We all know the names of common musical instruments, but this list of 11 unusual musical instruments with weird names will show you that there are some out there you’ve never seen or heard about.
As you can gather from the title of this article, we will be delving into the realm of sheer weirdness. Of course, if something is weird it does not make it bad, as you will find out in our list. On the contrary, the musical instruments that made our list are really very cool and you just might end up developing a sense of appreciation for these oddities yourself. There are lots of uncommon musical instruments such as the Balalaika a stringed instrument from medieval Russia that basically looks like an oddly shaped guitar. We also have The ektara a single bowstring folk instrument used primarily by wandering bards in India and Bangladesh. However, these instruments pale in comparison to what we are talking about on this list. If you are looking for unusual instruments to learn, which is a great way to stand out from the crowd, then you should try the bagpipe, the hang drum or even Bassoon. You will find classes to learn these instruments, however the instruments that made our list are so unique that you might not find a class where you can actually learn to play them.
The thing is any musical instruments you come across are going to be cool musical instruments in their own way. Take the cello-horn, for example, the name is self-explanatory as it’s an instrument that combines the cello and a horn in one. The sound of bowing strings comes out of a metallic horn instead of the wooden body of the cello. Or take a look at the hydraulophone, a musical instrument where music is produced by contact between jets of water and the player’s fingers. We’ll definitely elaborate some more on our list, with this one. A few musical instruments that have every right to be on the list, but did not make it due to their names not being that weird, are the Chapman stick, a guitar like instrument that is used to play bass lines, melody lines, chords, or textures, and also the 12 neck guitar, the creation of Japanese artist Yoshihiko Satoh. As you can imagine, it is basically as the name says; twelve guitars morphed into one awesome guitar with 12 necks.
Pixabay / Public Domain
To come up with such a list we had to do a lot of digging. Thankfully, we did find quite a few remarkable websites that are dedicated to such musical instruments. Websites like Cmuse, Mental Floss, Phrontistery and Odd Music spend their time too looking for unusual instruments. There were a lot of really unusual instruments listed there, but we knew we were looking for instruments that had to fit the bill perfectly, meaning it had to have a weird name and also weird way of operation to match. We eventually found what we have been looking for, and we are ready to share our findings with you. We did not rank our list, since we could not come up with a method of ranking weirdness so to speak, so we just listed the instruments we found to be weird. If this article leaves you feeling creative, then you should check out the 10 Easiest Musical Instruments To Make At Home as well.
Brace yourself for a brief journey into the world of wild creativity and wonder with this list of 11 unusual musical instruments with weird names. If we left out your favorite weird musical instrument from the list, do let us know in the comments section.
