Making instruments can be as simple as adding different amounts of water to a row of bottles or as elaborate as creating your own pipe organ-style instruments from any object that suits a musical vision. That’s what Len Solomon does. For over 30 years, he’s invented instruments by “filing and sawing” parts like “old vacuum cleaner tubes and plastic bottles, hardware supplies like PVC pipes and copper tees, and specialty items he makes himself like rubber squeeze balls and fipples.”
This Wired ‘Obsessed’ video spends time with Solomon in his workshop to learn how he creates and plays his amazing DIY musical contraptions, including the Oomphalapompatronium, the Callioforte, the Bottle Organ, and his masterpiece from 1983, The Majestic Bellowphone.
Learn more about his work at Bellowphone.com. Solomon has performed in schools and on stage around the globe as a one-man-band with his inventions for decades. He’s also built instruments for clients like Vermont’s Montshire Museum of Science.
We’ve been fans of Solomon since we saw him perform Tiger Rag on his homemade Emphatic Chromatic Callioforte. Watch that next.
Plus, watch more videos about unusual instruments:
• The Wintergatan Marble Machine, music made from 2,000 marbles
• Monster Tubulum
• Morske Orgulje – The Sea Organ in Zadar, Croatia
• Music from a Tree
• How The Met reassembled the Appleton Pipe Organ
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