People who make music out of Carrots

The World Carrot Museum has discovered several groups of people who make musical instruments from Carrots (and other vegetables and fruit). Click on the links to read more about each individual group.

What is Flutenveg?? It's Kerry Fletcher and Alain Thirion from Perth in Western Australia who make musical instruments out of carrots and other vegetables.

Kerry and Alain have just come back from a Festival South of Perth in a town called Esperance where they have the annual "Festival of the Wind" The carrots were a huge success.

They had some 30 people walking in the parade blowing three different notes - C,E,G chord - in single pipes carrots whilst Kerry and Alain improvised on a full set - 12 notes - carrot panpipes. Sounded great as well as the munching sound at the end of the playing!

They are also known as Bella Music and tour all the music festivals and do a lot of work in schools - they must be a truly amazing site when in full swing. They also do a first class job in promoting healthy vegetable eating. Good on ya! Flute 'n' Veg can also enhance corporate functions, Stress Management Workshops and team-building events. Is there no end to this talented bunch?

To quote from their site "From corporate functions to festivals across Australia these finely tuned and sculptured carrot instruments a peel to all ages! Tuned carrot panpipes can be made to create massed harmonies followed by carrot munching.

How do they make the instruments? With lots of time and patience! Selecting them at the various local supermarkets can be time consuming. Long ones are best - between 15 and 25 cm - not too thin, at least 4 cm in diameter at the thick (leafy) end and as straight as possible (makes drilling not too tricky!).

In an ordinary ordinary kitchen it takes about 3 hours to make a full set of panpipes - 12 notes. Another 2 to 3 hours to make the flageolet and quena flutes. In all a full day's work at the office!

Sometimes 2 depending how many are required (Duo or quartet) Once finished they are wrapped in very wet tea-towels and kept in the fridge until performing time, carrying them in a cool "hand portable fridge" (called esky).

The fresh celery addition happens minutes before the performance followed a fine tuning session with the piano accordion using mung beans to slightly raise the pitch if necessary. They are pre-tuned at 440 Hz whilst making them, with a electronic tuner.
They need refreshing - with the aid of a squeeze bottle - regularly throughout the performance to keep them moist, so that they don't dry out (easier to play) and look fresh at all times.
As you can imagine they are very demanding!

Why going through all that bother for instruments that after all only last the time of one performance? The smiles and joy - astonished looks and comments - from young ones to seniors listening attentively is so rewarding and thus worth the effort of making them.
Or maybe simple, gentle madness!

The tools specifically created and designed for the job, were made by Kerry's partner who is a luthier of international reputation. He specialises in the making and restoration of ancient wind instruments.

So there you are, you know just about all the "secrets" of the trade! Surely another fine example of carrot madness. Keep it going Bella Music.

Linsey Pollak - The Carrot Musician

Here's a guy who can do incredible things with a simple carrot. When Linsey hits the stage expect the unexpected!

What does he do?? he plays carrots - Yes!! combining comedy with music making, and generally giving people a good time.

He is a home-styled kitchenhand with a difference. He’s eccentric, hilarious and totally irresistable. And he lives in a musical world where all is possible.... From the moment that he walks into the kitchen, everything becomes musical. He even transforms a carrot into a clarinet before our very eyes. Using digital technology to record sounds instantaneously the audience is able to see each piece being constructed layer by layer, with all the sounds coming from the cooking utensils and food.

This musical world that Linsey creates is more than a series of clever tricks. It is an aural world of depth, energy and beauty. Although the materials are disconcertingly simple, the music itself is complex, rich and emotive, ranging from energetic and percussive cross rhythms to haunting and lyrical woodwind (or should we say vegiewind) melodies.

Linsey Pollak is an artist with a reputation for not only creating, but also playing instruments made out of everything from carrots, watering cans, chairs, bins and brooms to rubber gloves. For over 30 years, he has toured in Australia, Asia, the Americas and Europe. Linsey is well known all around Australia as a musician, instrument maker, composer, musical director and community music facilitator.

He has worked as a musical instrument maker for over 20 years and has designed a number of new wind instruments as well as specialising in woodwind instruments from Eastern Europe (having studied Macedonian bagpipes in Macedonia). He has specialised in designing and making marimbas and other tuned percussion. His ongoing obsession combines much of this: Making music more accessible to the Community through musical instrument making and playing workshops.

Linsey has a reputation for making and playing instruments made from rubber gloves, carrots, watering cans, chairs, brooms, bins, and other found objects. First developed in his solo show “Bang it with a Fork” and further in the acclaimed children’s show “Out of the Frying Pan”, this line of musical inventiveness has ultimately led him to also encompass modern digital technology and develop his solo shows “Knocking on Kevin’s Door” , “Playpen”, “The Art of Food” and "Making Jam" and the larger scale outdoor environmental performance “Bim...BamBoo!!” More recently he is using a midi wind controller to play and loop samples of everything from voices to frogs. He is currently building a musical installation where the sound of frogs are triggered when large aluminium frogs are hit with a stream of water “SQUIRT”.

Linsey Pollak is one of Australia's most brilliant and under-rated composer/musicians. He is wildly innovative in the use of instruments but never lets his experimentation get in the way of the musicality of a work.

The Wyld Men - The Vegetable Musicians

Dr. Cranius Lunch, Seth Sethstherton and Grebe, are more commonly known as the Wyld Men, specialising in Veggie Music - yes music played on real vegetables!

Think of it as ‘precycling’. Before you use something, you use it for something else first -- in this case, parts of your next meal. Read on, follow the links and engage your imagination!

The Wyld Men are three like minded artists who perform and experiment in the realms of music, theatre and movement. The "Veggie Music" CD is an exploration of song styles, soundscapes and radio theatre featuring the use of flutes made out of vegetables and other inventive sources of music. In this recording you will hear such instruments as Yam, Broccoli and Carrot Whistles as featured on the album cover.

They have found in live performance that they must be able to create their instruments on stage, or no one believes that they are really vegetables. While it is technically possible to create a fingered fife or flute from, say, a carrot, this is an exacting, tedious and lengthy process – and one at which they are not at all accomplished. The solution is to quickly create musical vegetables by drilling them out, then assembling a number of these vegetables creates, in effect, a set of pan pipes (no pun intended, though they are all ultimately destined for the pan. When playing the street at a festival the Wyld Men like to claim that we are the only musicians out there guaranteed to go home to supper).

You can hear samples of the Veggie Tunes played by the band here and if you like what you hear buy the full cd.

Described as "A playful and eclectic melange of diverse musical styles, comedy and theatre using flutes made out of vegetables as well as experimental instruments such as the umbrella-phone and a whiskey-in-the-jar-o-phone." - it is great music and great fun!

The Veggie Music CD gives the band ample opportunity to share the tunefulness of tubers. Seth's My favourite veggie cut (which is making more and more ipod downloads!!) is Location 5, an ode to David Brubecks' Take Five. The guitar man Frank is awesome, David (Grebe) performs some monstrous percussion, and Seth (Douglas) is very sassy on the beet, yam and broccoli and Jonathan explores the unexplored on slide potato.

The whole CD is beyond expectation - give it a listen here - and let the jaw slacken just a little, the eyes widen and allow that laugh to start way down deep in the belly.

"For the Wyld Men, it all started with the carrot flute. Later, after I had already branched out into all kinds of vegetables, I came across references to the First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra and then Flute n Veg.

The Wyld Men appear only at the Arizona Renaissance Festival, but I also perform at the Ohio Renaissance Festival. I from the US but am now based in Norway (thanks to a Norwegian wife) and perform solo or with other musicians at a variety of festivals here, going by the name Dr. Cranius Lunch."

Dr Lunch's "moment of fame" is that once he played a carrot flute before the King of Norway. So he quite justifiably claims to have played the first carrot ever heard by a Crowned Head of Europe! Quite an achievement!

Yes another first for the irreverent Dr - He claims to have invented -- or at least independently originated -- the slide potato! He is certainly the most accomplished performer on the instrument.

He heard about Jonathan's suggestion that he was making flutes from carrots and he was tickled orange! it made him laugh in a deep down in your belly way. To hear it over the phone, Norway to Virginia, is one delicious thing but to see this in person was transformational. Soon they were transforming other living things with this brilliant idea.

A favourite experience as a Veggie Musician is the sheer amazement of the audience. Children's mouths fall open, parent's eyes widen and jaws slacken. Grandmas in wheel chairs giggle like little girls. Like the elemental "ooooooooo" when a shooting star is seen, the Veggie Musician is treated to the continual human response of amazement.

Since Jonathan has perfected the slide potato, opening up the melodic frontier, Douglas is the bass line of the little combo, whose duty is to the rhythm which is usually comprised of a compliment of Yam (that sweet low tone), Broccoli (that most hilarious of instruments.) and the Beet (the only site gag that ALWAYS gets a laugh...it has never failed them.)

By tuning these three vegetables to E, F, G or C,D,G...one can noodle along with almost any folk song every written. Add a guitar and Jonathan is free to roam the melody and Seth can follow along on the bass line and of course David (Grebe; the only real musician in the bunch...bunch...get it?) keeps them all together with his far reaching percussion skills.

The natural history of Vegetable Instruments is explained more fully at the Play Your Food Site, edited by Dr Cranius Lunch (Jonathan Crocker) one of the bands members. Here you will also find useful links to other veggie music.

You want to have a go making your own carrot ? Full directions are given on the Play Your Food Site, or just click here. (Broadsheet courtesy of Dr Cranius)

The Vegetable Orchestra was founded in 1998. It consists of 11 musicians, a sound engineer and a video artist. Based in Vienna, the Vegetable Orchestra plays concerts in Europe and Asia. From time to time workshops are given - on how to manufacture an instrument or on musical topics.

The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetable sound universe. The ensemble overcomes preserved and marinated sound conceptions or tirelessly re-stewed listening habits, putting its focus on expanding the variety of vegetable instruments, developing novel musical ideas and exploring fresh vegetable sound gardens.

A concert of the Vegetable Orchestra appeals to all the senses. As an encore at the end of the concert and the video performance, the audience is offered fresh vegetable soup.

There are no musical boundaries for the Vegetable Orchestra. The most diverse music styles fuse here - contemporary music, beat-oriented House tracks, experimental Electronic, Free Jazz, Noise, Dub, Clicks'n'Cuts - the musical scope of the ensemble expands consistently, and recently developed vegetable instruments and their inherent sounds often determine the direction.

Of course like all the carrot musicians the World Carrot Museum has come across, these people are very serious about their music - it is not a "just for fun" project.

Radish Flute	Recorder	Cucumber Carrot	Karimba	Flute	Radirimba

Visit the Orchestra Web Site here to see the full range of instruments, listen to a few samples and see the concert schedule. Also search Youtube and you will see a 5 minute performance.

Known as Heita2 from Japan - A "Vegetable musician and amateur poet", his videos introduce the vegetable musical instruments he makes and then he plays them. Fascinating stuff! There are eight kinds of vegetable musical instruments. Enjoy the videos with sound here. (myspace video - opens in new window)

Recorders	Sticks

Carrot Musicians

Linsey Pollak - The Carrot Musician

The Wyld Men - The Vegetable Musicians