Rubber Glove Bagpipes and Carrot Clarinets That Sound Like Demented Ducks

This is the Disco Tulum by Linsey Pollak, where he happily plays a beach ball bagpipe.

To make an instrument sound like a demented duck requires talent. Australian Linsey Pollak is a master at coming up with new ideas for instruments, even if they are a bit, er, strange. From rubber glove bagpipes to reed flutes and a watering can clarinet, Pollak, who gives a TEDX Talk on April 26 at the Sydney Opera House, has a weird performance to match the quirky D.I.Y. skills. He shows up onstage wearing a scientist's jacket, along with a blue spiky wig or a country hat.

At a talk he did in Brisbane, Pollak said a lot of people ask him where he gets his ideas from. He said he transports himself back to being a kid (with adult skills), who hasn't lost that initial curiosity. He's found success on Youtube, wracking up at least 50,000 hits on each video which he attributes to his position as a "community music advocate." Basically, he makes music accessible. The idea? To make music with the stuff around us.

The Carrot Clarinet. Linsey Pollak drills out a carrot and turns it into a clarinet, looping it with a Boss RC20 to record three layers from his solo show ‘Making Jam.’

Pollak has been making instruments for 30 years, inventing new wind instruments and designing marimbas and percussion instruments. He has dug into an unlikely pile of recycled materials for his instruments, crafting them from rubber gloves, carrots, watering cans, chairs, brooms, dental floss and bins. His children's shows include “Bang it with a fork” and “Out of the frying pan.”

Linsey Pollak does a ‘Lunar Dance’ with a handcrafted Rubber Glove Bagpipe & a Kaossilator

Back in the day Pollak studied Macedonian bagpipes, while his own version is called the Australian Kitchen Glove Bagpipe. He combines his D.I.Y. instruments with a midi wind controller to loop samples of frogs and voices, as his show The Extinction Room creates tunes from endangered and extinct animals (yay, dinosaurs!).

The Live and Loopy series by Linsey Pollak

The Live and Loopy show, upcoming next on March 8 and 9 at the Bleach Festival in Gold Coast, Australia, loops a Kaossilator, voice percussion and melodica as Pollak does a mad solo with a rubber glove bagpipe and a Chinese bamboo flute. Stay tuned.

What's it like to karaoke Skype with total strangers? Nadja looked into that, too.

Nadja Sayej has been blasting this all week. She's on Twitter. - @nadjasayej