A mysterious group of prehistoric hunter-gatherers who once inhabited the southern Texas coast may have created music in a hauntingly unconventional way—by transforming human bones into instruments.

Haymes calls himself a “utility infielder” in Ramblin Jug Stompers, responsible for many of the unusual sounds that don’t come from the typical stringed instruments in acoustic bands. At the band’s ...

Duck herders in Java have been using a traditional large bamboo object called a kowangan to protect themselves against the rain. The kowangan can be worn as a hat or be placed on the ground as a ...

Movies set in the past often rely on music to tell us just where we are. Most, but not all, of the composers of this year's period pieces felt the obligation to reflect time and place. For Ridley ...

Add Popular Science (opens in a new tab) More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results.

Pianos use little hammers striking taut strings to make tones. The Mellotron used lots of individual tape mechanisms. Meanwhile, the Trans-Harmonium from [Emily Francisco] uses an altogether more ...

Cast and crew breathing and vocalizing together. Banging giant metal plates in a London warehouse. Inventing impressionistic vocal colors for the Elizabethan era. Hiring a 90-piece orchestra to ...

Music has a funny way of surprising us. Sometimes it's not the guitar solo or the vocal runs that stick with you. You know the ones. The tracks where you pause and think, what is that? That little ...

It's hard to stand out, particularly in the 1980s. These are three one-hit wonders from the 1980s that use weird instruments.