Musician turns his guitar into a synth… by playing it with a hairdryer

Italian musician David Lap has pulled a lot of stunts on YouTube, such as playing bass with his feet while performing a guitar solo with his hands, and playing the lead from DragonForce’s Through the Fire and Flames – while literally on fire.

But one of his most impressive feats has been a recurring series in which he uses his acoustic and electric guitars to imitate the sounds of other instruments.

In his newest installment, he transforms his Ibanez HSH shred machine into a synth pad by hitting it with a blast from a hairdryer, and the result is strikingly accurate-sounding (as Lap points out in the video, the hair dryer is set to “cold” so as not to affect the guitar’s neck).

Elsewhere in the video Lap approximates a sitar, a carillon and a didgeridoo, in the last case by using an air compressor on the strings.

Lap also tries out some unusual percussion techniques, in one instance mimicking maracas by dropping a handful of guitar picks into his acoustic (stay tuned for his next video, a five-hour-long clip in which he painstakingly retrieves each plectrum from his acoustic’s soundhole).

For more David Lap, head to his official YouTube channel.