We also invite you to take off your pants and jacket.

Blink 182 (Prof P-mix)

Other musical instruments need someone to play them, but mechanical instruments play themselves. They may be powered by hand cranks, foot pumps, spring motors, or electricity. They may rely on pneumatic or mechanical components. But all of them play music stored in some kind of binary format, making them the ancestors of digital computers.

Perforated paper rolls for mechanical instruments can be considered the first user-friendly music software. Each hole in a roll represents a binary-code notation that triggers a specific mechanical action, such as the playing of a particular note or the single beat of a drum. Air passing through the perforations activate a series of valves, hoses, and bellows.

Musical Instrument Museum

The main thing about jazz is that it’s made up. All music is made up, but usually only once—you write the song, and then you sing it. Jazz is different. It’s made up every time you play it, which must be exhausting and is possibly a waste of notes.

There are only so many notes in the world, and one day they’re going to start to run out. Hopefully science will one day work out a way to recycle notes.

Some instruments aren’t allowed to do jazz by law, like the harp, the xylophone, and the organ. Jazz on any of these would sound frankly ridiculous, and the jazz police would come down on them like a ton of police.

Jazz even has its own language. It’s called scat, and you definitely shouldn’t pick it up.

Philomena Cunk