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Music, Fire and Smoke

Music has never been so hot.

Music is all about strumming strings, hitting things or huffing and puffing into tubes. Fire and smoke doesn’t have much to do with it - well, unless you are at a rock concert where they have decided to set off some pyrotechnic bangs maybe. So it may come as a surprise that people have been making music with fire for at least a century, that smoke may help make better microphones, and that flames give a new way to watch music.

Dan Stowell tells us more about Rubens' tube, the Pyrophone and a microphone made of smoke.