Over the years, I have bought, made or been given a selection of different "noise makers" which have all been sampled and ultimately used in some of my tunes.  In some cases they have been a great ice-breaker with groups of children and in one case, a great use in self defence.

As I always tell people, I hate seeing an instrument being disposed of because it is no longer playable.  It can almost always finish up as spare parts for other instruments or can be given the Frankenstein treatment and turned into something equally useful.

This faithful old tambourine, was initially pulled out of the scrap bin at Savilles music store in Sundrland, where I worked in 1967.  It was originally a tambour and had a split skin.  In the absence of a fresh piece of vellum, and in urgent need of a folk instrument for our female singer, I ran amok with a small saw, purchased a few replacement jingles and produced "Tammy", now a 40 year old veteran of sessions.

A truly natural collection of instruments and memorable in their making.

My hunting horn came from an old Friesian cow, once owned by my uncle Harry who was a dairy farmer.  I managed to salvage the pair after the animal was sent to the abattoir.  Unfortunately, to clean them out they have to be boiled in water for several hours to loosen the supporting bone.  This caused such a smell, my mother chucked out the other one whilst I was at school so my dreams of owning a matching pair were shattered.  It was playable just by using the shaped end, but now I have to rely on a trumpet mouthpiece to get any sound.

The Big Brown Bone...

Was found on a fishing trip and nature had done a lot of the work to make sure it sounds rather bell-like when hit with a piece of hardwood.  Great for that authentic Australian outback sound and emergency self defence when ceilidh dancers go out of control.

The bull-roarer as popularized by Crocodile Dundee.  One of the oldest instruments known to man.  A flat piece of wood is twirled around on a length of double-stranded string.  Obviously the blade starts to turn and wind the double strands around each other.  The eerie noise is caused when centrifugal force is stronger than the rotational force and the blade unwinds rapidly in the air stream.

Finally, the "Bones" or "Nackers".  I had thought this was a northern method for keeping up complicated rhythms in simple fiddle arrangements, but I am beginning to re-think this.  I haven't seen nackers used much by southern players, although they seem to prefer using a pair of table spoons to acheive the same result.

Is it that southerners don't like getting their hands dirty on animal products or that they have more money to spend?

Left: Bell Tree and bell pads    Right:  The way to play a bell tree

My bell pads are made up of three sizes of bells ranging through 20mm, 30mm and 45mm diameter.  There are 48 bells in total, spread over the two pads and they give a more melodic sound when dancing than you would get from using  bells of a single size.

The Bell Tree  starts off with a 10cm bell at the very end and has over a hundred assorted sizes attached.  The smallest are about 5mm diameter and came from the toys you put in budgie cages.  Judith, as always, demonstrates the correct way of playing the instrument.  It is held upside down and your right hand beats out the rhythm over the top of your clenched fist.

The Rain Stick

This was bought for me by the brother-in-law and his wife to add to my collection of unusual sound makers.  It's only a littl'un by South American standards measuring about 65cm in length, but it can be damn painful to play.  Basically, it is a hollow cactus log is filled with dried seeds.  To get the rain sound the spines from the cactus are shoved through to the centre in a one or two tight spirals.  As the tube is tilted, the seeds hit the hundreds of spines inside giving a delicate rustling, rain-like effect.  The pain comes from the outside end of the spines that have been roughly cut level with the surface.  As the thing dries out these stay about 1mm proud of the surface and they are sharp.

I like the rain stick as it helps me to prove how wrong most people are when they say,"I can't play an instrument, I'm not musical".  It's always worth betting a couple of pounds before pulling it out of the bag and handing it to them.  Even if they shake the stick, it still produces a gentle maracca sound.

Up to this point in time, I'm still trying to work out some tunes to fit around the sound.  Watch this space!

That's one helluva pea-shooter

If I were a horse, I would have been shot by now for being broken-winded.  So what possessed me to buy a digeridoo I'll never know.  However!  Thanks to many years with the school and town band, cyclic breathing is a skill you rarely forget and I can now play the thing for a few seconds without collapsing in a gasping heap on the floor.

But hey, it's genuine, it has a nice sound, and it's authentically painted with a dreamscene.

My synth's "Mini Me"

From an era when, it was thought, electronic instruments would never be accepted comes my full-sized synth's "Mini Me".  Complete with 6 voices, 18 rhythms and 144 chords it is a lightweight band in a small plastic box.

At the time, all these features were considered more than enough variation for any musician.

Alright, laugh away, but when this little beast is linked to even a 15watt amplifier, it can hold its own with most of the larger keyboards used by some bands AND, he adds sarcastically, is certainly over-equipped for playing most of today's tunes.

On the odd occassion when I've had the chance to attach it above the buttons on my small accordion, it has proved useful in filling-in for the absence of a drummer and the absence of a larger squeeze-box with the extra chords.

The Crowd Scarers

On the left of the photograph is my "ACME" whistle - honest, it's an ACME as popularized by that crazy coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons.  It is a rather small but powerful siren and used to add effects to comical sequences in some of our dances.

The samba whistle is also useful if you want to organize any team sports during the quiet moments of a dance-out or causing traffic mayhem in most cities across Europe.

The mouth organ is a instrument I still have difficulty with.  Any average tune means a breathing sequence such as- suck, suck, blow, blow, blow, suck, blow, blow, blow, suck suck. Hell, at my age, I have difficulty managing to breathe in and out!