NeoKitsch

Things That Go Bump

“Things That Go Bump” is a collection of outrageous, weird and damn right silly musical experimentations. This time, the NeoKitsch studio brought together the combination of modern classical music styles, with avant garde film and electronic music. The Trumpet, Viola, Violin, Haken Continuum Fingerboard, Etherwave Theremin, Moog Synthesizers and Bass Guitar are just a fraction of the live instruments used to record this collection. 

All tracks were recorded live in the NeoKitsch Studio.

You can check out what some of these very recordings looked like on the NeoKitsch YouTube channel. Here is one of the videos showing Danny Hahn and David Way at work:

And here is another video demonstrating some of the unusual, one of a kind instruments in the NeoKitsch studio:

Filmmakers and Content Creators will find that these unusual tracks will really make a stamp on their work.  

Click on the banner below to listen to all 20 Avant Garde tracks:

Check out the new NeoKitsch album:

This is David Way and Danny Hahn in the NeoKitsch studio trying out the new AKG C414 microphone with the violin, Roland MC-808, Folktek Modified Omnichord and the Haken Continuum Fingerboard. This piece was an improvisation commissioned by the online music library and networking community: Humtoo, in which they requested NeoKitsch to produce an experimental, ‘musical FX’ and avant garde album for their store. Here is a link to another album Humtoo has produced for 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.