I like watching people do interesting things.  This guy is a street musician playing several instruments at once by himself.  Pretty creative.

Here’s a little Memorial Day fun for you.

I’m not going to spoil the video, but watch this video all the way through, no matter how pointless it seems in the first half.  By the time you reach the second half, I think you’ll be impressed with this guy’s creativity and dedication.

Here’s just a quick little video for you today showing off some creative musicianship.

This lady not only plays the guitar upside down, she’s so incredibly casual about it, too… almost like she barely knows she’s doing it!  I love it!

You don’t have to write new stuff to be musically creative!  Sometimes taking existing songs and twisting them into your own style, or putting them together in new ways can be just as much of a creative pieces as when you write songs “from scratch”.

Check out this video who took 22 TV Show Theme songs and put them together into an acoustic medley.  I love this kind of stuff.

You can play music without a musical instrument

So a quick survey… how many of you have ever “played” a song in a weird way… tapping out the notes on your steering wheel when you were driving, tapping a glass that is half full of water, blowing in a glass bottle, flicking a rubber band.

I’m sure most of you that are musical have done something similar, at least for a few seconds, just messing around to see what kinds of sounds you can get.

In my random searches on Youtube I came across this video: Someone playing the theme to Super Mario Brothers on a RULER… yes, a ruler.

It just goes to show that you don’t even need a musical instrument to play music… as long as you’re willing to put a little effort into it.

Last week I showed someone playing the Super Mario Brothers theme on a ruler.

Today I have something that was a probably little more time consuming to set up.

Someone set up a series of glass bottles in the proper order and spacing so that when they drove a remote control car past (set up with something to hit those bottles on the way by), the Super Mario Brothers theme song would be played.

I can’t understand what the people are saying (they’re not speaking English), but this is an impressive feat!

I am a big big fan of people who find creative ways to express themselves, and I’m going to show off a couple examples that I’ve found on YouTube today.

I talk a lot about writing and creating your own songs, which is what I assume most of you reading this blog are into. But because of YouTube I’ve really started to learn that there are a lot of ways to be musically creative without creating a new piece of music, but rather altering an existing piece.

I’m actually not talking about simple covers, although there are a lot of great and creative covers on YouTube. (and now that I think about it, maybe I’ll post about them in the next week or so… maybe even sooner)

I’m actually talking about taking two pieces of music and combining them into one song.

There are two primary ways of doing this. The first way we’ll talk about is the “mashup”.

I’m actually really impressed with Mash-ups. Maybe I give them too much credit… I don’t know because I’ve never tried to make one… but I think it takes a good ear for music to hear two songs that can fit together well, and I think it takes some musical creativity to pull it off well.

My favorite mashup is a mix of an acoustic version of “Times Like These” by the Foo Fighters (one of my favorite bands), and “Sweet Child o’ Mine” by Guns N Roses. Check out the video:

I love that version of those songs. I listen to it often. Whoever made that video might not have picked up an instrument or written a completely new piece, but he was creative in putting two things together and made a song that is very enjoyable.

The second example is completely different. The guy in the video didn’t write a new song, but he took two separate songs (the theme song to The Simpsons and the theme song to the original Star Trek series) and put them together… by performing the new piece himself.

I love this video for a lot of reasons!

First of all, I love Star Trek, and I love The Simpsons.

Second of all, I love the fact that he was creative enough to blend the two songs in a very clever way.

And thirdly, I love his instrumentation: A keyboard, a theremin, and a funnel (yep, a funnel). I am a big fan of unusual instrumentation, no matter how “unprofessional” it may seem.

Check out the video:

These two songs are great examples of figuring out ways to express musical creativity.  It’s not always about writing or creating something brand new.  Sometimes it’s about looking at existing things in new ways.

Wine Glass Player

As you know, I’m very interested in the idea of finding unusual ways to make music.

I’ve heard of people playing wine glasses before, so this isn’t a completely new idea to me, but I thought I’d share this video with you anyway. I’m impressed that people take ordinary things like glasses of liquid and turn them into musical instruments.

If that’s not what “creative music” is all about, I don’t know what is.

… and just in case that really grabbed you, here’s an eHow article on how to get started making Wine Glass Music.

How to Play Wine Glasses

I am intrigued by odd and rare instruments and the people who play them.

Here is another video I found on YouTube of a woman playing something that’s listed as a “Glass Armonica”  It’s an interesting instrument that I’ve never seen before.

Can you play more than one thing at a time?

This is a video of Greg Pattillo.  He plays the flute and beat-boxes at the same time.  I’ve heard other people do that before… not to say that it doesn’t take talent, of course.  But in this video, Greg took things one step further.  By using a piano with a sustain pedal, he added in some simple held out chords that filled out his sound immensely.