That comes up in this video by Rob Scallon, a guitarist who makes videos not just about odd guitars but also other odd instruments.
The title of that video does include, “Organ & Drum.”
Are you taking suggestions for band names?
looks around
Aw, The Drones has already been taken.
You beat me to it. “Best Audio Quality” indeed.
More Guilhem Desq. Just him, his hurdy-gurdy, and a looper.
Donovan’s version: Trippy
Butthole Surfer’s version: A Nightmare
I saw Page & Plant on that tour, still have the teeshirt around somewhere, and I was very taken by the hurdy-gurdy being played in a rock context.
Now Arcade Fire use it regularly, and there’s a pagan black metal band that uses a hurdy-gurdy as well as other folk instruments.
That’s amazing.
OP video for the BBS
One of my favorite of his is Hurdy-gurdy. Uzh I Ya Li Moloda, Tonkopriaditsa Byla
which has some electronic and drums mixed in.
Yet another Guilhem Desq
Guilhem Desq - Le château magique
Wish he had mentioned which musicians captivated him. Blowzabella? I have a painting of a woman playing hurdy gurdy on my wall, painted by artist, luthier, and musician Juan Wijngaard. No hurdy gurdys are produced commercially, you must have a luthier make one. It is not the box cranked by organ-grinders that goes by the same name. It has several strings that are rubbed like a violin bow by a rotating wheel, giving it a hypnotic drone. Instead of a fingerboard it has keys played with the left hand that stop the strings to create different pitches.
Why not both?
I’ve wanted a hurdy gurdy for years, basically since I discovered the Swiss folk metal band Eluveitie. Hurdy gurdy is one of their many, many instruments and it captivated me instantly.
Then there’s Patty Gurdy, who describes her music as ‘dark folk-pop’.
I just love the sound of the instrument.
Patty with Storm Seeker:
Solo cover of Sweet Dreams:
I was not away you could modulate the drone on those, which adds a lot more possibilities.
Also-- consider how complicated all the mechanisms are inside that, probably it didn’t appear fully formed and slowly evolved, but like the modern piano it is an amazing piece of musical engineering.
The traditional way of doing this is via trompette- quickly varying the speed of the wheel to vibrate a loose bridge:
It’s thought to have evolved from fiddles, as did the nyckelharpa- these have keys to stop the strings, like a hurdy-gurdy, but are bowed like a fiddle.
I first noticed a hurdy gurdy when Arcade Fire played one.
One of the videos linked upthread indicates the hurdy gurdy didn’t come from personal instruments at all, but rather is a shrunk-down form of early organ. Apparently there were huge multi-person versions of them where one person provided power on the wheel and another (or multiple others) played the keys.
I’m not a music historian so I can’t comment on which is more correct, but both are fascinating stories for the possible history of this machine.
That’s the organistrum. As I understand it, those also evolved from (scaled-up) fiddles, and aren’t really related to pipe organs.
If you really can’t decide between a pipe organ and a hurdy-gurdy, there’s the Lira Organizzata:
