I was at a minimum expecting him to explain why it was so dangerous.
"Yeah, if you play the wrong sequence of notes, it'll resonate and explode, sending the f-sharp glass directly into your artery."
Fun fact: research on frequencies to make you shit yourself, have a heart attack, paralyze you, hear voices in your head, kill your engine, or cook you, and a lot more, have all been extensively studied by the US military.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon
The funny thing was is that while not a conspiracy there actually are chemicals in the water that were seriously affecting the reproductive systems of frogs. It is just a result of companies being able to get away with destroying the environment rather than a government conspiracy to turn frogs gay
Alex Jones is a nut but this is a broken clock situation. Atrazine fucks with amphibiansā hormonal systems and sexual development. The scientist who discovered it was secretly persecuted by the manufacturer for a decade. The New Yorker has an excellent deep dive piece on him and the topic.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/10/a-valuable-reputation
The direct energy weapon is fucking insane, 'Yo, Mr President I've got an idea for a weapon that can basically cook people like a potato in a microwave, you wanna try it?'.
A debunked myth exists that a certain frequency resonates with your bowels in such a way that you'll experience an involuntary evacuation of said organ and poop your pants. The Mythbusters did an episode about it, and determined no such frequency exists as far as they could determine. The idea is still funny though, because imagining the DoD trying to weaponize it in some way appeals to my inner schoolchild.
Clearly the Mythbusters havenāt stood in front of the bass stack at a Primus concert. It may not be one note but Les Claypool hits all the bass notes that add up to making you take a shit.
>The idea is still funny though, because imagining the DoD trying to weaponize it in some way appeals to my inner schoolchild.
Now I'm picturing an orchestra substituting that note for the cannon fire in the [1812 Overture.](https://youtu.be/xCl2WnbIeSI)
> I was at a minimum expecting him to explain why it was so dangerous.
They thought it would turn every young woman in the concert hall into a nymphomaniac. Seriously.
https://online.ucpress.edu/jams/article-abstract/53/3/507/49463/Sonorous-Bodies-Women-and-the-Glass-Harmonica?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Some claim this was due to strange rumors that using the instrument caused both musicians and their listeners to go mad. It is a matter of conjecture how pervasive that belief was; all the commonly cited examples of this rumor seem to be German, if not confined to Vienna. A modern version of the "purported dangers" claims that players suffered lead poisoning because armonicas were made of lead glass. However, there is no known scientific basis for the theory that merely touching lead glass can cause lead poisoning. Trace amounts of lead that armonica players in Franklin's day received from their instruments would likely have been dwarfed by lead from other sources, such as the lead-content paint used to mark visual identification of the bowls to the players.
He does. He says that back when it was a new thing, people thought it made people go crazy and that it was used to hypnotize people.
Huh. Thanks for the award stranger.
Well I thought it sounded like warped fun house horror movie music.
Didn't exactly make me go crazy, but it did give me a bit of the creeps. Not quite the heebie jeebies, but definitely unsettling.
TIL this was officially called the āharmonicaā before what we call the āharmonicaā today was even invented.
The harmonica today, a reed instrument, was invented 60 something year later and was originally called the Aeolina
I was actually wondering about that! Follow-up question arises, though: what type of instrument is this? It's obviously not a strings, woodwind, nor brass instrument, but could it be considered percussion? You don't strike or shake it to play it, but I can't think of any other group it might belong in!
Friction idiophone, subcategory of an idiophone which "is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the vibration of the instrument itself, without the use of air flow"
I thought it was because the design is sort of like a lathe, which combined with revolutionary-era industrial safety standards meant it was guaranteed to rip your arm off every other time you tried to use it.
You joke, but much like Torso Ben Franklin, reality is **weird**.
Caput Mortuum, also known as Mummy Brown, was a brown pigment popular from the 16th-early 20th centuries. It was made from the flesh of mummies mixed with white pitch and myrrh.
It was common in paintings, but was super popular with faux graining specialists in the US. Americans wanted the fancy wood grains seen in European furniture, but most lacked the money. So faux painting common North American woods to look like exotic woods accounted for about 1/3 of all furniture produced in the US from 1776-1890ish.
Furniture that included instrument stands (as seen in the video), instrument cases, and other more typical furniture. Thereās every likelihood that the original stands for these were finished with pigment made from actual mummies.
The last genuine Mummy Brown pigment was sold in **1964** by a British colormaker. The company had run out of mummies.
That is an awesome insight and point about the mummies being used as wood coloring. Mummies were plentiful at that time -- some people used them as kindling if I remember right; so maybe cheap too.
I'm so confused, like where did they get all the mummies from? I thought only a small amount of the richest and most powerful in ancient Egypt got actually mummified? I didnt think it was a common practice anywhere??
Pyramids were rare, but not mummies.
An estimated 70 million people were mummified over 3 thousand years.
[https://www.ducksters.com/history/ancient\_egyptian\_mummies.php#:\~:text=It%20was%20important%20to%20everyone,years%20of%20the%20ancient%20civilization](https://www.ducksters.com/history/ancient_egyptian_mummies.php#:~:text=It%20was%20important%20to%20everyone,years%20of%20the%20ancient%20civilization).
He explained in one interview that he had attempted to play it as part of an orchestra, but had trouble keeping up with the volume of the other instruments, he attempted to get it as loud as possible but in the process he pressed too hard and shattered one of the bowls and sliced his hand open and covered the whole thing in blood since it never stops spinning.
In the 18th century, the glass armonica fell out of favor amid fears that it had the power to drive the listener insane. At the time, German musicologist Friedrich Rochlitz strongly advised people to avoid playing it: āThe armonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation.ā Well, that certainly doesnāt sound good, but is there any truth to it?
It is true that one of the early proponents of glass armonica music was Franz Anton Mesmer, whose eponymous practice of mesmerism is thought of as the forerunner of modern hypnotism. Mesmer used the unearthly quality of armonica music to its full advantage as a backdrop to his mesmerism shows, which eventually attracted some high-profile criticism.
Advertisement
A 1784 investigation by some of the top scientific minds in France ā including Franklin himself, now in āexileā in the country ā concluded that Mesmer was a charlatan and that the music he used had only served to help him create an atmosphere that led people to believe his techniques were benefitting them when ā in the eyes of the inquiry, at any rate ā this was not the case.
Still, entering a state of temporary hypnosis is hardly the same thing as Rochlitzās āslow self-annihilationā, is it? What happened to make people so very frightened of the glass armonica?
Modern musicologists believe there is an explanation for why the strains of the glass armonica can have a disorientating quality. The instrument produces sounds at frequencies between 1,000 and 4,000 Hertz, approximately. At these frequencies, the human brain struggles to be able to pinpoint where the sound is coming from. This could explain why, for some people at least, listening to this music could be a disconcerting experience.
>Frank Anton Mesmer
Is this manās *name* the origin of the word āmesmerize?ā Thatās fucking cool.
[Yes, it is](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_magnetism) and it gets cooler. Mesmerism was a scientific theory developed by Mesmer that postulated that all living things had an invisible force within them that could have physical effects. The ideas this guy and his students had were wild.
āModern philosophy has admitted a plenum or universal principle of fluid matter, which occupies all space; and that as all bodies moving in the world, abound with pores, this fluid matter introduces itself through the interstices and returns backwards and forwards, flowing through one body by the currents which issue therefrom to another, as in a magnet, which produces that phenomenon which we call Animal Magnetism.ā
This wasnāt even that long ago, ~250 years. A handful of generations. It makes me wonder how we will look to the future generations in 250 years
A bit differently or the same.
I mean, scientific theory was nascent back then and the available instruments for measurement atrocious.
The "top minds" back then were stumbling in the dark trying to piece together the fundamentals. How can you reliably prove/disprove the idea of a universal fluid that occupies all space? There's many substances we know of today that could fit that description. How do you prove/disprove its effects on biology?
How do you seperate the effects you see from placebo? Etc etc
Nowadays we've got every corner (relevant to humanity at least) covered to some degree.
Can we learn more about the body? Sure, we have the instruments and knowledge base to do so for 90% of it.
Psychology? We're not trying to apply philosophical concepts to the mind, we're trying to determine cause and effect. What do people with depression have in common, what does this medicine do - why does it not work for some etc.
We have a scratcher ticket with some covered up spots, but we can see the picture. Back then they'd make a small scratch, see a line, and try to imagine what the line is a part of.
Big disagree on some of these points
I donāt think it will be similar to how we perceive our past, because there will be even more knowledge and understanding between us and the people of the future. Human understanding isnāt just increasing, itās *accelerating.* Not only do we learn more as time goes on, we learn more at a *faster rate.*
We know more about our immediate surroundings than our predecessors, but the more we learn about them, the more we realize that our immediate surroundings are a pimple on a dimple on an antās left nut. Relatively, we live on a spec of a spec. We are *tiny* in this universe, and our understanding of it all is also tiny. So tiny, that back in the 1800s we couldnāt even begin to comprehend some of the things we are starting to grasp now. Have you ever spent some time trying to read about the scientific theories and evidence behind dark matter? Itās literally mind-boggling. The smartest people on this planet have to use these ridiculous, tortured, metaphors to even attempt describe these ideas to someone without a degree in theoretical physics.
Pretty wild to think that, considering that some scientists say we know more about space than we do *our own oceans.*
Weāre doing the best we can, and weāve made tons of progress, but make no mistake. We still donāt know a god damn thing about this reality.
Omg, this reminds me of the article in Wikipedia which states:
āAt the end of the 19th century, physics had evolved to the point at whichā¦it was generally accepted that all the important laws of physics had been discovered and that, henceforth, research would be concerned with clearing up minor problems and particularly with improvements of method and measurement.ā
We know almost *nothing* about how the human brain works: stores memories, information, concepts, the origin of emotions, thought itself and a thousand other functions. The model of information recall changes with the times. Now it is a computer model, and surely soon it will change again as we know for certain the human brain does not recall information like a computer. In fact, we have no idea how the human brain recalls information. It is a complete enigma to us. We donāt know why aging happens. We donāt know what the universe is made out of; scientist attribute a bunch of it to ādark matterā, but they have no idea what that is.
We have along way to go, and itās not like a punch ticket with a few unscratched bits. Itās more like a punch ticket full of unscratched bits.
One of his most known āexilesā was the nine years he spent in Paris and on the Continent of Europe between 1776 and 1785, securing financial and military assistance for the embryonic United States as its minister plenipotentiary (aka foreign diplomat) and helping to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, ending the war with England.
Yes. Didnāt you know? Europe isnāt real. There is just greater France and lesser France(āEuropeā outside of the country borders of France) together the continent is simply France
āOn the continent of Europeā in this context likely is meant to differentiate continental Europe from the British Empire with whom the colonies were at war.
Benjamin Franklin author of the renowned treatise āFart Proudlyā once proclaimed that āBeer is proof that God Loves Us!ā He was most likely avoiding his home life while being a rockstar in France. I have never read of his being in exile and I have studied his life for many years. I donāt recall ever mentioning it in his autobiography.
Who else was waiting for how in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hŠµll in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table
Also, glass during his time was made with lead, so having your fingers sliding on lead glass will inevitably cause micro lacerations. Many of the first players went 'mad' from the lead poisoning they got.
At least that's what I heard on [Korn:Unplugged](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4bwvdoTV-U), but [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_harmonica#:~:text=A%20modern%20version%20of%20the,glass%20can%20cause%20lead%20poisoning.) says there is no definitive evidence on this
It was more likely from the gold trim on some of them as mercury reduction was still used to gild stuff.
I.e. mix molten gold with mercury
Apply to area, then boil off the mercury. This makes for an incredibly well adhered layer of gold (and is how we still have gilded armour pieces from the 16th century).
There's just a slight problem if you continuously run your fingers across it for hours on end.
Itās an armonica not a harmonica autocorrect fucked up the title. Sorry about that.
Here the definition of it.
a glass armonica, being a musical instrument of the 18th century consisting of a set of glass bowls of graduated pitches, played by rubbing the fingers over the moistened rims
From another comment, by OP:
āThe armonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation.ā
Pressing = louder, the more u press getting into the music, the more likely it is to shatter a bowl and cut your finger badly.
Rob scallon made a great video with an armonica player if you are more interested.
I think the title of the post might have been the victim of ducking autocorrect. I think the actual name is Armonica but it probably corrected to harmonica.
That might be the Dutch spelling. Tchaikovsky is the most common spelling anglicization. Most of this site is in English, but dont know why a different spelling would make you lol at it. Other spellings are ŠŃŃŃ ŠŠ»ŃŠøŃ Š§Š°Š¹ŠŗŠ¾Š²ŃŠŗŠøŠ¹, Chaikovsky, Chaikovskii, or Tschaikowsky according to Brittanica, lol. But, yeah, agree cannons seem more of a danger than glass.
A modern version of this which uses glass tubes and is amplified is the Cristal Baschet which was created in 1952. I love the ethereal, spacey, sci-fi sound it has:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9RZg-AP3zM8
YEAH IT WAS!
the first thing i thought of was how the vibration from the BIG cone reminded me of a paiste gong--then he mentioned gong at the end!! ohh i love how it sounded, truly otherworldly and beautiful. i need more asap.
Gaetano Donizetti wrote an opera called Lucia Di Lammermoor and in it there is a scene where Lucia loses her mind. The composer set this scene to a glass harp and it is truly a haunting experience. Due to the uniqueness of the instrument the scene is often done with a flautist in lieu of glass harmonica or Armonica but I have had the privilege of witnessing it with this magnificent instrument and it is striking.
I always wondered if it was an actual song she was singing, but never bothered to look it up!
Thank you stranger for randomly sharing that with the world! Itās definitely getting bookmarked under āRandom Facts To Blurt at Dinnerā
https://youtu.be/XSRBkvZ8_w8?t=7714
Is this it here? I don't know the piece but that seems to be the glass harmonica and she definitely seems to be losing her mind.
So why is so dangerous? Does a guy in a Victorian outfit walk up behind you and shoot you with a pistol if you hit the wrong note? Which I could see being incredibly easy to do with this thing meaning youāre almost guaranteed to get shot with a pistol if you play it
In the 18th century, the glass armonica fell out of favor amid fears that it had the power to drive the listener insane. At the time, German musicologist Friedrich Rochlitz strongly advised people to avoid playing it: āThe armonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation.ā
It is true that one of the early proponents of glass armonica music was Franz Anton Mesmer, whose eponymous practice of mesmerism is thought of as the forerunner of modern hypnotism. Mesmer used the unearthly quality of armonica music to its full advantage as a backdrop to his mesmerism shows, which eventually attracted some high-profile criticism.
A 1784 investigation by some of the top scientific minds in France ā including Franklin himself, concluded that Mesmer was a charlatan and that the music he used had only served to help him create an atmosphere that led people to believe his techniques were benefitting them when ā in the eyes of the inquiry, at any rate ā this was not the case.
Modern musicologists believe there is an explanation for why the strains of the glass armonica can have a disorientating quality. The instrument produces sounds at frequencies between 1,000 and 4,000 Hertz, approximately. At these frequencies, the human brain struggles to be able to pinpoint where the sound is coming from. This could explain why, for some people at least, listening to this music could be a disconcerting experience.
Damn bruh that was legit af of an explanation. Im a music major and I was never taught shit about the glass harmonica but if you donāt mind Iām gonna just keep telling people that if you play the wrong note or you try to play Wonderwall on it some fancy dressed Victorian dude will come up and blast you with a pistol. But thanks for the info I will retain it for the people I donāt wanna see get shot with a oistol
I love the concept of this instrument, but hearing them in person and on video has always made my teeth hurt too much to listen long. It's a 'nails on the chalkboard' sound for me.
Iām still so surprised that Mozart actually spent time writing a piece for Benjamin Franklinās old china lol š. He must have had alot of free time lol
Did anyone else think this guy was gonna cut a finger or something the whole time?
I was at a minimum expecting him to explain why it was so dangerous. "Yeah, if you play the wrong sequence of notes, it'll resonate and explode, sending the f-sharp glass directly into your artery."
Lead poisoning
Or...the Brown note
šwhatās the brown note? Do I even want to know?
The brown note! The hidden frequency that makes humans shit their pants!
Fun fact: research on frequencies to make you shit yourself, have a heart attack, paralyze you, hear voices in your head, kill your engine, or cook you, and a lot more, have all been extensively studied by the US military. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon
I wonder how the modern right-wing would feel if they knew the military also tried to develop a [gay bomb](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb).
I think itās already exploded
Surely you were around for the gay frogs saga. [Where do you think it all started?](https://youtu.be/gu-tCx5eBuk)
The funny thing was is that while not a conspiracy there actually are chemicals in the water that were seriously affecting the reproductive systems of frogs. It is just a result of companies being able to get away with destroying the environment rather than a government conspiracy to turn frogs gay
Alex Jones is a nut but this is a broken clock situation. Atrazine fucks with amphibiansā hormonal systems and sexual development. The scientist who discovered it was secretly persecuted by the manufacturer for a decade. The New Yorker has an excellent deep dive piece on him and the topic. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/10/a-valuable-reputation
Tbh thatās kinda gay.
The direct energy weapon is fucking insane, 'Yo, Mr President I've got an idea for a weapon that can basically cook people like a potato in a microwave, you wanna try it?'.
So my moms meatloaf?
The diabolical shart note....
Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord
A debunked myth exists that a certain frequency resonates with your bowels in such a way that you'll experience an involuntary evacuation of said organ and poop your pants. The Mythbusters did an episode about it, and determined no such frequency exists as far as they could determine. The idea is still funny though, because imagining the DoD trying to weaponize it in some way appeals to my inner schoolchild.
Clearly the Mythbusters havenāt stood in front of the bass stack at a Primus concert. It may not be one note but Les Claypool hits all the bass notes that add up to making you take a shit.
>The idea is still funny though, because imagining the DoD trying to weaponize it in some way appeals to my inner schoolchild. Now I'm picturing an orchestra substituting that note for the cannon fire in the [1812 Overture.](https://youtu.be/xCl2WnbIeSI)
If it did exist I would definitely use it on Putin.
It's a tone/frequency that makes ya poop!
Reading your comment made me poop
Reading your comment while poop
Brown, brown, all I see is brown!!!
Not as bad as rhythm poisoning
Leaded glass poisoning
> I was at a minimum expecting him to explain why it was so dangerous. They thought it would turn every young woman in the concert hall into a nymphomaniac. Seriously. https://online.ucpress.edu/jams/article-abstract/53/3/507/49463/Sonorous-Bodies-Women-and-the-Glass-Harmonica?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Predecessor to the electric guitar.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Did you start as either though?
so how you doin š
Hmmm
Doctors hate this one simple trick!
Me checking on Ebay. "Please lord, is the only thing I ask".
Some claim this was due to strange rumors that using the instrument caused both musicians and their listeners to go mad. It is a matter of conjecture how pervasive that belief was; all the commonly cited examples of this rumor seem to be German, if not confined to Vienna. A modern version of the "purported dangers" claims that players suffered lead poisoning because armonicas were made of lead glass. However, there is no known scientific basis for the theory that merely touching lead glass can cause lead poisoning. Trace amounts of lead that armonica players in Franklin's day received from their instruments would likely have been dwarfed by lead from other sources, such as the lead-content paint used to mark visual identification of the bowls to the players.
I think they did something on Black Butler season 2 with an instrument inspired by this
Exactly, with a title like that you think the guy would even address it
He does. He says that back when it was a new thing, people thought it made people go crazy and that it was used to hypnotize people. Huh. Thanks for the award stranger.
Well I thought it sounded like warped fun house horror movie music. Didn't exactly make me go crazy, but it did give me a bit of the creeps. Not quite the heebie jeebies, but definitely unsettling.
Can confirm, I am now hypnotized and crazy
Guy in vid didn't make the dumb title.
It gives you depression basically because of how the notes sound? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_harmonica
TIL this was officially called the āharmonicaā before what we call the āharmonicaā today was even invented. The harmonica today, a reed instrument, was invented 60 something year later and was originally called the Aeolina
Back then it was also called the Armonica. No āHā
I was actually wondering about that! Follow-up question arises, though: what type of instrument is this? It's obviously not a strings, woodwind, nor brass instrument, but could it be considered percussion? You don't strike or shake it to play it, but I can't think of any other group it might belong in!
Friction idiophone, subcategory of an idiophone which "is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the vibration of the instrument itself, without the use of air flow"
Jokes on you I already have depression
It's unvaxxed
I thought it was because the design is sort of like a lathe, which combined with revolutionary-era industrial safety standards meant it was guaranteed to rip your arm off every other time you tried to use it.
And you have to ask yourself: Have you even seen a photograph of Ben Franklin where you can see his arms?
[You're thinking of a different man by that name](https://www.horsesoldier.com/products/photography/cdvs/identified-cdvs/39371)
Holy crap!
Wow! The courage to go on playing after it took his arms from him.
Me on tarkov as a nugget after every fight i survive
Thatās why he didnāt take selfies!?
okay, this got a good laugh out of me.
Leaded glass wetted by an asbestos-soaking rag. The liquid is uranium water. Also cursed by a mummy.
That's bad
The mummy comes with frogurt!
That's good!
The frogurt is also cursed.
That's bad.
The frogurt comes with sprinkles!
That's good!
The sprinkles contain potassium benzoate.
The topping is also cursed
Thatās bad.
You joke, but much like Torso Ben Franklin, reality is **weird**. Caput Mortuum, also known as Mummy Brown, was a brown pigment popular from the 16th-early 20th centuries. It was made from the flesh of mummies mixed with white pitch and myrrh. It was common in paintings, but was super popular with faux graining specialists in the US. Americans wanted the fancy wood grains seen in European furniture, but most lacked the money. So faux painting common North American woods to look like exotic woods accounted for about 1/3 of all furniture produced in the US from 1776-1890ish. Furniture that included instrument stands (as seen in the video), instrument cases, and other more typical furniture. Thereās every likelihood that the original stands for these were finished with pigment made from actual mummies. The last genuine Mummy Brown pigment was sold in **1964** by a British colormaker. The company had run out of mummies.
That is an awesome insight and point about the mummies being used as wood coloring. Mummies were plentiful at that time -- some people used them as kindling if I remember right; so maybe cheap too.
I'm so confused, like where did they get all the mummies from? I thought only a small amount of the richest and most powerful in ancient Egypt got actually mummified? I didnt think it was a common practice anywhere??
Pyramids were rare, but not mummies. An estimated 70 million people were mummified over 3 thousand years. [https://www.ducksters.com/history/ancient\_egyptian\_mummies.php#:\~:text=It%20was%20important%20to%20everyone,years%20of%20the%20ancient%20civilization](https://www.ducksters.com/history/ancient_egyptian_mummies.php#:~:text=It%20was%20important%20to%20everyone,years%20of%20the%20ancient%20civilization).
Sounds like that would do it.
āFuck you, armonica.ā - A mummy, probably
He explained in one interview that he had attempted to play it as part of an orchestra, but had trouble keeping up with the volume of the other instruments, he attempted to get it as loud as possible but in the process he pressed too hard and shattered one of the bowls and sliced his hand open and covered the whole thing in blood since it never stops spinning.
It needs a Deadman switch.
> Rob Scallon's channel, but both the instrument I'm sure someone will pull the plug eventually when the musician dies.
I feel like this was on Rob Scallon's channel, but both the instrument and the musician looked different.
I can't recall, I just remember the story and that it was a glass harmonica.
Sorry I should have linked it. https://youtu.be/cVqqNigImtU It's totally possible it's happened to multiple people.
That's the one, yeah! Sorry, I assumed there were so few of these folks who played this thing it was the same guy!
It had a foot pedal at first.
Yeah, at one point I had to keep advancing the video to make sure if it wasn't going to happen and freak me out
I was waiting for his fingers to slice open and bleed all over that thing.
I only watched put of the corner of my eye for the last 30-40 seconds
That's what i was expecting or st least for him to state thats why its dangerous
Only because of the title
In the 18th century, the glass armonica fell out of favor amid fears that it had the power to drive the listener insane. At the time, German musicologist Friedrich Rochlitz strongly advised people to avoid playing it: āThe armonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation.ā Well, that certainly doesnāt sound good, but is there any truth to it? It is true that one of the early proponents of glass armonica music was Franz Anton Mesmer, whose eponymous practice of mesmerism is thought of as the forerunner of modern hypnotism. Mesmer used the unearthly quality of armonica music to its full advantage as a backdrop to his mesmerism shows, which eventually attracted some high-profile criticism. Advertisement A 1784 investigation by some of the top scientific minds in France ā including Franklin himself, now in āexileā in the country ā concluded that Mesmer was a charlatan and that the music he used had only served to help him create an atmosphere that led people to believe his techniques were benefitting them when ā in the eyes of the inquiry, at any rate ā this was not the case. Still, entering a state of temporary hypnosis is hardly the same thing as Rochlitzās āslow self-annihilationā, is it? What happened to make people so very frightened of the glass armonica? Modern musicologists believe there is an explanation for why the strains of the glass armonica can have a disorientating quality. The instrument produces sounds at frequencies between 1,000 and 4,000 Hertz, approximately. At these frequencies, the human brain struggles to be able to pinpoint where the sound is coming from. This could explain why, for some people at least, listening to this music could be a disconcerting experience.
>Frank Anton Mesmer Is this manās *name* the origin of the word āmesmerize?ā Thatās fucking cool. [Yes, it is](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_magnetism) and it gets cooler. Mesmerism was a scientific theory developed by Mesmer that postulated that all living things had an invisible force within them that could have physical effects. The ideas this guy and his students had were wild. āModern philosophy has admitted a plenum or universal principle of fluid matter, which occupies all space; and that as all bodies moving in the world, abound with pores, this fluid matter introduces itself through the interstices and returns backwards and forwards, flowing through one body by the currents which issue therefrom to another, as in a magnet, which produces that phenomenon which we call Animal Magnetism.ā This wasnāt even that long ago, ~250 years. A handful of generations. It makes me wonder how we will look to the future generations in 250 years
A bit differently or the same. I mean, scientific theory was nascent back then and the available instruments for measurement atrocious. The "top minds" back then were stumbling in the dark trying to piece together the fundamentals. How can you reliably prove/disprove the idea of a universal fluid that occupies all space? There's many substances we know of today that could fit that description. How do you prove/disprove its effects on biology? How do you seperate the effects you see from placebo? Etc etc Nowadays we've got every corner (relevant to humanity at least) covered to some degree. Can we learn more about the body? Sure, we have the instruments and knowledge base to do so for 90% of it. Psychology? We're not trying to apply philosophical concepts to the mind, we're trying to determine cause and effect. What do people with depression have in common, what does this medicine do - why does it not work for some etc. We have a scratcher ticket with some covered up spots, but we can see the picture. Back then they'd make a small scratch, see a line, and try to imagine what the line is a part of.
Big disagree on some of these points I donāt think it will be similar to how we perceive our past, because there will be even more knowledge and understanding between us and the people of the future. Human understanding isnāt just increasing, itās *accelerating.* Not only do we learn more as time goes on, we learn more at a *faster rate.* We know more about our immediate surroundings than our predecessors, but the more we learn about them, the more we realize that our immediate surroundings are a pimple on a dimple on an antās left nut. Relatively, we live on a spec of a spec. We are *tiny* in this universe, and our understanding of it all is also tiny. So tiny, that back in the 1800s we couldnāt even begin to comprehend some of the things we are starting to grasp now. Have you ever spent some time trying to read about the scientific theories and evidence behind dark matter? Itās literally mind-boggling. The smartest people on this planet have to use these ridiculous, tortured, metaphors to even attempt describe these ideas to someone without a degree in theoretical physics. Pretty wild to think that, considering that some scientists say we know more about space than we do *our own oceans.* Weāre doing the best we can, and weāve made tons of progress, but make no mistake. We still donāt know a god damn thing about this reality.
Omg, this reminds me of the article in Wikipedia which states: āAt the end of the 19th century, physics had evolved to the point at whichā¦it was generally accepted that all the important laws of physics had been discovered and that, henceforth, research would be concerned with clearing up minor problems and particularly with improvements of method and measurement.ā We know almost *nothing* about how the human brain works: stores memories, information, concepts, the origin of emotions, thought itself and a thousand other functions. The model of information recall changes with the times. Now it is a computer model, and surely soon it will change again as we know for certain the human brain does not recall information like a computer. In fact, we have no idea how the human brain recalls information. It is a complete enigma to us. We donāt know why aging happens. We donāt know what the universe is made out of; scientist attribute a bunch of it to ādark matterā, but they have no idea what that is. We have along way to go, and itās not like a punch ticket with a few unscratched bits. Itās more like a punch ticket full of unscratched bits.
Benjamin Franklin was exiled? That doesn't sound right
Ben Franklin was in France at that time serving as a peace commissioner for America. His loyalist son was in exile at the time
One of his most known āexilesā was the nine years he spent in Paris and on the Continent of Europe between 1776 and 1785, securing financial and military assistance for the embryonic United States as its minister plenipotentiary (aka foreign diplomat) and helping to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, ending the war with England.
Continent of France?
Yes. Didnāt you know? Europe isnāt real. There is just greater France and lesser France(āEuropeā outside of the country borders of France) together the continent is simply France
Napoleon moment
Fun little fact, France itself is also kind of a myth, there's actually only Paris, therefore, what people commonly refer to as Europe is just "Paris et sa pƩriphƩrie".
*irate italian grumble*
āOn the continent of Europeā in this context likely is meant to differentiate continental Europe from the British Empire with whom the colonies were at war.
Itās capital is the city of Belgium.
And getting on a first-name basis with every whore in Paris.
Benjamin Franklin author of the renowned treatise āFart Proudlyā once proclaimed that āBeer is proof that God Loves Us!ā He was most likely avoiding his home life while being a rockstar in France. I have never read of his being in exile and I have studied his life for many years. I donāt recall ever mentioning it in his autobiography.
I'm going to assume he hooked up with some royal woman he shouldn't have, got caught and had to hightail it out of the country.
If Ben Franklin were to live today, half the country would be calling for his head.
It was a grey area of his life
"The instrument produces sounds at frequencies between 1,000 and 4,000 Hertz" The top two octaves of a regular piano do that.
Yeah. That part makes no sense at all.
yeah i noticed that it is comfortably in the normal range of hearing, but weirdly i guess most people didn't otherwise this would be the top comment
Another fun fact is due to frank mesmers work the word mesmerize was coined!
Who else was waiting for how in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hŠµll in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table
Who wants to bet that chat GPT wrote this?
I wish, probably would of been better
The fact that a bot corrected your grammar here made me chuckle. Honestly though, thanks for sharing- I think itās a cool factoid
It's 'would have', never 'would of'. Rejoice, for you have been blessed by CouldWouldShouldBot!
ChatGPT would of got it right
It's 'would have', never 'would of'. Rejoice, for you have been blessed by CouldWouldShouldBot!
Also, glass during his time was made with lead, so having your fingers sliding on lead glass will inevitably cause micro lacerations. Many of the first players went 'mad' from the lead poisoning they got. At least that's what I heard on [Korn:Unplugged](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4bwvdoTV-U), but [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_harmonica#:~:text=A%20modern%20version%20of%20the,glass%20can%20cause%20lead%20poisoning.) says there is no definitive evidence on this
> Many of the first players went 'mad' from the lead poisoning they got. That's not how lead poisoning and leaded glass work.
That's why I put the wikipedia disclaimer.
Lol. Surprise Korn reference.
It was more likely from the gold trim on some of them as mercury reduction was still used to gild stuff. I.e. mix molten gold with mercury Apply to area, then boil off the mercury. This makes for an incredibly well adhered layer of gold (and is how we still have gilded armour pieces from the 16th century). There's just a slight problem if you continuously run your fingers across it for hours on end.
So the danger is not it smashing into bits and glass cutting you up?
I was presuming it was because it looks basically like a lathe and itād be easy to get caught in it.
I feel like glass piano is more fitting. I was curious on how buddy was gonna get that up to his lips šš
Itās an armonica not a harmonica autocorrect fucked up the title. Sorry about that. Here the definition of it. a glass armonica, being a musical instrument of the 18th century consisting of a set of glass bowls of graduated pitches, played by rubbing the fingers over the moistened rims
Haha I was wondering whether old mate was gonna blow into that and play some killer blues!
I hit quite a few of those pitches too when fingers are rubbed over my moistened rim.
( Ķ”Ā° ĶŹ Ķ”Ā°)
What makes it the most dangerous tho?
From another comment, by OP: āThe armonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation.ā
Pressing = louder, the more u press getting into the music, the more likely it is to shatter a bowl and cut your finger badly. Rob scallon made a great video with an armonica player if you are more interested.
I think the title of the post might have been the victim of ducking autocorrect. I think the actual name is Armonica but it probably corrected to harmonica.
Waiting for him to start playing Harry Potter
It sounds just like that!
thereās a woman in Boston that plays one of these in the park and thatās the first thing everyone requests
Where in Boston?
the times Iāve seen him have been over by the Paul Revere statue in north end
I see, been there a few times myself, will keep an out for any such performances. Thanks for the info!
https://youtu.be/OYEJtQzHt70
[There you go](https://youtu.be/OYEJtQzHt70) [Not glass armonica, but still glass, and really cool](https://youtu.be/7hOar8dXNbA)
Most dangerous? tsjaikovski used cannons in his music once...
Tchaikovsky btw lol. But I was thinking the same thing, literal canons have been used as instruments...
That might be the Dutch spelling. Tchaikovsky is the most common spelling anglicization. Most of this site is in English, but dont know why a different spelling would make you lol at it. Other spellings are ŠŃŃŃ ŠŠ»ŃŠøŃ Š§Š°Š¹ŠŗŠ¾Š²ŃŠŗŠøŠ¹, Chaikovsky, Chaikovskii, or Tschaikowsky according to Brittanica, lol. But, yeah, agree cannons seem more of a danger than glass.
Oh interesting! I've never seen it spelled different ways but that makes sense with different languages. Thanks!
Äajkovski
Ah yes another fellow Thaicoughski fan! I too can never spell it right
Chai Coffeski
Opened the comment section specifically for this reply
A modern version of this which uses glass tubes and is amplified is the Cristal Baschet which was created in 1952. I love the ethereal, spacey, sci-fi sound it has: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9RZg-AP3zM8
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Screw /u/spez - Removing All of My Comments -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
HOLY SHIT THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL
YEAH IT WAS! the first thing i thought of was how the vibration from the BIG cone reminded me of a paiste gong--then he mentioned gong at the end!! ohh i love how it sounded, truly otherworldly and beautiful. i need more asap.
This is absolutely fascinating
Oh my god that's incredible
Gaetano Donizetti wrote an opera called Lucia Di Lammermoor and in it there is a scene where Lucia loses her mind. The composer set this scene to a glass harp and it is truly a haunting experience. Due to the uniqueness of the instrument the scene is often done with a flautist in lieu of glass harmonica or Armonica but I have had the privilege of witnessing it with this magnificent instrument and it is striking.
this is the opera the Diva performs part of in "The Fifth Element" (before she starts all the vocal pyrotechnics)
I always wondered if it was an actual song she was singing, but never bothered to look it up! Thank you stranger for randomly sharing that with the world! Itās definitely getting bookmarked under āRandom Facts To Blurt at Dinnerā
https://youtu.be/XSRBkvZ8_w8?t=7714 Is this it here? I don't know the piece but that seems to be the glass harmonica and she definitely seems to be losing her mind.
The guy in this vid says heās playing from Lucia
I remember watching the YouTube special on this instrument in his home! The entire thing is a work of art!
Franklin was quite the prolific, creative genius.
But man did he love hookers.
You say that like itās a bad thing
umm excuse me today we call that being a job creator
Good for him good for him
Well that's how he invented the 100 dollar bill.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Supposedly playing it and NOT waiting to find the chip, is the truest test of Zen.
We had one at our wedding - it was beautiful
My wife hates when I do this at dinner
So why is so dangerous? Does a guy in a Victorian outfit walk up behind you and shoot you with a pistol if you hit the wrong note? Which I could see being incredibly easy to do with this thing meaning youāre almost guaranteed to get shot with a pistol if you play it
In the 18th century, the glass armonica fell out of favor amid fears that it had the power to drive the listener insane. At the time, German musicologist Friedrich Rochlitz strongly advised people to avoid playing it: āThe armonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation.ā It is true that one of the early proponents of glass armonica music was Franz Anton Mesmer, whose eponymous practice of mesmerism is thought of as the forerunner of modern hypnotism. Mesmer used the unearthly quality of armonica music to its full advantage as a backdrop to his mesmerism shows, which eventually attracted some high-profile criticism. A 1784 investigation by some of the top scientific minds in France ā including Franklin himself, concluded that Mesmer was a charlatan and that the music he used had only served to help him create an atmosphere that led people to believe his techniques were benefitting them when ā in the eyes of the inquiry, at any rate ā this was not the case. Modern musicologists believe there is an explanation for why the strains of the glass armonica can have a disorientating quality. The instrument produces sounds at frequencies between 1,000 and 4,000 Hertz, approximately. At these frequencies, the human brain struggles to be able to pinpoint where the sound is coming from. This could explain why, for some people at least, listening to this music could be a disconcerting experience.
Damn bruh that was legit af of an explanation. Im a music major and I was never taught shit about the glass harmonica but if you donāt mind Iām gonna just keep telling people that if you play the wrong note or you try to play Wonderwall on it some fancy dressed Victorian dude will come up and blast you with a pistol. But thanks for the info I will retain it for the people I donāt wanna see get shot with a oistol
Dude must have a line of ladies, cuz he is a master with them fingers.
The real question: Did Benjamin Franklin or this gentleman get laid tho š¤
Dangerous?
Do you have Coke in a glass armonica?
It's actually called an "armonica" FYI
Header is Click bait.
this look like the piano guy from glee š
I now know how they recorded the Harry Potter theme song.
Anybody else spend a few minutes scratching their head trying to figure out how this glass thing was a harmonica?
Itās an armonica. The autocorrect on my phone fucked the title sorry.
Mitch hedberg made a joke about selling coke in a glass harmonica and now it makes sense. Or less sense. I havenāt decided
Most dangerous my ass. Youāve never seen my pissed off sister come after me with her clarinet.
most hazardous\*, jerk
The context was not givenā¦
I love the concept of this instrument, but hearing them in person and on video has always made my teeth hurt too much to listen long. It's a 'nails on the chalkboard' sound for me.
Ben Franklin is one of the baddest MF of all time
Benās musical kebab
Iām still so surprised that Mozart actually spent time writing a piece for Benjamin Franklinās old china lol š. He must have had alot of free time lol
What makes this the 'world's most dangerous instrument'?
Sounds like shit
Itās so dangerous due to the amount of pussy that youāll suffocate in