Inventors, designers and musicians introduce amazing musical instruments to the world from time to time. Among them, string, wind and keyboard instruments are most often found.
The most amazing string instruments
String instruments have always been one of the most popular, and there are some very unusual ones among them. Let's look at the TOP most amazing string instruments. ESCOPETTARA is a guitar made on the basis of a Kalashnikov assault rifle. This guitar is good as an extraordinary gift. She is in first place in the ranking.Stratocaster is a guitar with seventy-two strings. To create it, freak artist Yoshiko Sato disassembled twelve guitars. Looking at this unusual guitar, it seems that only a multi-armed monster can play it.
Extravagant music maker Ken Butler invented the violin-telephone in 1998. And Canadian guitar maker Linda Manzer worked for two years to create a psychedelic guitar - the “Picasso Guitar”. It is equipped with four necks and forty-two strings. The instrument was commissioned by guitarist Pat Metheny. “Picasso’s Guitar” ranks fourth in the top ten unusual string instruments.
A well-known Japanese company in 1997 created an amazingly simple CASIO DG-10 tool. This is a plastic guitar with plastic strings. The volume of the sound depends on the force of the strings. Even those with zero level of training can play it.
On the sixth line of the rating is a nano-guitar. It was made at Cornell University. This is the smallest musical instrument in the world. This guitar is smaller than the thickness of a human hair, measuring less than two microns. It is cut with a high-precision laser from silicone.
In 1918, engineer Bates invented the harp guitar. It was built in 1936 by an anonymous artist for the Chicago fair. The LONG STRINGED INSTRUMENT is in tenth position in the ranking of unusual string instruments. It does not have a body and consists of stretched strings, the length of which is twenty-one meters. Its inventor is Ellen Fullman. To extract sound, just run your hand covered with rosin over the strings.
You can learn more about expensive musical instruments.
Unusual wind instruments
We can give an example of several extraordinary wind instruments. Alpine horns made of wood have been used for centuries not only in the Alps and Switzerland, but also in many mountainous regions of Europe. 
Instruments called “wakrapuku” are made from cattle horns or metal. This wind musical instrument dates back to the pre-Columbian period. In Australia there is an instrument called the didgeridoo. It is made from termite-eaten eucalyptus. The didgeridoo makes a unique buzzing sound. The instrument is about one and a half thousand years old.
In Irish musical culture Illian bagpipes are present. This instrument differs from the Scottish version of the bagpipes in that it does not require blowing into pipes. Instead, musicians operate the bellows with their right elbow while pumping the bag with their left. This is how air is supplied to the seven pipes of the instrument.
Musicians from Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Azerbaijan, Macedonia, Southern Serbia, Romania and Turkey are familiar with this type of flute, the kaval.
Another rare wind instrument is the bombarda. She resembles a Gaboy. Her homeland is northern France. A musician playing the bombard must exert considerable effort, so breaks are required every ten seconds. The sound produced is very loud.
The ancient musical instrument Ocarina appeared about twelve thousand years ago in China. Europeans discovered it in the sixteenth century after the conquests of the South and Central America. At first, the Ocarina was considered a children's musical instrument, but after the modern version was created in Italy in the nineteenth century, the instrument received wider development.
The most unusual keyboard instruments
Keyboard musical instruments appeared much later than percussion, strings and wind instruments. Among the unusual ones is the clavichord, invented in the fourteenth century. It was especially popular in the Middle Ages. In the mid-nineteenth century, the clavichord was practically forgotten, but at the beginning of the twentieth the instrument was revived again. 
The harpsichord has been known since the end of the fourteenth century. It first appeared in Italy. In the sixties and seventies of the last century, a keyboard instrument such as the Mellotron was popular. It was developed from Chamberlin in England. The Muselaar is a small keyboard string instrument.
The most unusual musical instrument in the world
Strange and unusual musicians, sometimes existing in a single copy, musical instruments there are many in the world. Some tools seem incredible. It’s difficult to choose the most unusual one. Several unique musical instruments can claim this title. 
One of them is the “badger”. It represents a musical instrument theremin attached to a stuffed badger. The owner of the badger is David Kramner.
The most unusual is the music house, built by architect David Hanoelt. This house is a musical instrument, operating on the principle of the Byzantine harp. The wind passes through the walls of the house and through the rooms, as a result of which melodious pleasant sounds are heard.
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Theremin
Many have heard this musical instrument without knowing it, for example, in old horror films.
The Theremin was invented by Russian scientist Lev Theremin in 1928. It produces a rather unusual, even slightly creepy, vibrating sound that many underground musicians adore. However, it was the sound of the instrument that prevented it from gaining widespread popularity. Playing the theremin involves the musician changing the distance from his hands to the antennas of the instrument, due to which the pitch of the sound changes.
Banjolele
Despite the fact that both the banjo and the ukulele quickly gained an army of numerous fans, the hybrid of these two instruments, the banjolele, never became popular. It's essentially a very small banjo, only with four strings instead of five. The instrument produces a pleasant, soothing sound, but it is difficult for people with disabilities to play it. big hands quite problematic. Maybe that’s why, or maybe because of the cacophony of its name, the banjolele has remained a niche instrument.
Omnicord
Omnicord is an electronic musical instrument introduced by Suzuki in 1981. Sounds in it are created by pressing the button corresponding to the chord and striking a special metal plate. Being incredibly easy to use, the omnicord had the potential to become popular, especially among new musicians. But he never did. The famous melody from the British Clint Eastwood song Gorillaz bands is perhaps the most famous work played on this musical instrument.
Baritone guitar
Both the bass guitar and the guitar are some of the most popular instruments in the world. However, as in the case of banjolele, their hybrid, despite its deep and rich sound, was not particularly widespread. Due to their design, such guitars sound much lower than ordinary ones. Nowadays they are sometimes used in recording studios to give the main guitar part a richer tone.
Glucophone
Despite the cacophony of its name, this instrument produces very pleasant sounds. Most of all it looks like a metal hand drum. It consists of two bowls, on one of which there are “tongues” of the drum, and on the other there is a resonating hole. Each bowl can be fine-tuned.
The instrument has found some popularity among street musicians, but it still cannot be called mass.
Keytar
In the 80s, on the wave of popularity of pop music, this instrument almost entered the mainstream. Almost…
In essence, this is an ordinary synthesizer enclosed in a plastic guitar case. As with previous hybrids, it is mainly played only as needed. One of its main advantages is its compactness.
Few people know that Matthew Bellamy, leader of the popular British band Muse, regularly uses the keyboard at his performances.
Wind synthesizer "Evi"
"Evi" is the most popular wind synthesizer, but is still unknown to a huge number of music fans. It is a mixture of saxophone and synthesizer. The principle of playing it is almost the same as the saxophone. However, the “synthesizer past” of the instrument makes it possible to connect it to a computer.
Electronium
The most mysterious instrument in our selection. It was invented by inventor Raymond Scott. Little is known about it, other than that it is a huge prototype of a modern synthesizer. The only remaining Electronium belongs to composer Mark Mothersbaugh, and even that doesn't work.
Musical saw
This saw differs from a regular saw only in that it can bend much more strongly. When playing, the musician rests one end of it on his thigh and holds the other end with his hand. The sound is produced with a special bow. It must be said that the unusual sound of the saw can be heard in the compositions of some folk groups. However, it has not become widespread outside the ethnic music genre.
"Waves of Martenot"
Perhaps the most unusual instrument in the selection. It was invented by Maurice Martineau in 1928. The sound of the instrument is simultaneously reminiscent of a violin and a theremin. The design of the French invention is quite complex: when playing, the musician needs to simultaneously press the keys and pull a special ring. By the way, Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood used “Waves of Morteno” when recording several songs, giving them a unique sound
This amazing musical instrument was created by Leonard Solomon. Although Bellowphone looks ridiculous and funny, don't be fooled by its appearance. All these whistles, hangers, bicycle horns and cymbals can play any classic tune from Mozart to Brahms.
The carpenter turned musician does not stop there and is working on one more music project, to which he devoted about 15 years of his life. The whole world heard Solomon's symphonies. Some consider them too strange, others enjoy such unusual melodies, but no one remains indifferent. The musician is very energetic and cheerful.
And if that's not enough for you, sometimes he also juggles while he plays! We invite you to hear this tool in action.
Guitar AK-47
Cesar Lopez slightly changed the famous slogan “make love, not war”, replacing love with music. The inventor dedicated his life to turning the instruments of death into something beautiful and safe. The AK-47 guitar was named by its creator as "Escopetarra", which is Spanish for shotgun and guitar.
Lopez invented the instrument in 2003 as a response to violence in his hometown Bogota (Colombia), where it has been going on for many years civil war. Thus art challenged the destructive power of weapons. Colombian peace activists say: “If weapons designed to kill can be changed, then people can be changed too.” Many artists around the world have recognized that this guitar is a symbol of peace and beauty. Some musicians have even added this “machine gun” to their collections, including the famous peace activist, Paul McCartney.
One of the twelve guitars can be seen on display at the United Nations headquarters.
Holophone
It all started with the world famous series "Futurama". Holophone is a clarinet of the future that projects holograms when played. Volpin Props brought this idea to life when a customer asked him to create an instrument from his favorite movie.
Unfortunately, the device does not yet create holograms, but it is encouraging that even in the series, only two or three people in the entire Futurama universe can play it well enough to generate them.
The impossibility of creating holograms is made up for by LED flashlights, 54 of which are installed around the entire perimeter of the instrument, which lights up and goes out like its cartoon original. Fans of "Futurama" hope that soon this tool will be able to be ordered online or purchased in stores.
Guitar Picasso
This is what would happen if Pablo Picasso was a musician. The world's first guitar created in the Cubist style. Linda Manzer created this incredible guitar after jazz guitarist Pat Metheny challenged her to design an instrument with "as many strings as possible." And here we have the result - a 42-string guitar with four intertwined soundboards and a weight of 6.7 kg.
It took Linda two years to create this unusual string instrument. The neck of the guitar is made of ebony, the soundboard is made of red and all this is decorated with fine decorative trim.
I believe that this instrument could take pride of place in a museum of modern art.
Laser harp
When many people think of a harp, they imagine an elegant instrument with carved cherubs. However, this musical instrument has gone far from its ancient ancestor. Meet the laser harp.
It is created by splitting a single laser into several parallel beams, which are then connected to a synthesizer. This instrument gained fame in the 80s thanks to the composer and musician Jean-Michel Jarre. Some skeptics tried to prove that the laser harp was a hoax, however, during one of Jarre's concerts, the instrument broke.
This incident proved to skeptics that the harp was not fake. Since Jean-Michel was one of the founders electronic music, the harp was associated not only with a light show, but also became a symbol of a new musical genre. An excellent tool connecting audio and visual perception music.
Singing tree
The last thing you'd expect to hear while walking in the English countryside is a musical tree.
The sculpture, three meters high, was created from galvanized steel pipes that were constructed so that when wind passes through them, the structure produces a sound with a range of several octaves.
The Singing Tree was developed in 2006 as part of a project called Panopticon. Apart from being an architectural prize, the sculpture is one of the most stunning and eerie-sounding instruments in the world.
Picasso Guitar
The Picasso guitar is a strange musical instrument created in 1984 by Canadian string maker Linda Manser for jazz guitarist Patrick Bruce Metheny. It is a harp guitar with four necks, two sound holes and 42 strings. The instrument was named because external resemblance with those depicted on famous paintings(1912–1914), the so-called analytical cubism of Pablo Picasso.
The Nyckelharpa is a traditional Swedish stringed musical instrument, first mentioned around 1350. Typically, a modern nyckelharpa has 16 strings and 37 wooden keys sliding underneath the strings. A short bow is used to play. The sound produced by this instrument is similar to the sound of a violin only with greater resonance.
Glass harmonica is a rather unusual and rare musical instrument, consisting of several glass hemispheres of various sizes, mounted on a metal axis, which is partially immersed in a resonator box with diluted vinegar. When touching the edges of the glass hemispheres, rotating by means of a pedal, the performer produces gentle and pleasant sounds. This musical instrument has been known since mid-17th century century. Interestingly, in some cities in Germany it was prohibited by law, since in those days it was believed that the sound of the harmonica had too strong an effect on state of mind people, scares animals, causes premature birth and even leads to mental disorder.
Erhu, also called "Chinese violin" - an ancient Chinese string instrument bowed instrument, created in the seventh century. It is an original two-string violin at the bottom, to which is attached a cylindrical resonator equipped with a membrane made of snake skin. A very versatile instrument, it is often used as a solo instrument, as an accompanying instrument in Chinese opera, as well as in modern musical genres such as pop, rock, jazz, etc.
Zeusaphone
Zeusaphone, or "musical lightning", "singing Tesla coil" is a form of plasma loudspeaker. It is a Tesla coil that has been modified to produce sounds accompanied by the beautiful glow of air ions in an electric field high voltage. The term "Tesla coil singing" was coined by David Nunez after a public demonstration of the device on June 9, 2007 in Naperville, Illinois, USA.
Hydraulophone
The hydraulic phone is a strange acoustic musical instrument that operates on the principle of converting vibrations of liquids into sound. It has several holes through which streams of water shoot and when one of the streams is blocked, the instrument produces a sound formed not by air, but by water. It was invented by Canadian scientist and engineer Steve Mann. The world's largest hydraulic phone is located in scientific center Ontario, Canada.
The Singing Tree is a unique musical sculpture located in the Pennines near Burnley in Lancashire, England. The sculpture was built on December 14, 2006 and is a three-meter structure consisting of galvanized steel pipes of different lengths, which, thanks to wind energy, emit a low melodic hum.
Theremin is an unusual electro-musical instrument created by Russian physicist and inventor Lev Theremin in 1919. The main part of the theremin are two high-frequency oscillatory circuits tuned to a common frequency. Electrical vibrations of sound frequencies are created by a generator using vacuum tubes, the signal is passed through an amplifier and converted into sound by a loudspeaker. Playing the theremin involves the performer controlling its operation by changing the position of the palms near the antennas of the instrument. By moving the hand around the rod, the performer adjusts the pitch of the sound, and gesturing around the arc allows one to influence the volume. By changing the distance of the musician's palms to the instrument's antenna, the inductance of the oscillatory circuit changes, and as a result, the frequency of the sound. One of the first and most prominent performers on this instrument was the American musician Clara Rockmore.
In second place in the list of the most unusual musical instruments in the world is the Hang - musical percussion instrument, created in 2000 by Felix Rohner and Sabine Scherer from the Swiss city of Bern. It consists of two interconnected metal hemispheres with a resonator hole measuring 8–12 cm.
The most unusual musical instrument in the world is the Stalactite organ. This is a unique musical instrument located in Luray Caverns, Virginia, USA. It was created in 1956 by mathematician and scientist Leland Sprinkle, who throughout three years processed stalactites hanging from the ceiling of a cave to obtain the perfect sound. After which he attached a hammer to each of them, controlled by electricity from an organ keyboard. This instrument covers an area of 14 square kilometers and is the largest musical instrument in the world.
Musical works are written in different countries, in a variety of genres and directions and can immediately be performed in any city on any continent, because professional musicians do not necessarily need to be able to speak the language of their colleague, they understand each other in the language of music. Fortunately, musical instruments are as versatile as musical notation, but not all musicians are satisfied with the existing variety; some are constantly looking for something new, unusual, and if they don’t find it, they invent their own.
Perhaps the most popular musical instruments in the world are strings and winds. Therefore, it is not surprising that some musical masters come up with any improvements and changes to the already established traditional device and appearance, for example, violins, guitars, pipes or bagpipes, and you don’t have to look long for examples.
Unusual strings
One musical master built a violin, which “double-edged” as a telephone; the result was something between a violin-telephone and a telephone-violin. Apparently, the instrument did not catch on, since the world did not suddenly start playing it, although it was invented at the end of the 20th century in 1998.
But, apparently, the guitar gets the most innovations.
This instrument is known all over the world, but one inventor decided to make the guitar even more popular, and he created an automatic guitar. As a result, the instrument became externally similar to a Kalashnikov assault rifle, also world-famous, but only a weapon. The guitar was named Escopettara.
From the machine gun, the body of the guitar included a butt, an automatic mechanism and a magazine for cartridges, on which a panel of regulators was located, and instead of a barrel there was a real guitar neck. But the most original thing about the design is that it was not the guitar that was made to look like a machine gun, but a real machine gun that was converted into a guitar.
Stratocaster is a super guitar!
We are used to the fact that a guitar has six strings - this spanish guitar. True, there is also a Russian guitar - a seven-string, but the six-string has more fans and has almost replaced the seven-string guitar. We can conclude that the more strings, the fewer fans the guitar has, but a certain artist, Yoshiko Sato, did not agree with this idea.
He took twelve guitars, completely disassembled them, and assembled one new one from the resulting spare parts. His guitar had seventy-two strings, which is almost equal to a piano keyboard. It's hard to imagine that there would be a musician who wants to master playing this instrument, but is it really that important for an inventor? The main thing is the fact of invention and the sonorous name - Stratocaster.
CASIO guitar DG-10
At a time when all kinds of keyboard “self-players” were filling Russian stores and markets, in 1997, the Japanese CASIO campaign had a new musical instrument - the DG-10 guitar. In terms of content, this musical toy was an electronic filling in a plastic shell, but outwardly it was a real electric guitar.
Even a non-musician could play the instrument by making small adjustments, like on a keyboard “self-player.” But the principle of sound extraction is interesting here. The guitar had plastic strings; it could be played like an acoustic guitar, which produced the appropriate sound. Sensitive strings increased the volume depending on the force of the blow, that is, by what hit harder along the strings, the louder the sound.
Since then, technology has advanced greatly, and a nano-guitar has appeared, however, it cannot be played, since it is cut out of silicone using a high-frequency laser, and there are no such small musicians in the world, because the size of the guitar is smaller than the thickness of a human hair.
Compared to the silicone “guitar”, the instrument of Canadian guitar maker Linda Manzer is simply gigantic - it has four necks and forty-two strings, all real and made especially for guitarist Pat Metheny. The instrument is given the name “Picasso Guitar”; it is simultaneously a guitar, a lute, a viol and a harp.
Brass
There are also plenty of oddities in the world of wind instruments, although visually, in comparison with guitars, they are not so noticeable. For example, a little-known french instrument- Bombarda is somewhat similar to an oboe, but the sound it produces is much louder and stronger, and enormous effort is required to extract it, and the musician is forced to rest without losing even ten seconds.
In Europe, in the Alpine countries, a woodwind instrument is widely known - the Alpine horn. But in parallel there is a little-known Alpine horn - Vakrapuku. For its production are used different sizes livestock horns, which are composed in order of increasing diameter into one large curling horn, the joints are fastened and decorated with red material.
The Scottish bagpipes are quite famous all over the world and it already seems commonplace that the musician needs to blow into a pipe to fill the bag with air, which comes out through several pipes that create sounds. And in neighboring Ireland there is a similar, but little-known Irish bagpipe, in which special bellows, driven by the elbow, are used to fill the air bag right hand musician.
The original Australian wind instrument is the Didgeridoo, the sound of which is most similar to a loud buzz. The manufacturing technology has existed for one and a half thousand years, the material is parts of eucalyptus trees in which termites have eaten the core.
Considered unusually ancient chinese instrument- Ocarina. Its history goes back more than 12 thousand years. For a long time it seemed childish to Europeans, but in the 19th century, after some modernization, it sounded beautiful and original. In essence, the Ocarina is an even bundle of small bamboo tubes, each of which, when a musician blows into it, produces a gentle high-pitched sound reminiscent of a flute.
Keyboards
In the fourteenth century music world enriched himself with a new instrument - the clavichord. He became a representative of a new generation of musical instruments - keyboards. The clavichord quickly gained popularity, and its peak occurred in the Middle Ages. In the nineteenth century, the instrument was practically forgotten, but in the twentieth it was brought back to life, when the need arose to preserve the musical historical culture. Today the clavichord seems exotic, but for its time it was quite common. As a similar but modern example You can tell the story of the video cassette recorder; it became exotic in just fifteen years.
Following the clavichord, another keyboard musical instrument appeared - the harpsichord, which surpassed its older “brother” in distribution and popularity. Of course, the piano became the pinnacle of technical development of keyboard instruments and eclipsed all that came before it, but the originality of the harpsichord remains unchanged.
The most original musical instrument
Architect David Hanoelt built a house that makes sounds when wind passes through its walls.
But the most original instrument you can play is a two-handed wood saw. You can play it with a bow, changing the pitch of the sound by the degree of bending of the metal saw blade!