel is great!

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
glitcher
Really intrigued by the instrument. Would be nice to see the whole thing on screen for more than 1.5 seconds without jumping to all kinds of zoomed in shots of who knows what. Horrible video editing!
mitchbob
Big woodwinds are fun. I got to play a contrabass clarinet in college, where you feel the lowest notes even more than you hear them. The opening of Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand [1]--written for Paul Wittgenstein, Ludwig's brother--has an amazing solo for contrabassoon [2]. And there's Anthony Braxton and his contrabass sax [3]. For all these low instruments, it's best to experience them live.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_for_the_Left_Ha...

[2] https://youtu.be/Yme2336j81g

[3] https://youtu.be/PuoBeYB-O1M