Weird Instrument: Chair!

[Shadoweclipse13]

Musicial Chair

I get emails from Instructables a few times a week, and there are all sorts of cool things I've seen that I enjoy, whether I eventually build them or not. I thought this was something else, but it's still kinda cool. It reminds me of the Sounds of the Nightmare Machine.

I originally thought it was a chair that had a cable in the middle with 2 female 1/4" jacks. For the sake of playing guitar at home in a seated position, it would be kinda neat to have your amp connected to the chair, and then just use a short cable to connect the guitar to the chair. I don't know if it would truly have an advantage over a single cable, but less chance of getting tangled up in cables yourself might be interesting.

[Futuron]

Who wouldn't love chair-guitar!

We already have chair-drums, like on that hilarious old tribute to St Anger by Matt Smith of Theocracy. A chair-snare even.

[Shadoweclipse13]

That Tribute to St. Anger is hilarious!!!

[mackerelmint]

When St. Anger came out, a drummer friend of mine handed me his copy and said "this is terrible, you need to hear this" and of course all I could hear was that awful snare ringing all over the place and I've never listened to it since but I guess that snare sound is pretty famous, huh?

There are an awful lot of crappy sounding ringy snares in the last couple decades of music, for some reason.

[marqueemoon]

[marqueemoon]

[Futuron]

Regarding too-ringy metal snares, that sound I call 'PUNG'. I prefer a nice quick PUHT - good snares crack and not too much sustain. Not sure which I dislike more, PUNG or the sound common of the 70s 'floppy cardboard box' BUH.

[Ceylon]

I seem to remember John Cage made music with the creaking of a chair.

[DeathJag]

It reminds me of the Sounds of the Nightmare Machine.

Thank you so much for posting this! These are some of my favorite sounds. MAN!!!! I knew exactly what he meant by canned horror movie sounds...

[mackerelmint]

Regarding too-ringy metal snares, that sound I call 'PUNG'. I prefer a nice quick PUHT - good snares crack and not too much sustain. Not sure which I dislike more, PUNG or the sound common of the 70s 'floppy cardboard box' BUH.

I most certainly dislike PUNG more.


Gimme a nice 80s snare crack any day, the gated reverb is optional but the crack is not. Tighten that snare as far as it'll go or you're an asshole, that's my philosophy.

[Shadoweclipse13]

I seem to remember John Cage made music with the creaking of a chair.

Interesting. I might have to look that up. I love seeing things as instruments that weren't meant to be instruments. There are so many cool sounds in this world that are very musical, especially in the right context. When I worked for Miller Brewing, there was one night where the speed of the line was just right, and I'd gotten into a rhythm loading box blanks because the packer that I was working at just had this epic sound to it, chugging along beautifully.

Thank you so much for posting this! These are some of my favorite sounds. MAN!!!! I knew exactly what he meant by canned horror movie sounds...

I don't know about you, but as much as I love music, I have a love at least as deep for sound effects. When I found that video a while back, I was absolutely entranced. I want to make something like that for myself.

Gimme a nice 80s snare crack any day, the gated reverb is optional but the crack is not. Tighten that snare as far as it'll go or you're an asshole, that's my philosophy.

Me too! 80's snare sounds were great. You know what other genre almost always gets the snare sound right? Punk. Listen to anything with Travis Barker, and it's there. Most punk seems to have a deep respect for the sound of a good snare

[andy_tchp]

John Stanier in '90s era Helmet > any other snare drum sound. Ever.

[jorri]

A recent recording i did had a metal chair, cloth horse (drying rack that twangs), and a metal grill from an amp (you could bend it for pitch.
Piezo'd it all up which usually gets interesting sounds from stuff that is weak micced up.
Very much in the background though.

[Shadoweclipse13]

A recent recording i did had a metal chair, cloth horse (drying rack that twangs), and a metal grill from an amp (you could bend it for pitch.
Piezo'd it all up which usually gets interesting sounds from stuff that is weak micced up.
Very much in the background though.

That sounds awesome! Have any recordings of it that you could share? I'd be very interested to see what that sounds like.

[jorri]

A recent recording i did had a metal chair, cloth horse (drying rack that twangs), and a metal grill from an amp (you could bend it for pitch.
Piezo'd it all up which usually gets interesting sounds from stuff that is weak micced up.
Very much in the background though.

That sounds awesome! Have any recordings of it that you could share? I'd be very interested to see what that sounds like.

Only pretty buried in dense mixes. I really need to make something a bit more based around that, because these were just adding to the clang of some reamped drums.

I just updated my link in profile, the tracks video #1, video #2 and weights been lifted have this on. #2 is most clear because the others have drums reamped, i think weights had the ambient mic in the hallway then it as sent through an amp which was micced from the hallway AGAIN, because we got a bit carried away!. I can't actually remember which is which and the tracklists were labelled differently. Pretty sure there was a metal waste paper bin too.