NeoKitsch

“I’ve been watching this talented and extremely amiable man from Japan for many months on YouTube. He makes Ocarinas with almost anything, although vegetables are his speciality. Heita only speaks in his mother tongue on his videos, but he mentions briefly in English writing that “I make vegetables musical instrument. Because I have gone to work in daytime, I do not have enough free time. I am playing the vegetable musical instruments on holiday.”

His wife and daughter often appear in his videos, accompanying his Ocarina jingles on the piano and teasing their pet cat and dog, so it appears that part of his success comes from his ‘family man‘, and ‘must be cool to have a dad like that‘ aura. Perhaps the best examples of Heita’s talents can be seen in the videos below, where in one, he demonstrates how to make an Ocarina with an egg, and the other, a display of different vegetable Ocarinas. 

I hope you enjoy Heita as much as I do!”

How to make an egg ocarina

“I made an ocarina with an egg. I show how to make.”

Introduction of handmade vegetable musical instruments

“I introduce the vegetable musical instruments made this time. There are eight kinds of vegetable musical instruments. Please enjoy various sound”

Here is Heita’s own translation of what he is saying in the video above:

“Then, let’s introduce the vegetable musical instruments that can have been done this time. 
It is a carrot ocarina first. 
And, it is an ocarina of a white radish in Japan that can have done this time. 
The octave is geted down from the carrot ocarina. 
The broccoli ocarina was made. 
A good sound is not heard because only such a broccoli was obtained this time. And, a carrot ocarina of the slide type and this carrot ocarina is different the sound hole. When the breath is put here, something is heard. It shaped ..so… 

The paprika was punctured. When the breath is put here, such a sound is heard. It is an owl. Carrot panpipe. When the breath is put in this, such a sound is heard. Similary asparagus panpipe was made. However, a good sound is not heard. It is a trumpet of the cucumber and the paprika in the end. There were musical instruments that looked alike also in the vegetable orchestra. Moreover, when musical instruments can be done, I introduces it.

Thank you“

Here’s a look at some of NeoKitsch’s quirky instruments. This improvisation tries to recreate the sound of the 1950’s Science Fiction movie soundtrack using continuos pitch instruments as well as looking into other ‘victims of spoof’ genres such as 1950’s Hawaiian music, in which this particular piece was not inspired by the traditional, religious music of the native Hawaiians, but by the ‘Kitsch’, franchise hungry invasion of the ‘pleasure island’ at that time. This time however, extra-terestials are doing the invading! Now that’s Neo-Kitsch!
The Folktek ‘Folkchord’, a circuit bent Omnichord OM-84 is being used to create different overtones and textures within the B minor scale, and the Folktek ‘Micro Garden’ finds its way into this improvisation too! Also being used is the Roland MC-808 Groovebox Synth, Moogerfooger Low Pass Filter, Moog Etherwave Theremin, Vintage Lap Steel Guitar, and of course, the studio favourite, the Haken Continuum Fingerboard.

The Folktek ‘Folkchord’ is yet another new instrument to arrive at the studio:

Enjoy this new improvisation at the NeoKitsch studio!

This is another NeoKitsch improvisation with some of the new instruments arriving at the studio. The Roland MC 808 was delivered at the door that morning, and this is the first attempt at arranging some music with it. The meditation style of music is part of an experiment for the forthcoming album called ‘Nonsense, Nocturnes and Nirvana’. Danny Hahn on the Haken Continuum, Roland MC-808 and Folktek Micro Garden, and David Way on Violin.

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The videos below are examples of the first attempt at playing with the Haken Continuum Fingerboard in the NeoKitsch studio. One of them is accompanying the text from an Edward Lear nonsense song. David Way is playing the Viola and Danny Hahn is on the Continuum. Both Danny and David share an exciting conversation between violin, viola and unusual instruments, and they produce a large amount of music together for film, TV and for classical, Jazz and experimental music enthusiasts.

The Continuum Fingerboard or Haken Continuum is a music performance controller developed by Lippold Haken, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, and sold by Haken Audio, located inChampaign, Illinois.^[2]

The Continuum is a MIDI controller; it does not generate audio. Rather, it must be connected to a sound-producing source that will receive MIDI input, such as a synthesizer module.

The most recent model has begun to incorporate built in sounds, and can generate audio, but it is still primarily designed to be a controller.

Over the years, many filmmakers have requested NeoKitsch to produce piano pieces for their productions.

The music uploaded to this particular blog entry is called Piano Glitch. It was commissioned by a filmmaker who was making a particularly personal film in which he was exploring the sensitive subject of cancer, and the final stages of his mother as she was documented towards the end of her life. The task of composing a title sequence for the film, which was to be screened at local cinemas to friends, family and the local press, proved to be a little more complicated than anticipated.

The filmmaker attended many meetings at the NeoKitsch studio. The music needed to be redrafted several times for numerous reasons, such as the piece being far too depressing, too upbeat, or cliché for this style of documentary. The director was often in mixed minds about how he wanted to represent his mother’s last days of her life. He knew it was to be a positive film about the strength and bravery his mother possessed, but nevertheless, as NeoKitsch had pointed out, if the music were to be confident sounding, the subtext of what at the time appeared to be an agonising struggle, would smell of irony, and as it was a personal project attempting to be as truthful as possible, we all decided to settle for a piece which described how his mother was feeling and the people around her. With her approval, and the final go ahead from the director, we settled for the piece you can hear now.

The music is a bitter/sweet melody, which is surrounded by glitchy crackles and stutters, which helped describe the images of flickering, abstract medical machinery.

You may or may not agree with the atmosphere of the music for a subject as sensitive as this, but it was well received by the friends, family and community of everyone involved, and that seemed to be the only important accomplishment at the time.   

You can download the full version of “Piano Glitch” from iTunes and other leading stores.

This is one of the many quirky instruments from the NeoKitsch Studio. The Micro Garden is a hand made glitch synth by Folktek. The Micro Garden is being played through a talkbox to create those robotic vocal sounds. The Elektron Monomachine and Machinedrum are accompanying the glitch improvisation. The NeoKitsch Studio has a large collection of unusual instruments, and will be uploading many more interesting videos to come.

This video features in the official Folktek blog:

http://folktek.blogspot.com/2009/09/neokitsch-experiments-with-micro-garden.html