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New Order, timeless style: Blue Monday recorded with instruments from the 1930s

16 January 2023

New Order's Blue Monday was released in March 1983, and its cutting-edge electronic groove changed pop music forever. If it had been made 50 years earlier, what would it have sounded like? Watch masked musicians Orkestra Obsolete play the song using authentic instruments available in 1933: the harmonium, Diddley bow, singing wineglasses, dulcimer, Theremin and musical saw. Banish the January blues and marvel at a classic as you've never heard it before.

Orkestra Obsolete: Blue Monday

What would New Order's classic have sounded like in 1933?

The Instruments

Diddley bow

A one-stringed, home-made instrument thought to have originated in Africa and popular in rural areas of America's Deep South; the Diddley Bow is essentially a string attached to piece of wood with a bottle used as a moveable bridge. It influenced the development of the blues sound, and R&B pioneer Bo Diddley was named after the instrument.

Hammered dulcimer

A percussion instrument featuring strings over a trapezoidal sounding board, which is struck with small mallets. Versions of the instrument have been in use throughout the world since at least the Middle Ages.

Harmonium

Popular with village churches and Ivor Cutler, the harmonium, or pump organ, uses bellows to generate its sound. It was first patented by Alexandre Debain in 1840.

Zither

The famous sound of the theme from The Third Man. The earliest surviving zither-like instrument is the Chinese guqin, dating from 433 BC.

Musical saw

An adapted or specially made handsaw that is capable of continuous glissando, creating a sound similar to the electronic Theremin. Famous players include Marlene Dietriech, who used it to entertain troops during WWII.

Singing glasses

First created in 1741 by Richard Pockrich, Pink Floyd famously used singing glasses on 1978's Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Queen of the instrument was Gloria Parker, US radio star and leader of an all-girl band; Parker, who died in 2022 aged 100, was a virtuoso on marimba and organ as well as the singing glasses.

Theremin

Invented by Leon Theremin in 1919, the first and only instrument that can be played without touching consists of two antennae: one that controls volume and the other controlling pitch. It was used to great effect in sci-fi movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Prepared piano

Prepared pianos have been used since the 1920s in various forms, most famously by avant-garde composers ranging from John Cage to Brian Eno.

Slit drum

The slit drum, tongue drum or log drum is one of the earliest musical instruments, with examples found in Africa, Indonesia, and South America. The version played by Orkestra Obsolete was made by Angus McIntyre using African hardwoods.

Dulcitone

A rare keyboard instrument that uses tuning forks instead of strings. It was designed in Glasgow circa 1900 and, as well as its lovely sound, its chief advantage was portability, hence its popularity with missionaries in Africa.

Other instruments

The small drum kit, double bass and banjo-uke (the one used dates from around 1910) would be standard foundation for any small dance band from 1915-1930. The musical effects were created using a scratched 78rpm record, a Theremin and reel-to-reel tape echo.

The history of Blue Monday

Blue Monday by New Order is the biggest selling 12” single of all time.

“I don’t really see it as a song. I see it as a machine designed to make people dance.”
New Order's Bernard Sumner

It was created using a hand-built Powertron Sequencer, driving a Moog Source synthesiser and an Oberheim DMX drum machine.

Clocking in at seven and half minutes, it is one of the longest songs ever to grace the UK singles chart, peaking at No. 9 in 1983 and at No. 3 when it was re-released in 1988.

The original artwork, designed for Factory Records by Peter Saville, was famously so expensive to produce that the label lost money on every sale.

New Order performing Blue Monday live on Top of the Pops in 1983

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