Re: Re: PREPARING INSTRUMENTS for LOOPING (and any other performance)

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Super balls are also really nice.

They really develop a lot of friction on any surface that they are 
dragged across.

I'm really into preparing my drum set and other drums (frame drums 
especially).

Lately, I'm doing a version of 'Sunflower' by Milt Jackson in my weekly 
jazz gig
where I start the whole tune out with a long dream modal jam (before 
hitting the head when
the rhythm comes in).     I use two super ball mallets with extremely 
thin and flexible plastic
rods attached to make moaning 'whale', 'dolphin' sounds in a rubato 
fashion.
Eventually, I morph to play the toms and snareless snares with the super 
balls as
normal drum mallets (this sounds a bit african hand dum-ish).

It's really effective and almost always gets the patrons of the 
restaurant I play
at to suddenly stop talking and pay attention to the music (always a 
good thing - <smile).

I'm also fond of using different sizes of chain (from the kind found on 
typical light fixtures- the ones
that are a series of connected metal balls--to very large 1 inch oval 
chains used for hauling things
on my cymbals and drums.

I found some really killer skinny metal keychain holders.   They are 
circular and have a fastener that
allows you to put the ring over a typical cymbal stand holder with the 
lengths of chain attached.
One, that I love is the largest and I cut it's length so that it hangs 
down over the end of the cymbal
by one or two links only.     The weight is so heavy, hanging off the 
flat ride cymbal or crash cymbal
that it causes a buzzing, disortion sound when I hit it that it physical 
'gate's  the disortion sound quickly
after I strike the cymbal.

Last week,  I tried out a very, very slow, version of Brubeck's Take 
Five with cymbals prepared this way that came off like
an almost Industrial Blues.

That brings us to brushes (of all kinds):    commercial brushes used for 
drumming,  cheap plastic hand brooms,  different thicknesses
and hardnesses of vegetable brushes,   even some metal flea removal 
brushes that I bought recently.

With the metal flea brushes (which, I warn you, are Very hard on guitar 
strings), you can actually tape or glue a piezo
pick up to them, because when you play over a guitar string, the metal 
tines themselves will resonate like little harps.

These sound AMAZING through pitch shifters and other processing.

With drumset brushes, there has been a tremendous explosion in the 
number of commercial 'jazz' brushes that are being
sold commercially in the last two or three years alone.

They make them with really soft flexible blue nylon 'wire's,  medium 
soft white nylon wires,  hard and thick black nylon wires:
they have new versions that have really minute balls at their ends which 
are more percussive on metal surfaces and, of course, there are
different thicknesses and stiffnesses of wire bristles from the original 
concept for them.

They sound good on almost anything that resonates.     I've even 
considered taking one of my miniature electric guitars (I've collected
four of them) and super glueing different textures to the surface with a 
piezo pickup attached to the body so I could both drum, scrape
and play my 'prepared' guitar.