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Re: LOOPING ACOUSTIC DRUMSET INVENTION
Very cool ideas, I forwarded this to a couple of drummers I know who
are pursuing similar concepts. Rick, we need pictures and audio clips!
:-)
On Friday, February 10, 2006, at 02:34 AM, loop.pool wrote:
> Kevin and I have been having an off list discussion about our love for
> simulating
> electronic sounds by using all acoustic methods and he asked me about a
> Drum and Bass kit that I had eluded to in an earlier post.
>
> I sat down tonight (my first night out of bed after five days of one
> of the worst viral bugs that i've had)
> and wrote it out.I thought I'd share for anyone out there who is
> interested in the acoustic kit and it's possibilities in
> looping. This kit mics like a dream with a split mic channel with
> two D112 Kick mics and on Shure SM 81 or
> AKG C1000s overhead.........................mono all the way baby!
>
> yours, Rick
>
> ************************************************
> D&B/DOWNTEMPO specialty kit
>
> What I set out to create was the equivalent of what the software
> program ReCycle does
> for audio drum tracks.
>
> You can pitch the kit up (jungle, D&B) or down (Trip Hop, Downtempo,
> Abstract Electronica, Chill),
> slice it up and then rearrange it.
>
> Consequently I wanted to acoustically reproduce the sounds of drum
> sounds pitched up or down on a sampler.
> (the higher the pitch, the shorter the envelope----the lower teh pitch
> the longer the envelope)
>
> Additionally I wanted to use cymbal combinations that sounded more
> like artificial synth drums, old analogue drum machine sounds
> or even highly processed drum sounds.
>
> What I came up with was
>
> a two side drum kit
>
> LEFT SIDE (jungle, D&B, analogue drum machine----higher pitched)
>
> three custom made snare drums (using old fiberglass Pearl concert tom
> tom shells from the 70's)
> 6", 8", 10" These are on a rotating even plain off of an old
> Ludwig tri-tom so that I can rotate which ever one close in to me
>
> They sit to the left of an 8" Marco Mineman Meinl electro hi
> hats.............very high pitched, very electronic sounding---just
> like normal hats pitched
> upwards on a sampler
>
> then the main snare drum---------------whatever I'm into but I"m
> digging an old 60's piccolo Supraphonic that I"ve had forever tuned,
> surprisingly, rather full (not high pitched) Still it sounds like a
> normal snare drum---it's got a killer die cast rim on it, though for
> all that great electronica rim click stuff (and reggae, african and
> latin).
>
> The kick drums are bizarre inventions of mine (inspired but the
> drummer of Mari Boine's band from Norway)
> One is a 12" Purecussion tom tom with thick naugahyde glued to both
> sides of the head on an LP footpedal designed for cowbells and
> woodblocks
> the other is the 14" tom tom with hideous amounts of gaffing tape
> covering both sides with the same footpedal assembly
>
> the 12" 'kick' is tuned up like a hi pitched Drum and Bass kick
> the 14" sounds incredibly like a massive TR 808 drum machine kick
> ..........you know the one you hear in rap all the time that has a low
> but
> very clear fundamental tone and a long envelope.
>
> both of these kicks sound like hell from a foot away, but if you put
> your ear right next to them they sound like god , so I mike them
> incredibly tightly.
>
> RIGHT SIDE (half speed, trip hop, downtempo, chill)
>
> a big double headed 26" kick drum tuned close to slack and very , very
> deep but without a lot of sustaining tone
> a big 10" X 14" Ludwig Coliseum snare drum (also with that awesome
> Ludwig die cast rim---the absolute loudest die cast rim made on
> earth--I know because I've owned one of all of them at one time or
> another) tuned incredibly slack with the snares just rattling.
> I really wanted that long, sloppy, detuned vibe of a trip hop beat
> that was originally at 120 beats a minute
> and piece de resistance, two very old 60's Japanese crash cymbals
> purchased at the flea market. Because the Japanese make such
> incredible drumsets these days, a lot of people forget that they made
> the world's worst drum sets in the 1960's...by
> far....................bad for world
> drummers...................excellent for me.........lol
> These things are so cheap that they are very thin and as we know in
> the cymbal world, the thinner
> the cymbal the lower the pitch (give the same diameter).
> I use these two as ersatz downsampled hi hats. I don't even put a
> clutch on them, nor do I tighten them down.
> Just resting on each other they sound like perfectly like detuned
> samples of normal hi hats
>
> I compliment this all with an array of small specialty cymbals that I
> have collected over the ages...........including cymbals that sound
> curiously like the
> TR 808 ride cymbal sounds------flange cymbals-----mega bells-----jing
> cymbals from china-----stacks of small splashes and cut down cymbals
> that make really nice white noise crash sounds.
> I'm also proud of the finishing touch which is an invention of mine:
> One very, very heavy set of six 60's Japanese hi hat cymbals that I
> put goggles on and beat the holy living hell out of with a ball peen
> hammer. I squashed the bells to flat and then put as many pings into
> them as possible. The more pings, the more overtones. this thing
> makes the most awesome simulation of a synthesizer white noise,
> clapping sound and they are loud as hell. By using felts and
> tighening and loosening the wing nut I can
> change the length of the envelope from very tight to very long from
> song to song.
>
> Then to make things interesting I play these things with a plethora of
> different kinds of beaters and sticks to get different timbres out of
> them:
> I have chicken scrapers that make it sound like a very, very quick
> multiple digital delay hit on a snare drum..................knitting
> needles whose
> head sounds like electronic hi hats on even a normal pair of
> hihats----various kinds of brushes----a bunch of inventions of mine
> where I
> but a strip of the fuzz side of velcro on several different sizes of
> stick, mallets and brushes and the I sewed everything from dry Indian
> jingles
> to tambourined jingles to poker chips to seed pod gourds to the stick
> side of several strips of velcro and , voila, instant percussion
> stick.
>
> this is a particularly cool effect if you are doing some kind of a
> hand over hand accented pattern like a bo diddley beat with a velcro
> stick in one hand and a normal stick in the other. You hear the
> accented tom tom lick of the bo diddley beat but you simultaneously
> hear a funky constant 8th note pattern on whatever jingle texture you
> have provided.................it's like having your own maraca
> player..................without having to pay him or her...........Bo
> Diddley eat your heart out.