Songs Where an Unexpected Instrument Makes Perfect Sense

Wait until the chorus for the high tone that glides over the voices. Paul Tanner played it on the Electro-Theremin, an instrument he helped devise. The clean slides let the chorus keep rising in little surges while the cello underneath keeps pulsing in short strokes.

Noah Lenker’s jaw harp sounds like a spring being released between the other instruments. Listen for the small twangs under Adrianne Lenker’s long, conversational lines. That regular bounce makes room for her to drift across the beat, and it sounds right alongside the fiddle when everyone gets going.

Jack White wrote this on a concert marimba and plays it on the record. The rounded notes almost make a bedside lullaby. Then the drums and electric guitar interrupt in short bursts. The harder sounds have somewhere to disappear after every outburst because the quiet marimba figure is still there.

A loop of Jeremy Steig’s jazz flute from “Howlin’ for Judy” keeps lifting through the beat. The short phrase leaves room for the rappers to pass lines between them, then gives the ear a familiar point of return. You can follow it as a second voice when the verses get crowded.

Mitchell’s fretted dulcimer keeps a low note humming as she brushes across the upper strings. Listen for the delicate rasp underneath the stronger bass and voices. It keeps a little forward motion going through her longer sung phrases and makes the chorus feel like something a roomful of people could join.

Davy Spillane plays a winding melody on uilleann pipes that Bush identified as a Macedonian air. Follow the way the notes bend and linger when her vocal steps back. The pipes carry the melody through that space and keep the song’s lilting movement going without adding another voice.

Damon Albarn demonstrated the Suzuki Omnichord preset behind the song. Listen to the slightly lopsided keyboard figure against the repeating beat as the vocal gives way to Del’s rapping. The instrumental pattern hardly needs to change to make room for two very different deliveries.

Paul McCartney opens with the Mellotron’s flute sound. The notes have a soft edge and faint wobble, which gives John Lennon’s first line an unsettled place to land. Listen for how different that small opening feels from the later brass and drums as the song gets stranger.

Gabriel opens on a shakuhachi flute sound played from a Fairlight sampler. The breathy phrase slips up into the air before the horn section and bass arrive, which makes their entrance sound even more solid. That little pause at the beginning is worth hearing on the full album recording.

Amos digs into the harpsichord until its plucked notes sound almost like a second set of drums. Hear how the sharp attack cuts across the moving bass when the chorus opens up. A softer keyboard sound would lose much of the friction she gets from pressing those notes into an already forceful rhythm.

The interlaced harp arrangement by Björk and Zeena Parkins makes room for higher plucks to ring across the lower ones. Listen to the intervals between those attacks as Björk’s phrases become more insistent. There’s a delicate structure holding the song together before the vocal is left so exposed near the end.

Chuck Hammer layered notes from a guitar synthesizer to make the stringlike sound in the chorus. Hear the soft rise beneath Bowie’s voice while the bass and drums stay sharply defined. Hammer’s longer notes give the chorus a depth that’s easy to miss when you follow the busier parts.

Jimmy Page’s banjo enters after the gentler acoustic opening. Its pointed notes give the arrangement a faster-feeling edge as other strings and the rhythm section accumulate. Listen for the banjo’s short strokes through the loud ending, where there’s still a scrap of that earlier acoustic sound to follow.

The singing saw can be mistaken for a voice in the distance. Listen for the high, almost unbroken glides behind the strummed guitar and the blunt horn notes. It stretches across the beat so the song feels suspended for a moment, even as the guitar keeps going.

Peter Buck wrote the song on mandolin, and its short, bright notes set the pace from the opening. Keep following them after the bowed strings enter. The mandolin keeps the rhythm small and restless even when the arrangement swells around the vocal.

A recorded military bugle call keeps intruding on the guitars and drums. Its timing feels independent of the band, as if a sound from outside has carried into the room. That recurring call makes the questions Harvey sings about a country’s glory hard to take as a simple celebration.

The accordion has a rolling pulse that makes this long sea story easy to sit with. Follow the swell and release of the chords beneath the narrator. The part keeps a sense of motion through stretches where the voice has several lines of story to get through before the band can answer.