SINGER CAN HEAR VOICE AS AUDIENCE HEARS IT

So that would-be singers may hear themselves as others hear them, a Los Angeles, Calif., voice teacher and former grand opera singer has invented and patented a voice reflector. Fitted around the pupil’s neck like a collar, as shown above, its convolutions carry a part of the singer’s tones back to her own ears. According to the inventor, his device will enable singers or public speakers to detect and correct faults in tone, volume, and diction during a few hours’ practice, since they may hear in this way exactly how their voices in singing or speaking would sound to an audience.

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Let’s Play a Tune

Every Nation Has Music All Its Own Dressed in the full uniform of the Scots Guards, these experts on the bagpipe are ready to play at memorial or any other special services. The Highlander still clings to his pipes, though there are those who find them slightly less than musical.

There is no escaping the diligent ukulele player. Even in the heart of the Belgian Congo, the uke is strummed; that is, if this strange looking instrument can be called a uke. The player in the photograph is Congo’s champion, and he loves to strum and sing his native African songs.

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“Compact” is not the first word that comes to mind when I look at this picture, but I guess compared to most other pipe organs…

Electricity Runs New Player Pipe Organ for Home

Designed on the principle of the player piano, a compact new pipe organ for home and school plays music automatically from a flexible roll. Because of its unique feature, the “reproducing organ” will bring into the home an entire symphony, which, if played by hand, would require the services of a whole group of artists. All of their movements may be recorded upon a single roll. The organ is expected to be of especial value in schools. Pupils of music appreciation classes are enabled to hear the compositions of masters played by famous musicians and recorded for the purpose. Electric mechanism works the instrument.

Bugle Call into Megaphone Gets ‘em Up in the Morning

Reveille sounds painfully loud these days to the boys in camp at Fort Jackson, S. C. When the bugler sounds “I can’t get ‘em up in the morning” he steps to a huge megaphone that blasts his notes throughout the camp. Mess call, he finds, does not require so much artificial amplification.

Pigeon Fancier Equips His Birds for Sound
Birds that play music while they fly are the pride and joy of George Spiegel, Elizabeth, N. J., pigeon fancier. Spiegel attaches special lightweight reed pipes, obtained from China, to the tail feathers of his pigeons. When they fly, a musical whistling flows from their feathers.

VIOLIN HOOKED TO RADIO SET

Stringed instruments without sounding boards, including violins, cellos, guitars, and ukuleles, have been devised by an eastern violin maker. Vibrations of the strings pass through the bridge to a magnetic pickup, resembling a microphone, that converts them into electric currents. These are amplified to operate a loudspeaker. At home the instruments may be plugged directly into the family radio. One of the new violins is illustrated above.

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Maker Of The Maestro’s Wand

It started as a joke, but Isaac Cary turned it into a business. Whether it’s symphony or swing, the odds are heavy that the leader of the band is using one of Gary’s custom-made batons.

by Lester David

APPLAUSE beats in waves through vast Carnegie Hall as the spotlight picks out the frail little man advancing to the conductor’s stand. He bows deeply and faces the orchestra, arms outstretched. In his hand he holds a slender, white, beautifully proportioned baton. A hush settles on the auditorium … he taps his stand twice, sweeps his baton upward and music flows into the hall. Arturo Toscanini is interpreting a master.

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PIANO SIZE PIPE ORGAN FOR HOMES

Only its double keyboard, a row of stops above it, and an inconspicuous pipe at the rear reveal that the latest musical instrument for the home is an organ. In size and form it looks like a piano. But within the case are concealed 231 pipes that, it is claimed, equal in richness and variety of tone the effects produced by pipe organs of great size. The “baby” organ is designed especially for dwellings of moderate size. An average-sized living room offers adequate space for it.

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These kids should get themselves a midget brass section.

SEVEN BOYS PLAY BIG HARMONICA

Seven boys are needed to play a huge harmonica recently demonstrated at Detroit, Mich., and which is declared to be the largest of its kind in the world. It measures eight feet in length, giving sufficient space for each performer to render the part assigned to him in music orchestrated especially for the big instrument. There are 770 notes in all on the scale of the gigantic mouth organ.

Street Organ Made With Tin Cans, Wood and String

A STREET organ constructed entirely out of tin cans, waste wood, string, and other scrap parts by J. F. Pearson, unemployed resident of Elephant and Castle, England, has brought fame to its constructor.

Although the organ is rather crude looking in appearance, it sounds as well as any manufactured product. Musical critics who have heard the instrument played on the street believe the tinny notes of the organ are due mostly to the lack of sound reflecting backgrounds in the street. They believe that the tones of this instrument could not be distinguished from the average theater organ if the two were placed side by side in a movie house.

Regular piano keyboards are used, and air for the tin can pipes is supplied by a foot bellows arrangement.

Boys Turn Bike Into Chimes

BOYS at Weoley Castle School in Birmingham, England, have developed a novel use for old bicycles. Sawing the old bicycle tubing to various lengths and stringing the cut sections on wires hung on a home-built mounting, the boys have created musical chimes featuring a full complement of notes, enabling tunes to be played.

Organ Creates Photocell Music
BUILT from a dishwasher motor, an old keyboard and other gadgets, a homemade organ creates photoelectric music. A film sound track of tones is re-photographed on one of two revolving disks. Beams of light shine through these disks and reach a photocell. The light is then turned into sound, reproducing original tone.