• Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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    4 months ago

    My first instinct was to say yes, but then I remembered the bong sound isn’t really modulated in the song. So it’s more like a sound effect like police sirens.

    Funny enough, I do consider a basketball a percussion instrument since it is bounced to a beat in some songs (I’m showing my 90s kid age here lol).

  • palordrolap@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    Yes. It is an instrument used in the consumption of drugs.

    Or do you mean musical instrument? TL;DR: It can be.

    It comes down to how wide you want the definition of “musical instrument” to be. Is a drumstick a musical instrument? Is it what makes a drum designed to be played with sticks an instrument? What is such a drum without at least one stick?

    “Well I could hit the drum with something else.” Sure, but does that make the “something else” the instrument?

    What is a woodwind (musical) instrument without the player’s breath? A saxophone without a reed?

    “I could smack it on something.”

    Well, yes, that’s the crux of it.

    In the loosest sense, anything that can be used to make a noise is a musical instrument. Take the popular joke of mayonnaise: if you put a straw in it and blow, I’m willing to bet some sort of noise can be had.

    This then brings in the other argument: what counts as musical?

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    4 months ago

    I only know of one song that for sure uses a bong “as an instrument” and that’s the bong rip you hear at the beginning of Sublime’s Smoke Two Joints.

    But I mean, if they use the sound of hitting one to create music then it’s an instrument as far as I am concerned.

  • HobbitFoot
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    4 months ago

    Yes. It is a percussive instrument similar to cymbals.

  • mkwt@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    “Watermelon Man” by Herbie Hancock has a beer bottle solo credited to Bill Summers.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    alright. So.

    I gotta ask…

    how high are you (were you?)

    also, just to actually answer the question, if it’s played as an instrument, it’s an instrument. Anvils have been instruments (See that thing in Andor. that’s an instrument.) Saws, too. Wine glasses. (both, by playing the rim, as well as breaking them as a sort of percussive instrument.). Even your desk when you’re bored out of your skull waiting for that one email to come in so you can do your job. (rapatap tap, smack rapatap tap, thunk.)

  • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Lots of non traditional instruments get called for in concerts. I played a song that called for drumming on upturned metal trash cans in high school.

    • Case@lemmynsfw.com
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      4 months ago

      I was in band, and marching band was mandatory.

      I did not try out, as I did not want to participate in that part of the band experience.

      So I was part of the “front ensemble” which is shit you can’t march with. Timpani drums, etc.

      We had an L frame rack with wheels that had all sorts of crap on it, half of it made in some garage before I joined.

      We called it the ghetto rack.

      I had a solo on what were essentially tanks that had the bottom cut off and an attachment point welded on top hung by rope.

      So yeah, if you can hit it and make a sound, it becomes a percussion instrument.