Sunday, May 15, 2011

Sunday Night Tomfoolery (1)

Well this is the first of what will hopefully be a regular series of Sunday night blogs showcasing some of the weird and wonderful on the internet.

The theme for our first Tomfoolery is bottle playing.

Bottle playing is the playing of different bottles as a musical instrument where each bottled is individually pitched (in the same manner as a marimba or xylophone). I am only looking here at bottles that are hit with something (such as spoons). There will possibly be a whole other session on bottles that are blown into (much like panpipes).

I blame my very recent interest in this on a post last week by one of my Facebook friends, Simon Tsang. This was his link (I think they're Uni students with a bit too much time on their hands - the guys in the clip, not Simon):



The piece they are playing is titled Csardas (a form of Hungarian dance) by Vittorio Monti.  It is interesting that a) the best known csardas was composed by an Italian and b) it's the only piece that he is famous for.

Anyway, I got to looking at other forms of bottle playing on the Youtube.

There are a number by Bottigliofono, including another version of Csardas, and this excerpt from Mozart's Rondo Alla Turka (final movement from Piano Sonata No. 11).



And his interpretation of Spring from The Four Seasons, by Vivaldi:



Of course bottle playing has been used in advertising. Most notably, in Australia it was used to promote Fosters Victoria Bitter, which (quite frankly) does not feature in my list of favourite beers. However Fosters do produce very good ads for their beers (maybe a topic for a future Tomfoolery). Anyway, here is the ad:



As an aside, there were many well known and talented Melbourne brass and percussion players used in the making of this ad. I know a few of them (Hi Matt, Joe, Martin).

Then there's this one, from a restaurant in Spain. I'm not sure why I like it. It could be the facial expressions of the players or the swigs taken from the bottles being played. If I ever travel to Spain, I will be tracking down this restaurant.



Now to start adding skating to bottle playing. Here is someone revisiting Mozart, this time with a theme from his Symphony No 40.



I could go on and on, but I won't. Here is a final clip, the Mario Theme played on bottles, using a remote controlled car:



Have a good week.

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