If there is one skill I have with regards to music, it’s that I make can make some really annoying noises.
While driving home, I started thinking about what would be the most annoying musical instrument one could build. More specially, more or less “acoustic” instruments.[1]
The ideas that came to mind were mostly about building wind instruments, and attaching a large number of them to a compressed air source. Kind of like a set of bagpipes, but far more annoying.
A large pressure chamber with say, three dozen slide whistles attached to it. All slightly out of tune. Or a large number of siren whistles. Or both. Maybe a few dozen cheap penny whistles. Or a hundred kazoos.
Something else to put on the list of things to build.
[1] and not including things that are just brutally loud, like a klaxon, or steam whistle, or a Hemi powered siren, or an orchestra of pulse jets, or maybe a fog horn.
If my goal was to build a really annoying instrument, I’d dig through Survival Research Labs videos, the Experimental Musical Instruments journal archive and links, and that scene from a Mel Brooks movie where they torture the hero with a big gauntlet on a chalkboard. There you go, a big acoustic blackboard with a resonator and with scrapy things, like a fork on a plate.
Or, on the other hand, you could go look at EMI’s book list and you might find something really fun to play with that wouldn’t set teeth on edge…