The Smell of Your Instrument…Your Musical Instrument

Do you enjoy the smell of you musical instrument? Some instruments are multitextured for a variety of fragrances such as leather, polished wood, metal, etc…What provokes you to smell your instrument? Are you smelling it in an attempt to get to know all aspects of it so that you may have a better understanding of it? Are you smelling it to make sure you’ve washed away all the beer. Or maybe because its close to your face or maybe just because…What have you learned? This is a serious inquiry for serious replies only.

“What provokes you to smell your instrument? ” Absolutely nothing! ….. And then,…
“This is a serious inquiry for serious replies only”….
Best of luck there Petey. But if it is a serious inquiry, could you please tell us what serious reason you have you ask?

Knowing one’s instruments inside out is very important if one is going to play them properly. The instrument and all technique should be unnoticed, invisible. All one should be aware of is the music in one’s head and it becoming real in the air. Therefore the smell, colour, texture, taste and other intimate properties of one’s conduit for this process should be totally familiar to one so as to not distract one from the music. We all look at, listen to and touch our instruments, try smelling and licking too.

I’ve had a deliberate sniff of my fiddle. Even with my large olfactory gland I can barely distinguish any smell whatsoever. It would smell nice if I put polish on it, but then that would be the smell of polish, not my instrument. I see no playing advantage to having a pongy fiddle. Sometimes however, after an hour or two of energetic bowing I might be seen having a quick sniff of my underarm!

“Therefore the smell, colour, texture, taste and other intimate properties of one’s conduit for this process should be totally familiar to one so as to not distract one from the music”… So Yhaal House, are you implying that we should not only have an ear for music but a nose for it as well? (thinks)….Well, here’s a little tune I picked out myself… Ha, ha, …Sorry Petey, I can’t help myself.

And before I get attacked for not respecting the OP’s last sentence, i.e., “This is a serious inquiry for serious replies only.” I defend myself with this….. There is a saying that recognises that, ’The Irish always treat serious things with humour, and humorous things seriously. This is an Irish site!

I don’t necessarily make a habit of “sniffing” my instruments but their familiar smell can be comforting. It’s part of growing to love them, I suppose.

However, I certainly wouldn’t go sniffing at other musicians’ instruments or even those in a shop. It would seem a bit weird and, also, rather difficult when you have to wear a mask. 🙂

Yes! The aroma of your instrument is a very personal thing especially where mouth blown bagpipes are concerned.

Thank God I play the fiddle. Varnish and rosin smell nice. The smell inside a luthier‘s shop is heavenly. Too bad they now recommend against those polishes one used to apply in between.

A mandolin I have still holds the exotic aroma of imbuia wood, reminiscent of peppery nutmeg and cinnamon, forty years after its construction. Without a doubt, this adds a modicum of pleasure to my experience of playing it, which I do rarely and extremely badly.

When I got my current guitar first, the wood smell was fantastic. Every time I took it out of the case when I left the house to play somewhere it was overwhelmingly good and I hoped nobody would spot me noticing it… When I got my current mandolin last year, I was slightly disappointed as, though I had it made for me, it didn’t have the same enormous smell. Currently it (mandolin) smells a bit of the wood smoke from a couple of weeks ago playing with friends, so a good memory.
The smells are very important. Even now, I love that musty smell of most non-fancy musical instrument shops and the smell of the speaker cabinets and electrics (though I hate the metal riffs they spew).

I have two guitars from my earlier music travails, each made with a natural cedar top soundboard and cherry wood back and sides. They are kept in a hard shell case. When I take them out the wood smell is intoxicating, I play mostly to take in that smell for a few hours then back to the case for another six months or so of aroma “seasoning.”

My fiddle mostly smells like pine rosin, can’t imagine why….

I’m not aware of any particular aromas emanating from my instruments. I do like sniffing newly built stringed instruments, though, for the smell of recently worked wood. Each species has its own distinct smell - spruce, cedar, walnut, mahogany, rosewood, cherry… Some, like maple, don’t have much smell except when they in the process of being worked (maple dust smells a bit like marshmallow or candyfloss). Some people find it odd or amusing that, when handed a new guitar, mandolin or bouzouki, one of the first things I do is sniff its soundhole; to me, that seems perfectly rational.

“My fiddle mostly smells like pine rosin, can’t imagine why….”

Now you mention it, so does mine. But I only notice it when opening the case.

When we still had our upright piano, if you took the front off, you’d get that musty, dusty, fusty smell reminiscent of antique shops. Don’t get the same buzz off a digital keyboard.
And when my button box was new, you’d get that lovely new leather smell from the straps. It’s pretty well worn off now.

I’ve owned my acoustic guitars, mandolin, and octave mandolin long enough that the initial lovely smell of the wood is gone. They’re almost completely neutral-smelling now, with more of an antique furniture dusty smell inside than anything else. They’ve been stored out in the room on stands and not in cases, which probably helped to age-out the odor.

My wooden flute has no smell of its own, not surprising because it’s Cocus wood and who knows when the wood was harvested and dried. That wood is unobtanium now. It picks up a very slight odor from bore oil after oiling for a few days, but then that disappears.

I think the only musical instrument in the house that’s noticeably stinky is a Djembe with calfskin (?) head, where there is some residual smell if you get your nose right on it.

Conical bore: “My wooden flute has no smell of its own, not surprising because it’s Cocus wood and who knows when the wood was harvested and dried.”

The would wood still have had a smell when it was worked, irrespective of how old it was at the time (although not necessarily the same smell as when it was freshly felled). Never having worked cocus wood, I don’t know what it smells like (according to https://www.wood-database.com/cocuswood/ , no characteristic aroma - so it smells of wood 😉 ). Rosewood is apparently so called because, when freshly felled, it smells of roses; the seasoned wood has a sweet, incense-like smell, but not much like roses.

My fiddle smells like it’s spent many nights snuggled up to an old drunk.

That site also says mopane has ‘no characteristic aroma’. When my mopane flute it arrived in the post new but having not been a tree for over 20 years (I was told) it had a strong, pleasant woody smell that struck me as exotic. But maybe it’s not ‘characteristic’.

When it has been played but not oiled for a while the smell is still there but nowhere near as strong as when I opened the cardboard box.

When I first read this i thought we were going to a discussion of synesthesia. After all F # has always sounded a bit like dark orange to me. I was, as so often, wrong. So here’s my story.

When I got my first wooden flute it didn’t have much of a odor. My first oil was a synthetic, but that smelled ,well, synthetic. Note: as an aficionado of single malt whisky I’m sensitive to aroma. Then I went to raw linseed (flax) and that smelled a bit foul. Then I found almond and was happy for a while even though it had very little odor. Finally it hit me. As an American with only a modest ability to cook I thought "what’s the go-to ingredient? Of course … BACON … duh. So I quickly changed to bacon grease. Now I sometimes open my flute case even with no notion of actually playing, just to enjoy the scent. Heck I even oil my delrin flute now so I can enjoy it equally. Guys it doesn’t get any better.

Now I fully appreciate the way an great smelling instrument can add so much to the experience.

I generally don’t sniff my fiddle because I spend too much time playing it. If anything it smells like rosin.

Okay, despite my previous reluctance to take this thread seriously (as demanded). The main thing about smell and association is that it is more powerful in the past. For example, I can still recall the smell of my grandparent’s house which was pipe tobacco and fruit. This memory gets triggered whenever I smell either of those things, and yes, it gives me a moment of pleasure. I can also remember the smell of my recorder when I was in primary school, and it evokes good (as well as bad) memories. But how does you instrument smell now? Well you won’t really know for a few, or many years into the future, when it all becomes nostalgia.

So adding to that, ….. play well and enjoy your present musical experiences so that the smell of your instrument in the future will be positive and rewarding. If you don’t enjoy your present, your association with your past will smell awful! And as someone on here reminded me recently, “It’s all in the mind you know”.
(thinks to self…. “My dog has no nose”… “SHUTUP Gobby!”)

I used to think brass had a smell, as my childhood school-owned saxophone always had a metallic smell. My whistle doesn’t smell at all though. I would smell my Clarke original with the wood block but it’s in the car and I’m not getting it. I do have a lovely small wood fired ocarina that smells like burnt wood as it should. It’s a nice aroma.

If you can’t smell your instrument or it’s smell has changed, get a COVID test.

I have a Martin 000-28 which is 47 years old and there is a woody, not unpleasant, aroma I notice when I open the case. Also when opening a 175 year old Rudall & Rose flute case there is musty Victorian scent, or odor, that is released, but the flute itself doesn’t exhude any stench. My uilleann pipes are free of any fragrance. Do you perhaps have a smell fetish Petey_ Whistle?

My whistles, which are either all-metal or metal and plastic, don’t have a smell of any kind that I can detect.

With my uilleann pipes there’s only a subtle leather smell if I get my nose right on the bellows or bag. (The bag is chrome-tanned cowhide which requires no dressing so there’s no odour from seasoning.)

Highland pipes are a different story altogether!! Because I play the traditional sheepskin bag which has a strong unique smell that I love. Most of the smell comes from the seasoning I suppose, and sheepskin bags have to be kept seasoned to stay air-tight.

I love the smell of my fiddle, and my flute (when it’s been freshly oiled & polished) smells of leather balsam, silver polish and Roy McManus’s own-brand bore oil which is slightly lemony. Lovely!
m.d.

I expect our instruments smell rather like our houses and so we are all a bit desensitised to their bouquet, breathing in our personal domestic stench (e.g. cats, incense, tobacco, coffee, vanilla, cannabis, garlic, garum masala, cider, olive oil, leather, cooked fish and seafood, frankincense & clove hair oil, extinguished candle smoke, farts, burnt toast, motor cycle oil, damp wool and sheepskin overcoats, Palmolive, coconut shampoo, wood fires, cedar and pine wood, dried lavender, old books, wet dog, hot electronics (valves), new computers, Aifix glue, washing baskets, freshly baked cakes and bread, the toilet et cetera) all the time as we do.

I got my old Strat out the other day - it still smells like teen spirit.

Thanks for you thoughts everyone!
Petey

Wow Petey,… that was a bit of an anticlimax. Like a joke with no punchline (except serious, of course).

Actually my fiddle has quite a pine scent to it. Maybe that’s just the rosin but I appreciate it and can tell when I’ve left my fiddle open in a room.

My fiddle spends most of it’s time out of it’s case so not much of a smell but when I was about 10 years old I took a few months of violin lessons from an old guy who lent me an old violin . When I opened the case it had a strong musty, dusty , wood , varnish , and rosin smell , very distinct, unlike anything I had ever smelled before !!!!! Like old history in a small coffin !!!!!

Serious or not, I’ve strangely enjoyed this discussion, it reminds me of how personal an instrument can/should be.. As for my Martin guitar (20 years old now) and my concertina, they make perfect scents to me 🙂

My uilleann pipes usually smell pretty nice: leather, exotic hardwoods, beeswax, and metal polish. It also helps that I bathe regularly and don’t smoke.

“Do you perhaps have a smell fetish Petey_ Whistle?” -> nope…no smell fetish

When I made a few flutes and whistles donkey´s ears ago, I loved the smell of the freshly turned woods. . .freshly roasted coffee. . .Victorian lavender. . .rosewater. . .tulips. . .chocolate. . .faraway places.

Petey….whistle….great topic for discussion always one or two negative souls…..I like to add a blend of patchouli and musk to my saxophone and clarinet cases at regular intervals a great way to kick off a practice or rehearsal ….I also have a cocobola Oz whistle which smells divine…happy daze.

Yes ScottsIrish I’ve had Cocobolo and Brazilian Rosewood flutes that had a very nice smell.

Which reminds me about a rather stinky flute I used to have, an original Boosey Pratten flute made around 1880 out of some kind of early plastic or hard rubber.

That material, if kept oiled, had a nice deep brown-black colour. But if let dry out the flute turned a hideous olive green. Either way, it smelled bad.

Me bazooki has a whiff of the bog about it. Sometimes in me gaff if the window is closed it takes over the whole room!

Sometimes my violin bow smells like it’s come from the rear end of a horse.

One thing I love doing, when I pull out my concertina, is to smell the leather bellows, gorgeous! I’m pretty sure I’ve done it once or twice while busking as well ^-^! I got my sister to put her nose to it, she didn’t have any massive grá for it.

I leave it out in my dresser now, gives me way easier access and drive to pick it up and play a few times, so the smell is less intense, needs to stew in the case for a while to build it up ^-^ …

Well, I must say my GHBs don’t smell very good if they haven’t been cleaned in a bit ;) and my metal Irish whistle doesn’t smell like much at all… let me go smell my bass guitar now.

Edit:
My bass smells like polish and warehouse because I just got it a week ago :D