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Tempest Instruments

@tempestinstruments

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Tempest is a small team led by Alex Davis. Check out the 50 sounds to hear before you die https://deck.tempest.audio

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Marco Polo wrote about a desert where travelers heard spirits calling them by name and drums coming out of the sand. That sound is real.

I turned the recordings into an instrument you can play on your phone, free:

https://hearit.now/dunes

About 30 dunes on Earth hum a low note when dry sand slides down them, and it can get about as loud as a chainsaw. You hear three of them in this video. Sound on. 🔊

Morocco, Arabia or California. Which desert would you play?
#SingingSand #SandDunes #MarcoPolo #StrangeSounds #DidYouKnow taken in Black Mountain, North Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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12 days ago

Edison's Greatest Failure

Thomas Edison built this doll in 1890, and it was pulled from the shelves after six weeks. Every one was recorded by hand, by young women shouting nursery rhymes into a horn in his factory. The surviving records went unplayed for over a century, until scientists read the grooves with light. Sound on for what it says. 🔊
🎧 THE 50 SOUNDS YOU NEED TO HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE — get the list first, link in bio.
Recording: Thomas Edison National Historical Park / NPS; optical recovery NEDCC (IRENE).
#ThomasEdison #EdisonDoll #CreepyDoll #SoundHistory #DidYouKnow taken in Greenville, South Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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A Human Voice Gone Extinct

Alessandro Moreschi was the only castrato to make solo recordings, leaving us a glimpse of a kind of human voice that disappeared more than a century ago.

🎻 Download SONA/CHROMA FREE:
https://tempest.audio/sonachroma/

🎹 Tempest Instruments:
https://tempest.audio/

#Castrati #AlessandroMoreschi #MusicHistory #MusicHistoryFacts #ClassicalMusic #SistineChapel #Music #History taken in Black Mountain, North Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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A scream made of clay

hearit.now/deathwhistle

Blow gently and this clay skull hisses like wind. Blow hard and it screams. Two of them were found in the hands of a man sacrificed at the temple of the Aztec wind god, and researchers in Zurich rated it the most unpleasant of more than 2,500 sounds. At the end you hear one of the real ones from that grave. Play it yourself, free. Sound on. 🔊
Original recording: Frühholz et al. 2024, University of Zurich.
#AztecDeathWhistle #DeathWhistle #Aztec #SoundHistory #DidYouKnow taken in Black Mountain, North Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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4 days ago

The only recording of King Tut's trumpet

hearit.now/kingtut

Two trumpets from King Tut's tomb, one silver and one bronze, played live on BBC radio in 1939 for an estimated 150 million listeners. In rehearsal one of them shattered, and the broadcast went out by candlelight. The curator of the collection later said a war breaks out whenever someone blows into the bronze one. Wait for what the bandsman actually played. Sound on. 🔊
1939 recording: BBC, Egyptian Museum, Cairo, 16 April 1939.
#KingTut #Tutankhamun #AncientEgypt #SoundHistory #DidYouKnow taken in Black Mountain, North Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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5 days ago

I have some prototypes of the cards… and they look amazing! I’m making a deck of 50 (mindblowing) sounds to hear. More info on Kickstarter ❤️ Love, Alex taken in Black Mountain, North Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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Vote and listen to the full recordings at

hearit.now/firstmusic

A choir of 4,000 in London in 1888, or a scrap of tinfoil from St. Louis in 1878. Both have been called the oldest music ever recorded.

#MusicHistory #DidYouKnow #TempestInstruments #OldestRecording #Phonograph #Edison #CrystalPalace #Tinfoil #SoundHistory #LostRecordings taken in Swannanoa, North Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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11 days ago

Brahms himself at the piano in 1889

Brahms was recorded exactly once, in Vienna in 1889, on one of Edison's machines. The family who kept the cylinder loved it so much they played it until almost nothing was left but noise, and it took a century and a team at Stanford to pull him back out of it. Sound on. 🔊
Piano: the Vieness Piano Duo, used with permission. 1889 cylinder: Berlin State Library; restoration: Stanford CCRMA.
#Brahms #JohannesBrahms #WaxCylinder #ClassicalMusic #SoundHistory taken in Black Mountain, North Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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24 days ago

The Loudest Sound in History

In 1883 Krakatoa burst the eardrums of sailors 40 miles away, and people 3,000 miles away thought they were hearing a battle. Nothing could record it. 139 years later something that big happened again, and this time a microphone in the snow in Idaho was listening. Sound on. 🔊
🎧 THE 50 SOUNDS YOU NEED TO HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE — get the list first, link in bio.
Recording: Zach Keskinen / Boise State University Geosciences.
#MusicHistory #DidYouKnow #Krakatoa #LoudestSound #Volcano #HungaTonga #Infrasound #SoundHistory #ScienceHistory #TempestInstruments taken in Greenville, South Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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a month ago

Voice of a Man Born in 1800

This is the voice of Helmuth von Moltke, born in 1800, recorded in 1889. It is believed to be the only surviving recording of a person born in the 18th century.

More than 135 years later, we can still hear his actual voice.

Coming soon from Tempest Audio: 50 Sounds You Need to Hear, a deck exploring 50 of the most extraordinary sounds ever captured.

Sign up to be the first to hear about it:

https://tempest-listening-deck.pages.dev/

#MusicHistory #AudioHistory #SoundHistory #HistoricalRecording #RecordedSound #Moltke #Phonograph #50Sounds #TempestAudio #TempestInstruments taken in Black Mountain, North Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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a month ago

SUED FOR SILENCE?

In 2002, musician Mike Batt released a track containing one minute of silence.

Then the publishers of John Cage’s 4′33″ came after him.

Yes. Someone got sued over silence.

And Batt’s response might be the best part of the whole story.

I make virtual instruments!! Check out SONA / CHROMA, a FREE Kontakt Player instrument at http://tempest.audio

#MusicHistory #JohnCage #MikeBatt #MusicFacts #WeirdHistory #Music taken in Black Mountain, North Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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Does Alien's Scariest Scene have the wrong music? You decide.
Alien's scariest scene isn't scored with the music Jerry Goldsmith wrote for it — Ridley Scott replaced it with music Goldsmith had written years earlier for a completely different film. At the end, you'll hear the buried cue and the one that took its place — the Alien music you've never heard — and you can decide who was right.

I make tools for music makers! Check out my free COLOR instrument, SONA/CHROMA here: [link]

#Alien #JerryGoldsmith #RidleyScott #FilmMusic #FilmScore #MovieFacts #MusicHistory #FilmHistory taken in Black Mountain, North Carolina by @tempestinstruments

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a month ago