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Looper's Delight
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At 5:53 PM +0000 2/7/01, Jon Wagner wrote:
>Get a piece of plastic flexible tubing and fit it airtight into a
>drum. Then play the drum while blowing/sucking into the tube. You
>can get a really cool realtime pitch shift by altering the pressure
>in the drum.
>Also I was experimenting with placing splash cymbals on my drums and
>playing them. If the drum is tuned just right for the cymbal, you
>can get some really cool sympathetic vibrations with incredible
>sustain.
>Also try rubber bouncy balls scraped on the heads of your drums. I
>once saw Tuttie Heath play with mallets with bouncy balls on the
>ends and he did this really cool scraping/bouncing sound on the toms
>which had a very wierd effect.
I explored similar techniques and others in a piece for percussion
and tape. One movement used a set of three timpani, amplified using
contact mics. The head tension of the timpani could be controlled
dynamically with mechanical pedals. This is similar in effect to the
breath pressure technique but in addition to allowing resonance
glides it also enables the tension to be left for a time at a useful
pitch. This works very well when the timp acts as a resonator for
cymbals, which are played as Jon describes. Bowing (a cello bow works
well), scraping, and rubbing with superball mallets all result in
interesting tones, some of which resemble guitar feedback. Working
the timp pedal enables you to pick out various resonances on the
cymbal sound, and you can even create some interesting vibrato by
working the pedal periodically.
Superballs drawn across the drum head produce a variety of sounds
depending on the degree of stick pressure, the speed of movement, the
area of the head, and the pedal tension. Light stick pressure at a
slow speed near the middle of the head, combined with slack pedal,
will generally result in bouncy effects. Heavier stick pressure at a
faster rate near the rim, combined with tight pedal, will generally
result in continuous tones and even squeeks. Between the two extremes
are rich growls and even hornlike tones.
Bowing a metal rod, such as a triangle beater, while holding it flat
against the drum head at the rim will result in a similar range of
sounds. The length of the free section of the rod outside the rim is
critical, as is the bowing technique. A shorter length of rod can
produce a continuous tone, while a longer free section can result in
chattering sounds. Working the pedal and sliding the rod can both
create gliding sounds resembling whale songs. I ran these sounds
through a tape delay to great effect.
Wire drum brushes lightly swept over the drum head can produce a
continuous white noise effect. Another noise effect can be created by
spinning disks on the drum head. We used crotales (antique cymbals)
spinning two at a time on each of two timpani, while the
percussionist worked the pedals to change the relative pitch of the
sound.
All of these effects benefit greatly from amplification, though not
without feedback hazards. I used a combination of contact mics
(attached to the heads near the rim to minimize damping) and air
mics. Some of the sounds (such as the brushes) ended up on the tape
part only, some (such as the spinning crotales) were live only, and
others (cymbal, syperball rubbing, and rod bowing) were both live and
on tape.
--
______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD zvonar@zvonar.com
(818) 788-2202 voice zvonar@LCSaudio.com
(818) 788-2203 fax zvonar@well.com
http://www.zvonar.com