Glass Armonica (spinning glass bowls... that break)

and then we just dip some more water and then we put it on so that and it isn't it isn't just a slow accords you can do every part of this instrument is extremely delicate nudge the instrument glass shatters yeah you press it too hard it doesn't play you press it too soft it doesn't play you press the wrong speed it doesn't play you press it too hard it shatters and that's your favorite dennis james specialists and instruments made out of glass yeah yeah that's fine what is this thing called this is a recreation of benjamin franklin's harmonica it's the franklin design there are a few concessions to 18th century versus i did this in 1991. when i try to leave europe they say that i'm stealing it from the european patrimony that it's an antique instrument i said antique it's got an electricity and i build it sounds like this is an extremely fragile instrument and the thing about glass that you learn breaks this is the speed control so i have an electric motor i have a sewing machine motor it's the first major accommodation in the 18th century they did it like a lathe or a sewing machine but mechanical you did it with your foot now oh and yeah you didn't have a motor so yeah that's the first accommodation you're seeing it right up front is that i put an electric motor kind of nice invented by ben franklin and he was so associated with electricity this is the connector yeah it's like a gas pedal this is vertical yeah this is turns it's a potentiometer so we got this little guy that i'm hooking up to and they pull and it just turns the switch okay that's in so the deal about the motor the amount of weight of all that glass to get that to turn quickly takes a huge amount of torque and then this belt drive clip that in there this is a sewing machine motor well we call it that it's it's the type of sewing machine motor but this is a much stronger one first question i have when i saw a photo of it was has anyone ever dropped it i've dropped it it slipped out of control and it slammed down onto the stage did all of it shatter well we heard the big crash which means call the glass factory federal express four days replacement bowls put them on when i open it and it's not broken it's christmas do this nope nope i know i know this keeps the motor in place when you get that torque the motor just wants to climb right up the belt and so we ended up making a bracket just knowing the amount of glass that's in here there's just such an unsettling feeling like if this falls down it's like going to be a chandelier hitting the ground we pull the pins and christmas shot glass white rind red wine cereal bowl cake cover this is a shaving mug this is a little purse atomizer that i keep full of alcohol a single drop of perspiration hits a bowl i have to get that off of there because it spreads so that's always there this is the top half of a butter dish so i took it to a gold plater now we get into the preparation for playing right there so this is a note rod this is invented by a guy as i remember it was 1785 came up with the idea franklin painted the rims on the insides of the bowls white for each of what would be the accidentals in there so there we go so you need to get surgically clean yeah i completely scrape every surface until it starts to grab you can feel the grab because if there's any oil or sweat anything it just won't work and then one of the things is the habit is you never touch your face your ear that's going to know it's hard no you don't have to dry oh you don't want to be dry i don't want to be dry and i use distilled water does it have to be distilled water yep everything else leaves deposits on the glass alcohol so now what we're going to do is we're going to clean this babe i cleaned it every time i play it if it plays it's clean there it is i had to slow it down to that speed now if i kick up the speed it stops playing it only plays yeah also needs to be at a certain speed too every note has its own speed now i'm going to give you the puzzle you're adjusting the speed for every note on the instrument to play it then you see it in the music where they have you playing both both sides and what do you do yeah think about it you move it i've had 14 oh my god you move your hand don't you you're number 15 in 40 years but then you can't sustain for very long right it's just to get it to start the most important thing is starting a note this is the coolest thing i've ever seen the sound is coming out of the cracks yeah the bulk of the sound is here the vibrations are either this side or they're being thrust out of the little gap the cone of sound is this way that's powerful in the room can you imagine in concert halls people go bananas i already love it we alcohol our hands all the touch surfaces you just rub them down it does two things it cleans them finely and it stops the sebaceous glands just stop your hand from sweating totally kills the ability of the production for about 10 minutes now you wet it ben franklin talked about it you don't go this way because the water goes down inside so you come up and you just keep it spinning while you're doing it okay that came in late that means i need a little more water on that one and i gotta adjust my speed a touch there it is now i'm playing both ends [Music] you can barely see with the little grab the quickest way to play glass is on the actual knuckle that skin is got a great surface and you just press and it just grabs the foundation of this instrument is just like when you put some water on your finger you play a wine glass right that's it a line of tuned wine glasses and a motor that's special and you can't get to the rim because it's on its side so you have to play on the side whole new touch experience then the game is to learn how to reliably make that note to play now to make it loud think about what a violin player does when they're both because we're bowing the glass this is the surface of the strings of the bow the water is the rosin the stick slip principle of physics where it grabs let's go grabs let's go in the proper relationship of mass and all the rest it pops into speech so the game is once it's playing how can i make it louder well the first thing you think of is well you just press harder it stops if i'm going to increase the speed which would give you more energy stops just slips you can feel it just slips under your fingers and then it comes back into when it drops to see the trick is both pressure and speed and then back off and then when you're back to the point of the motor then you lift touch and that speed and pressure is different for every ball it's the start is the kicker start is different because then i'm instantly able to adjust with the pressures because once it's playing i can without touching get a certain amount of volume change with the accessory i can really and then you see how i do a a schwarzondo [Music] if this piece if this piece didn't exist i wouldn't be sitting here it's written just for solo glass harmonica by wolfgang amadeus mozart he wrote it in 1791. [Music] [Music] do [Music] so that last is one of the tricks of the trade they talked about it no matter what the piece was they always ended in silence because it's the only instrument up until that point that could do that die away to absolutely nothing i'll see if you can tell when i stop i'm off now i mean it's such a sensitive instrument huh that can be very light [Music] [Music] really typical of the writing for it something that's so so unique about this is just how delicate yeah everything everything every part of this instrument is extremely delicate i did one performance dealing with modern instruments with uh metal strings instead of gut you know and all these instruments that are not the way they were so everything's gotten louder you know and this thing's 18th century you know i'm playing the mozart piece and i'm ripping along and i'm knowing that they're not hearing very much and i just went all right i'm going to crank that volume and i'm going to kick that thing up and i'm just going to see how loud i can get and guess what i broke the glass oh that was my next question it's like sliced my finger right up and still have the scar immediately blood just went chew and it spread you know and i was playing well blood still works until it starts to drop until it starts to dry you just can't see that it just stops and you stick to it it becomes like glue you know but i did learn and i'm glad it happened because i learned how hard i can press so now you're gonna do it okay so now so definitely don't play too hard you want your fingers to be like pruney bath that's the ideal that's about eight minutes put your foot on the yeah that's good now just practice just little bits of speed change you set your speed for the lowest note you're going to be playing and then you're adjusting your speed to go up as you go up higher so now what you do is just take your middle finger just through middle finger of your left hand just make it so you're arching as much as you can and then there it is there you got it already so now i'll do that on another note oh my he's a natural that's great now try the side of the thumb while you're holding that one wow look at that hey now mess with your speed just not pressure just mess with the speed and you'll feel it when it just quits because of the speed slips yeah now come back off without changing anything just come back and you'll feel it kick in again wow now get off completely now lighten up oh yeah like you said the pressure and the speed needs everything now as you increase the speed press a little harder i'll do it for you yeah a little more speed oh you're really pressing oh after your story i don't know [Applause] there's a bunch of spinning glass and i can feel already that i need more water oh yeah and i wasn't playing for that long and already my thumb it's like i clearly need more water on it so if i'm going higher i need to go i need to bring this feet up like crazy and then you also have to get closer to the rim yeah you're very good get more water you need more water at the top yeah because i'm not really watching there oh this is so difficult there needs to be a different pressure for each one very nice oh take that lift up and come right back down again see if they'll play see that was a little late yeah that means you have to come in a little earlier and you have to pull on this one just a touch when you come down the one on the right yeah i see it it's kind of like a flange because you got to do it before you want the note just before yeah just before now he's he's a sensitive guy he knows his stuff i can feel it you need an initial you got to like grab the ball in to get to know it it kind of feels like on a guitar very particular vibrato yeah yeah but on this you need that very particular vibrato for everyone or just doesn't play right get to the rim get closer closer to the rim yeah a little bit and then arch back parts so very nice [Music] so you're at the stage now you just have to get comfortable yeah because you can't do it it's really tough i mean it's really really delicious new use of your fingers i'm going to try to just get one clean c you're already six months into it yeah yeah very nice i'm gonna see if i can just get some cords sure nice [Music] nice kind of feels like it's it's falling but you have to fall like this i'm kind of imagining as if there's like a pivot point right here and then i need to like sure do that [Music] oh i like it ending on that one note oh that's kind of a cool thing yeah oh yeah because i've done that with a wine glass oh yeah yeah and and how tough that is yeah so if you've ever tried to do that on a wine glass yeah yeah imagine well a bunch of them in front of you spinning yeah so the next time you get 107 000 you can get one of them that's that's that's organ that's organ touch the beginning the beginning treatises have you play hymns i can feel my pinky need some more water you help me out here [Music] oh [Music] [Laughter] you're slipping away and using just one finger hard yeah yeah yeah this is really really really well it's like learning a new language but if you say the wrong word cuts and you know why is your finger open yeah [Laughter] this is just me now yeah has the teacher has given up on me [Music] do [Music] i'm starting to get the touch starting to feel it mr krabs [Music] man because as soon as you get ready for this to work this stops working vice versa how hard you press only matters initially and then after that your pressure on the balls needs to be the same as the speed over here it needs to be so delicate and so slow at the initial it's and that's when i know i gotta notice when it's pulling my skin along this is my least favorite note from now on yeah this is an f f this note it's really hard i mean it looks impossible yeah it kind of feels impossible but clearly it's not [Music] hey you because this is right this isn't right [Music] that is a little hard to listen to yeah you don't like it you don't like it jake no it's really hard to listen to yeah yeah that's another thing that's talking about the instrument you don't do it right and it's nails on chalkboard beautiful nails on a chalkboard nothing why did you choose these instruments in particular this and theremin just the most difficult instruments yeah [Music] well yeah 600 bucks a note down in there [Music] oh you're worried about the balls my attendant franklin produced apparently the number was eight and i've tracked down seven of them and i have a sniff on the eighth one it was sold in 1939 at auction in denver so it's out there so there's only so during that time there was only eight of these made frankly one factory in northern france made 5 000 of these oh okay they made them all the way until 1946 there were factories in italy in venice and in murano and they were as common and as produced as pianos became in victorian times so they were hugely popular but then the problems started and they became banned it became illegal to play them illegal to own them illegally make them and that's all part of the mystery of the glass and the history the the famous glass disorder and we all have our theories about that the symptoms peg it for me and every doctor i've spoken to they lost their hair they developed delirium tremens went blind ended up in asylums and their minds they lost their minds people thought that was because of the glass bowls well yeah with the players yeah over time and so if you talk to any doctor immediately they go oh lead poisoning glasses which were made with high lead content but the thing is there's just not enough going on here for the lead to leach out into the skin so the best theory that's coming around now is that lead was already a huge problem in the 18th century so that's why these were illegal because they thought that they gave you well they called it the the glass illness they didn't say that it was just the mysterious illness because the main problem was it was killing people in the audience it wasn't the players now you start to play you play your first notes and somebody stand up scream and drop dead wait what yeah it's a real famous uh incident wait what this is like this is like documented documented in if you believe everything you read in the newspaper my favorite monica was killing audience members killing audience members yeah you ever heard of mass hysteria yeah yeah that's the best explanation we have people expected something to happen so it did so yes people were keeling over it would cause fainting men to revive it would cause women to faint um what are you talking about no it's all documented i'd love to continue playing it let's see what happens yeah i got one a here okay [Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] i could take a sip [Laughter] dennis thank you so much for allowing us to come in and see this instrument sure i'm sure this isn't the last unusual instrument we take a look at on this channel if you would like to subscribe maybe another one here sure with you i got hundreds yeah

Channel: Rob Scallon

Views: 3,452,314

Keywords: Rob Scallon, music, musician, guitar, guitarist, glass instrument, glass armonica, spinning glass bowls, glass bowls instrument, Benjamin Franklin instrument, dangerous instrument, wet instrument, water instrument, instrument you play with water, dennis james, weird instrument, instrument you play with wet hands, music made with water, water music, theremin, pipe organ, carillon, scallon, glass, water, unusual instrument, big instrument, hurdy gurdy, mozart, Ben Franklin instrument

Id: cVqqNigImtU

Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Maybe-moving-on]

“… until they were banned.”

“…people were falling over dead in the audience and other people lost their minds.”

Great watch, especially when they stumble upon this aspect of the instrument’s history toward the end.

[u/chainjoey]

I love how at 20 minutes he asks why the guy chose this instrument and theremin, two very difficult instruments. Then he's about to say something and it just cuts away.

[u/bicameral_mind]

Really cool video - the tone of the instrument is so ghostly and unique. Today, we are used to these sounds because they are so often produced electronically. But it is fun to imagine being a person from the Victorian era and hearing something like this for the first time.

[u/shaun3000]

“This is an extremely fragile instrument,” as the guy is literally sitting on it. 🤣

[u/mrrowr]

Hey where’s his dumb hat?

[u/Jake_of_all_Trades]

The video shows that the way the player increases volume is to floor the motor pedal while increasing pressure of the fingers, but it seems that the motor increases the speed of rotation of all of the bowls.

What happens when a player wants a particular note in a chord to be louder than the rest without ?arpeggiating? the chord?

[u/Top_Cry_533]

Yo this is kinda sick . seriously glad i watched this

[u/BestAtempt]

“Do you have coke in a glass harmonica”

-Mitch Hedberg

[u/intellifone]

What does a fully modern version of this look like? Do you have thicker and thinner glass bowls to produce the sound? Does the shape of the glass change, like glass plates instead of bowls, cones instead of bowls, do you do nested cylinders instead of bowls? Would having each bowl on a separate motor set to keep the speed of the edge the same on all bowls be better (not RPM because that’s currently the same, but the velocity of the edge is different on every bowl currently).

How do you improve this to make playability better?