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Looper's Delight
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Bill Cummings wrote about my mention of the Martha Stewart brass waste paper basket (made to look like and enormous thimble, btw :-): "how do you tune that thing?" I hold the open end of the waste basket against my chest pinned there by my forearms. Then I play the edge of the bottom with my third finger of my right hand to create the ersatz 'tek' sound. I then play the middle of the bottom with my 1st, 2nd and 3rd fingers together to create the ersatz 'dum' sound.The middle of the drum is much thinner metal and, hence, has a lower pitch. The whole time I support the base of the drum with the thumb of my right hand and the thumb and pinky finger of my left hand which leave my 2nd finger free to mute or change the pressure (pitch) of the thin metal. I can really control the envelope of the harmonics this way and I have several pitch bend techniques up or down controlled by the pressure of the 2nd finger. Additional, I can rotate the drum off of my chest keeping one side of the open end balanced on my chest to create radial phasing effects akin to the upwardly pitch bending bass technique on Bayan in Tabla playing. Then, to top it all off, I can flip the drum so I balance the base on my left palm and it has a beautiful bass gong note that lasts quite a long time. Using pitch shifting footpedals and my DL4, this becomes a phenomenally expressive and musical instrument; like a cross between a brass gong and a metal tabla. It is the best $20 I ever spent on a percussion instrument (unless, of course, you include the $25 I spent at Cost Plus for my Liquid Glass Ghatam----but that's another story altogether). The cool thing is everyone of these waste baskets (which are still available for $20 a K-Marts, although disappearing rapidly, has a completely different pitch. I use two of them in performance. They fit exactly inside each other and there is room for me to throw my gas stove, poor person's overtone pipe inside them Too cool. yours, Rick Walker (loop.pool)