What’s That Sound? 14 Everyday Items (That Ended Up Being Musical Instruments)

Toward the end of my time as a music major in college, I took an electronic music class. 

They were of course, totally great, but were considered very outdated, as it was the mid-80s.  There was even an oscilloscope in the studio. 

One day, I went to the instructor’s office to ask him a question. He cautiously opened the door just enough so that I could get a glimpse inside as we spoke. What I saw was of an assortment of cryptic, odd-shaped bundles on the shelves, wrapped in brown paper. In the very back of the office, a long-haired man I had never seen before was tinkering with some sort of keyboard contraption. I said to my professor, “man, that’s a pretty wild office you have there.”
Looking a bit shifty, he said something to the effect of “you didn’t see any of this”.

I learned later that the guy in the back of the office was named Eugene X. Rator.

The idea of music being made with items that would not normally be considered musical instruments is a fun topic.

Pop and rock music recordings feature many examples of this.

Below is a list of just a few of them. I tried to avoid synthesized sounds, samples, previously existing recordings of sounds, and actual musical instruments. (You’ll likely notice that the tape loop of cash-oriented sounds on “Money” by Pink Floyd is not included. I encountered conflicting information as to where some of the sounds originated as well as what some of them were, so I stayed out of it – but it’s amazing all the same.)

A playlist of all the songs is included at the end. Here we go!

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Walkie-talkie:

At about the 22 second mark of the song, you will begin to hear a rhythmic pattern of beeps and static from a Walkie-Talkie. Played by Fred Schneider, as seen in this video:

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Bicycle bell and horn:

Brian Wilson used more than a few unconventional sounds in Beach Boy recordings, and Pet Sounds certainly has its share.

My favorite is the bicycle bell and horn employed on “You Still Believe In Me”, to help give the song a juvenile aura. You can listen to the instrumental track and get a behind-the-scenes feel for the recording process here:

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Spade and gravel:

Lots of nutty things are happening throughout what is basically a 5-part stitched together musical collage – and one of the oddest Beatles tracks out there. 

It starts out somewhat normal, but then suddenly we are in some sort of nightclub and Paul becomes a lounge singer named Denis O’Bell, with calypso-jazz backing. At 2:20, the beat changes yet again, with an old timey piano thing, amid comical voices, bongos and a cuckoo sound. 

And listen carefully to hear road manager Mal Evans rhythmically running a spade through gravel. The song eventually morphs into a jazz shuffle with, among other things, George Harrison playing vibraphone, and the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones playing alto saxophone. Which only adds to the bizarre fact that any of this even exists.

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Fingernails:

What sounds like a typewriter on the recording is actually Dolly rhythmically strumming her acrylic nails together. 

She explains here:

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Knife/bicycle spokes, bottles being smashed:

U2 exploded into the universe with this opening track from their debut album.

When I hear it, I literally must follow. If the driving guitar and forceful rhythm of the song along with Bono’s urgent wailing isn’t enough intensity, then how about all that wondrous clanging in the bridge? Like, what is that? 

Glad you asked. It’s Bono smashing bottles, and producer Steve Lilywhite running a knife along the spokes of a spinning bicycle wheel. Genius.

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Kazoo sound:

To get the effect of buzzing traffic, Jimi doubled the guitar line with what sounds like a kazoo.

But he improvised by using a comb and a piece of cellophane.

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Billiard balls:

Producer Mitch Easter recorded drummer Bill Berry playing pool. And then he slowed down the tape so that the billiard balls knocking into each other sound more like eerie, ominous thunder.

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Sugar packet:

Back in 2013, Steven Tyler told Howard Stern that when they were recording “Sweet Emotion”, he couldn’t find the maracas he was supposed to play.

So he found a sugar packet and used that instead.  If you listen to the opening of the song, it fits perfectly, way better than the maracas would have sounded, in my opinion. Tyler also had a great story involving the vibraslap, which I will save for another column.

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Tire iron:

To beef up the drum track: Co-writer Ivy Jo Hunter reportedly went out to his car, came back with a tire iron and had them record him banging it against the floor on the backbeat.

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Microphone stand:

According to producer/songwriter Allen Toussaint: The rhythmic sound of a pickaxe at work is, in fact, his brother hitting a microphone stand with a drumstick.

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Handheld electronic football game:

At the 3:21 mark, when Roger Hodgson stutters “d-d-d-d-d-d-d-digital”, the brief, high-pitched trilling sound that follows sounded very familiar to just about any guy around my age. Was that really the Mattel Electronics Football handheld game that we all played incessantly in junior high, making a cameo?  Indeed, it was. 

The game belonged to a producer/engineer who was working in the room next to where the band was recording. It was the perfect effect for that moment and fit right in with the discordant and unhinged overtones of the song’s outro. 

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Beer bottles:

The singer blew into beer bottles at various stages of consumption, generating different tones, in an attempt to mimic part of the bassline to “Dazed and Confused”.  It shouldn’t have worked in the context of the song, but it kind of does.

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Junk from a junkyard:

Drummer Chad Smith said this about the percussion-heavy instrumental bridge of the song:

“We sent out the runner guy from the house to go to the dump yard and bring back big metallic pipes and stuff. We sat on the ground in the foyer and Flea had this big pipe and was beating it, and I’m playing [car wheel] brake drums and Anthony was playing a garbage can or something.”

Then we all kind of switched and double-tracked it and Brendan [O’Brien, engineer] put a mic out there and would say, ‘OK, now you sit closer, you sit farther’… and it was done in half an hour.”  (from musicradar.com, 4/1/22)

In a related story, this song slaps.

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Spoons, pots and pans:

I almost neglected to include this song, until I woke up in the middle of the night and suddenly remembered it. 

I said to myself, “it shan’t be left off the list!” (Apparently this is how I talk now when I’m half-asleep.)

The inspiration for the song, street performer Artis the Spoonman, makes an appearance on the recording, playing his spoons, and drummer Matt Cameron adds pots and pans to the beat. 

Here is a playlist of all the songs:

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