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{{trope}}
[[File:
Weird and wacky musical instruments, that can show up in comedy, fantasy or SF, which came straight out of the author's head and look, well,
Compare [[Everything Is an Instrument]], where things not designed or intended to make music ''do''.
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]]
* The Detragan from ''[[Professor Layton and
== [[Comic Books]] ==▼
▲== Comic Books ==
* [[Gaston Lagaffe]]
** The Gaffophone (see picture), a homemade string/horn instrument whose use invariably results in [[For Massive Damage|massive]] [[Glass-Shattering Sound|damage]]. The sound the Gaffophone makes is the result of the overlap between [[Brown Note]] with [[Loud of War]]. Psychological and collateral damage all rolled up into one. It causes ''plants'' to commit suicide...
** He once made an electric version which was even worse: it caused a city-wide blackout, busted the plumbing of the entire building and blew out the front wall onto the street below.
** After he tuned a violin for a friend, it emitted a [[Kiai|shrieking sound that could paralyze people]].
* ''The Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra'' mostly takes real instruments and depicts them this way. A few instruments are original, such as the String Tuba and the Yo-Bow.
* [[The Smurfs|Harmony Smurf]] once got tricked by Gargamel into giving a ''Turlusiphon'' recital to the smurfs, the instrument's dark power plunging them into an irreversible magical coma. Upon reading into the evil sorceror's tome of the permanent effect, he gives them one last trumpet sendoff, his [[Dreadful Musician|horrible playing]] proving ''stronger'' than the curse and waking them all up. "Your music is bad enough to wake up the dead!" Indeed it was.
* A ''[[Star Trek]]'' comic introduced the Elisiar, a device with three horseshoe-shaped keyboards and a mobius-strip of xylophone bars.
== Films -- Animation ==▼
* The traveling merchant who sells musical instruments in ''[[The Smurfs and the Magic Flute]]'' produces one while showing of his wares. He even admits that he doesn't know what it is but says it sure makes a lot of noise.
== Films -- Live-Action ==▼
* Some of the instruments played by the band in the cantina at Mos Eisley in ''[[Star Wars]]: [[A New Hope]]''.
* ''[[The Adventures of Baron Munchausen]]'' has one of the more twisted examples: prisoners are in a cage, and you press the keys to make sticks jab them in various places, with the music being their cries of pain. (You kind of have to hear it to understand how this could sound like music, but it does.)
== [[Literature]] ==▼
* ''[[Futurama]]'
▲== Literature ==
▲* ''[[Futurama]]'s'' holophonor (below) is based on [[Isaac Asimov]]'s visi-sonor from ''[[Foundation|The Foundation Trilogy]]''.
* Many examples in the [[Dr. Seuss]] books, to the point that Seussaphone might be a good alternate title.
* In [[Michael Moorcock]]'s novels, the decadent and cruel Melniboneens have certain slaves [[And I Must Scream|surgically modified]] so they can utter only a single tone each. They only make an instrument when a large group of them is assembled into a chorus.
* The ''[[Star Trek Novel Verse]]'' novel ''[[A Singular Destiny]]'' features most of the instruments mentioned in the TV series (and the Elisar from the comics) played either by the folk group The A. C. Walden Medicine Show, or the jam sessions on the ''USS Aventine''. The book also introduces the ''jirvik'' and Saar string, sadly without defining them.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Earth: Final Conflict]]'' has "tubes", a Taelon musical instrument which also has something of a holographic visual accompaniment.
* ''[[Star Trek]]'' has bunches of them:
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* In ''[[The Goon Show]]'' spinoff short film ''The Case of the Mukkinese Battlehorn'', the eponymous [[MacGuffin]] is a large and ridiculously convoluted antique horn.
* ''[[Phil of the Future]]'':
{{quote|
'''Phil:''' Yeah, phyble.
'''Keely:''' Did you blow in it? Are there strings? Did you hit it?
'''Phil:''' Exactly. All those things. }}
* ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' brings us the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCumzdtaA7w porkarina], which is supposed to re-create the incidental music in ''[[The Beverly Hillbillies]]'', ''[[Green Acres]]'', and ''[[Petticoat Junction]]'' that sounded like a pig grunting.
* The Minbari
== [[Music]] ==
▲== Music ==
* [[Animusic]] creates a wide variety of fantastic (in both senses of the word) instruments for their music videos, ranging from balls being shot out of pipes, to lasers, to odd and automated machines, to some gigantic, Frankensteinian conglomeration of string instruments.
== [[Puppet Shows]] ==▼
▲== Puppet Shows ==
* ''[[The Muppet Show]]''
** In an episode, Crazy Harry plays the explodaphone.
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* On ''[[The Banana Splits]]'', Fleagle had the Calliopasaxaviatrumparimbaclaribasotrombaphone.
== [[Web Comics]] ==▼
▲== Web Comics ==
* The Silverodeon from ''[[Girl Genius]]'': part organ, part anything-you-can-fit-in-there. Also, the musical notation used in the series is quite otherworldly.
* In ''[[Homestuck]]'', Jade plays the eclectic bass. It resembles an electric bass guitar, but with multiple necks and built-in keyboard synths. Only Jade's dream self can play it properly, because only her dream self can grow the necessary extra arms.
* The holophonor from ''[[Futurama]]'', which creates its own visual accompaniment. It's so difficult that only a few humans can play it, and most of them aren't that good at it.
* ''[[Dave the Barbarian]]'' plays the Garglepipes, mostly to annoy Candy.
* The "invented instrument" with no other name that Carlos created in an episode of ''[[The Magic School Bus]]''. He adds all sorts of bells and whistles on it, leading to Mrs. Frizzle to give a lesson on sound, and ''why'' it doesn't work.
* Most of the instruments in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' are real Asian instruments, but then there's the tsungi horn, which has a funny name on top of being completely fictional.
* ''[[A Charlie Brown Christmas]]'': Schroeder's toy piano, capable of imitating a grand piano and a ''pipe organ.'' [[Beyond the Impossible|And a toy piano]].
* Quite a few positively psychotic examples from [[Dr. Seuss]]'s ''[[How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (novel)|How the Grinch Stole Christmas]]''.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* The [[wikipedia:Zeusaphone|Zeusaphone]], a.k.a. the [[A Worldwide Punomenon|Thoremin]]. It's a Tesla coil that plays music. Loudly.
* The [[wikipedia:Bazooka (instrument)|Bazooka]], invented by radio comedian Bob Burns and popularized in the
* [[Benjamin Franklin]] invented the Glass Armonica, sort of a cross between a lathe and those guys who play wine glasses by running a moistened finger along their rims.
** The reason it fell out of style was because it was noted long time players got sick. Turned out glass back then contained lead.
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* Apparently, the original "Golden Bull" was an [[Incredibly Lame Pun|instrument of murder]]: a bound prisoner would be forced inside, the only supply of air linked to a horn. Then the outside would be roasted, and the prisoner's screams as he was being cooked alive would sound like the lows of a bull.
* The many invented musical instruments of [[PDQ Bach]], as made up by Peter Schickele. The hardart, covered in little glass doors you put money in to get out percussion tools (in a concerto for horn and hardart, which is a shout-out to the [[wikipedia:Horn and Hardart|automat chain of that name]]). The left-handed sewer flute. The double-reed slide music stand. The dill piccolo. The ''lasso de amore''.
** ''The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach'' tells of the Pandemonium, described by its inventor, Ludwig Zahnstocker ([[PDQ Bach]] was his apprentice at the time), as "the loudest instrument ever created upon the earth." A cross-section diagram shows an organ pipe, two cannonballs, a percussion cap, a plate of glass, and a number of other noise-producing
* [[wikipedia:Harry Partch|Harry Partch]] made numerous instruments out of junk and scrap parts and composed pieces for them.
** To single out some of the more unusual examples, the Zymo-Xyl (made of tuned hubcaps and liquor bottles) and the Blowboy (an exhaust pipe welded to a set of bellows).
* [[wikipedia:Moondog|Louis "Moondog" Hardin]] composed for orchestra, but also for several instruments he built and played on street corners, when he wasn't busy writing poetry or sewing his own clothes. Oh, and he was blind most of his life.
* [[Les Luthiers]] is widely known for this, though it has decreased through years. Most memorable are a 4
* The [[wikipedia:Hydraulophone|hydraulophone]] and related instruments.
* Argentine comedian Hugo Varela is famous for his musical routines which involves lots of funny-looking musical instruments made entirely of scrap material or unusual things like a ''chamberpot''. And they sound incredibly well, to boot.
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* Bowed hand saws produce a theremin-like "woo woo" sound.
* The Bowed Piano Ensemble. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y6kXnc9llw Listen here].
* Until its 2018 season, [http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/ Grounds for Sculpture], an immense sculpture garden outside of Trenton, NJ,
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Music Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Xenophone]]
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