Instrument creation isn’t just for those crazies out there. Take the scientist and politician Ben Franklin; a man that even the most conservative American could appreciate. Franklin apparently created an instrument called the glass armonica, a piano-like tool designed to replicate the echo of wine glass rims. It has a series of glass bowls laid out in scale from large to small, sanded to the perfect pitch. The glasses are wrapped around a spinning wheel so the player doesn’t have to roll around the rim, freeing them to hit multiple notes at once.

From the comments section of a post over at Dutty Artz about knowing something about the lyrics and culture of the music DJs and producers are playing or sampling. A thoughtful discussion over there.

The New York Times recently did a story about a new police siren that New Yorkers can feel beneath their feet. Dubbed "The Rumbler", the new siren uses a sub woofer an entire street vibrate.

Below are MP3’s of the various sirens used by the NYPD.

The Yelp

The Wail

The Hi-Lo (or, The European)

The Air Horn

The Fast

The Manual

The Rumbler

(I actually did this post a while ago, but when I updated my blog software, the post got messed up. Sorry it it’s not fresh.)

Sure, you could drop a couple thousand dollars on recording equipment and then travel around North America looking for field recordings like Amon Tobin did for his latest album, The Foley Room. But the rest of us are probably a bit too budget-challenged for all that.

For musicians looking for noises lifted from the real world, the world wide web can be a great resource. The three sites that I’ve found most useful so far are Freesound, SoundSnap, and FindSounds.

The first two use only Creative Commons licensed sounds and tag all of their samples for easy browsing. All employ high quality sounds, and can be downloaded in a variety of sound files. (If you run into a sound file you’re not sure how to use, like .ogg or .aiff, click here for file converters. You wont need to download any software.)

So, if you’re bored of hearing a setup that consists of a lead guitar, bass guitar, and drummer, work something out and flip it Musique Concrète style. With these sites, you can dig up sounds ranging from the audio from a factory floor to the rattle of a spray can to the purr of a tiger.

For a recent example of someone taking this idea as far as you could, check my post on Coldcut’s "Timber".

A friend of mine named Waer created this mash up a couple months ago using Jamglue.

Mum’s 2000 self titled album was heavily funk influenced and more rhythmic than its more recent spacey, chill out stuff. The shining achievement on this album is the first song; “Zero Gravity,” the song remixed here. Coming with a tuff hip hop structure, it was perfect for the sample play of mashing up an Obama speech with music.

He chose Obama because of the ease of access to MP3s of his speeches (and because the bar he worked at was throwing a fund raiser for him.)

So, enjoy. It’s not bang you over the head with his political views or anything. It’s still unfinished, he only finished one "verse,"so the second half of it is just the original "Zero Gravity" song.