Odd percussion instruments

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Howard Jones
Date: 06 Mar 10 - 02:29 PM

When the Electropathics recorded Martin Graebe's "Stonecracker John" we wanted some appropriate percussion. Our percussionist Pierce Butler had an impressive selection of bangy things, but nothing made the right sound. We ended up using metal extension tubes taken from the studio's vacuum cleaner, which we banged on the floor.

Sadly, the vacuum cleaner never made it to the live performances.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 07:25 PM

Just reminiscing last night as a friend was showing off his latest birthday present of a proper cajon "complete with pre-amp" to boot, that a few years ago guys were just sitting on cardboard boxes and slapping them with snare drum brushes!
And like John P, if you're caught napping without your bodhran, djembe, shaky eggs, triangle or full set of timpani, then anything goes!

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: John P
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 06:30 PM

As someone who started driving my parents out of their minds at age 5 by drumming on everything in sight, I can confidently say that ANYTHING can be a percussion instrument.

legs
stomach
butt
cereal boxes
light bulbs (don't try this at home . . .)
water bottle
any type of pipe
telephone
adding machine
clothing
mattress
garden hose
kelp
any kind of food
paper
garden shears
spouse
cats and dogs
fish tank
bicycle (lots of different drums there)

My ex-wife actually has an album credit for playing "scrap lumber". The bodran was being too boomy, and the studio was undergoing a remodeling project.

John

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 02:05 PM

What about claves clah vays (what my kindergarten teacher called rhythm sticks)?

Thinking about getting a pair, because they would do well with some blues songs and even Poverty Knocks to replicate sound of loom.

Would they be considered too latin?

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: RangerSteve
Date: 15 Jun 08 - 08:40 AM

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but bottle caps, the kind that pop up when you first open the bottle - Snapple caps are the best, you put the cap over your mouth and push the middle in and out with your finger, moving your tongue back and forth to get different notes. Snapple ran a radio ad with a professional rock drummer playing one. It's a great way to annoy your co-workers.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Jack Campin
Date: 14 Jun 08 - 06:57 PM

I have a Tibetan ringing bowl beside this computer. I haven't figured out a performance use for it but I like to bong it every so often, it makes the same sort of long ringing tone leeneia described.

An even more private percussion instrument is the lid of a large wok. Balance it on your head and hit the rim. You get an amazing stereophonic gong sound.

Laurence Picken's book on Turkish folk instruments tries to apply the Sachs-Hornbostel classification to this sort of thing - most of the taxonomic space is taken up with children's toys. My favourite was popping a just-turned wet clay pot by smacking it flat with your hand.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Kaleea
Date: 14 Jun 08 - 06:29 PM

Years ago when I was teaching Music, I had some special ed students who had limited use of their limbs, & required very lightweight & easy to hold & play items which could be shaken, tapped, etc. I also used some long seed pods as shakers, which I picked right up off the ground in front of a school building in addition to various sticks, which have long been some of my favorite percussion instruments.
I like to use an oriental fan--not the type which unfolds, but one which might be shaped as an oval (or whatever) in which silk is stretched over a wire frame & is held by a handle. This is terrific for kids to tap gently & they sound quietly drumlike, each having a different pitch.
I suspended from a string a very long bolt (@ 11") used in making jet planes, then held it for the child to tap with any metal implement (spoon, triangle beater, etc., or if nothing else, a stick). This makes a wonderful long ringing tone! If you wiggle it as it rings it creates a vibratolike tone. I once rang it & held it near the ear of one child from behind & found out that he was not deaf as his parents & Dr.'s had believed! I showed the aircraft bolts (& other stuff) to the the head of percussion at my alma mater, & he was intringued. Since the aircraft industry was the main industry in that small city, he wrote a musical work for orchestra & suspended aircraft bolts of various lengths.
I also have fun playing percussively on my little Celtic Harp. There are a great many sounds you can coax out of a Harp, & other instruments for that matter, & you don't need to be Tommy Emmanuel to do it. The famous 20th century composer John Cage wrote & performed piano works playing the insides of a grand piano.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: trevek
Date: 14 Jun 08 - 01:42 PM

Talking of digeridoos, a firned of mine used one as a persussion instrument of a different time.

He got into a fight with someone at a party. The person pulled a knife, whereupon Rab grabbed the nearest thing... a didge... and percussed the knifeman's head with it... In Rab's words, "I didgeri-done him".

Mentioning trays, Spider Stacey of the Pogues used to batter his head with a beer tray.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Dead Horse
Date: 14 Jun 08 - 04:17 AM

I guess the ultimate in "Shaky Things" would be a Quality Street tin loaded with nuts n bolts or marbles.
You might even be welcomed into a song circle until ya started shakin it :-)

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 08:37 PM

That's a "wobble" board, introduced to UK audiences in the sixties asnd seventies (along with the Stylophone and didgeridoo) by Australian artist/entertainer/singer/songwriter Rolf Harris. "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" was one of numerous songs from his pen. He's still around, appeared at the Sidmouth Folk Festival some years back, and was more recently honoured? by being permitted to paint a portrait of HM the Queen.

I don't think linoleum would work - at least, not the stuff we used to get over here - too stiff and "dead". The sheet material used by Rolf Harris is known as hardboard, reconstituted wood fibre, smooth one side and textured the other. I think wobble-boards were even sold in music shops for a while.

Damn! Wikipedia says all that and more - should have looked first.

Ross

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: GUEST,erinmaidin
Date: 13 Jun 08 - 05:49 AM

Saw a duo in Indiana about 25 years ago (yes...I'm THAT old!). Two fellas, one on guitar and the other on various and sundry instruments of persecution....er...percussion. Anyway, the fella had a large square of old kitchen linoleum...about 18inch square...that he held on either side and "waffled" on....called it..actually...a "waffle board". Made a great "woompa woompa" sound and was particularly effective on that old gem "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport".

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 08:48 PM

Black bin-liner - about five minutes into this from Newfoundlanders Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers on YouTube.

Ross

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: GUEST,JB
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 11:10 AM

On the Bristol Beeb Points West programme last night they had an Arab playing trad instruments plus a WW2 jerrycan, which in fact sounded pretty good.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: trevek
Date: 12 Jun 08 - 07:49 AM

A singer in Poland once told me of meeting an Estonian blacksmith who played 'tunes' by banging his anvil with his hammer.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 11 Jun 08 - 09:38 AM

A bunch of Aussie steel workers achieved international fame as "The Tap Dogs" - percussive tap dancing.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Jun 08 - 04:49 AM

One of the Goon Shows had a plotline about a Spanish dancer who needed a large collection of false teeth to use as castanets, so she ambushed people to steal them.

The BBC came up with the most inspired sound effect I'ev ever heard - somebody being whacked on the back of the head with a mallet, followed by the clang of their false teeth falling into a bucket.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Rowan
Date: 11 Jun 08 - 01:37 AM

In the mid 70s there was a melodeon player in East Gippsland whose false teeth were not quite a perfect fit. The local ladies would queue to have him as a partner at the Saturday night dances because, while he danced, he'd keep them in his mouth but click away on them to the rhythm of the music; in their ear, while dancing!

Better than castanets.

And he'd do it occasionally while playing dance tunes, as well.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 11:54 PM

Anyone mention push brooms? There's a wonderful stomp video on youtube with metal garbage cans and lid, plus push brooms used for percussion along with the dancers' shoes, hands, bodies, etc.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Rowan
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 11:44 PM

Jack, we Aussies have drunk the lager phone under the table... it's easy to play, but a bugger to get the parts... :-)

Plastic seals are trickier to remove than the old cork seals and any platic left in the crown will deaden the tone. But if you collect the steel thingies that stop the wires on champagne corks from cutting through the cork, you can make a champerphone.

Linsey Pollak does a fine line in unusual instruments, some of which are percussion. Satay sticks tuned by varying their length while tapped might not be everyone's idea of "percussion" and the sound of gaffer tape coming off the roll (used in Kev the roadie) even less so but his most recent use of a bicycle (spokes, tyres, pump, saddle stem and chain) is seriously percussive.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: azfiddle
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 10:16 PM

How about a slinky? The plastic ones don't work- you have to use the metal ones, but they come in several sizes which give somewhat different tonal qualities....


My bandmate introduced these at the Walnut Valley Festival in Kansas (Winfield) - sound sample on the "Contra dance set" on the myspace page or web page for Round the House.

Sharon

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 06:58 PM

I've been thinking about converting my two spun steel SCA helmet blanks into a bongo set...

Jack, we Aussies have drunk the lager phone under the table... it's easy to play, but a bugger to get the parts... :-)

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 06:18 PM

There is a group from somewhere on the eastern US seaboard who do tracklaying work songs. These are accompanied by the sound of hammers bashing rails into place. They toured the UK last year, bringing a set of sledgehammers and yards of steel rail with them. (I missed hearing them).

The most industrial thing I've ever heard was a performance by the Glasgow experimental-arts group Test Department in the early 90s. It was held in an abandoned locomotive factory that still had much of the original equipment in place. At one point there was a group of about a dozen people doing Stalinist-style callisthenics on a moving locomotive transporter (just visible through the smoke and flares) with a percussion ensemble of assorted metallophones, with the equivalent of the large gong in a gamelan ensemble being a suspended mixer bucket from a full-size premixed-concrete truck, whacked with six feet of railway line suspended from a chain. There was so much going on you could hardly hear it. There were several megalomanic shows like that in Glasgow around that time, I miss that stuff.

Nobody's mentioned the lagerphone yet.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Dead Horse
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 03:37 PM

I use one of these
but not the plastic version, rather a home made wooden article done up to look like piano keys.
Its a simple way to create that Zydeco rub-board sound without having a corrugated iron vest round ya neck :-)
Lark in the Morning have a huge selection of weird and wunnerful instruments.
I also carry around a cajun triangle, two coconut halves, a shaky corn-cob, a wee tambourine, a shaky banana and some plastic knuckle dusters with bells on.
A true artist, thats wot I is, mate.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 03:16 PM

An axe and a wrench.
I would hit the axe with the wrench to simulate a stardrill to back up a friend singing Sixteen Tons.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: reggie miles
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 03:01 PM

Perhaps not so very odd in the traditional sense but an image of what I most often use can be found at the following link. my 1929 Maytag Custom Special Dixie Delta Deluxe Eldorado Rhythm Board.

I've been threatening to debut my urinal bongo set but I'm not sure the general public is quite ready for that yet.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: GUEST,Trev
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 12:58 PM

I've seen two beer bottles used like a bodhran and tipper, also as bones. There's an interesting sound as they vibrate/rub together.

Also seen Gypsies using a wooden box/tea chest for a drum, sitting on it and drumming the cormers with hands.

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Leadfingers
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 10:42 AM

The Mic was on a stand , and not really INSIDE Steve's mouth ,but close enough to 'Pick Up' the varying sounds from Steves Skull ,
amplified by his open mouth !

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Grab
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 09:30 AM

LF, did he get it out again?! I can't help thinking of those stories about people who put a pool ball in their mouth for a bet and then find out about the phenomenon that your mouth will briefly open that wide but won't do it twice in a row, so they have to go to casualty and have someone take a crowbar to their jaw... :-)

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Leadfingers
Date: 10 Jun 08 - 07:46 AM

Incidentally , reading back through , I see someone plays 'Head' with small hammers ! An old mate of mine , Steve Darrington , when he was playing keyboards and silly buggers in a band called Brewers Droop used to put an SM58 in his mouth and rap on his skull with his knuckles - by opening and closing his mouth he got a surpringly wide variety of sounds !!

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Leadfingers
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 08:41 PM

Jack - That looks more 'Melody' than straight percussion .

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 08:13 PM

Went to see Rachel Unthank and the Winterset in Bristol this week. Becky plays percussion with her high heels on one track (Felton Lonnin, also on latest album).

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 07:05 PM

The Till Family Rock Band

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: PageOfCups
Date: 09 Dec 02 - 03:43 PM

I've got something I picked up at an art fair in Phoenix (antibiotics haven't helped ;-) ), and for the life of me I don't know what it's made of. It's a bunch of what look like itty bitty cow hoofs on a decorative cord. It makes a nice rattle-y sound. I like it. But I'd like to know what the heck I'm playing when I play it. Help?

PoC

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 09 Dec 02 - 10:52 AM

In Lortzing's opera Zar und Zimmermann (Czar and carpenter) there is a wonderful clog dance. Here the clogs are simulated by a woodblock.
Instead of that I used to clap two clogs over my head which made a good impression upon (or to, or on? Choose the right prep.) the audience.
The best however is the story how I bought them on the market. I choose the size fitting my wife's beautiful feet, and then I tested every pair for the sound. The saleswoman was flabbergasted. She had experienced a lot in her long life, she told me, but never before a customer choosing her clogs for their sound.

Wilfried

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: GUEST,Rex on the work 'puter
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 12:04 PM

There's a friend of mine that has, yep, the jawbone of an ass. Like in the old minstrel shows. He has a piece of hardwood and runs it across the teeth. Sort of a rattle. It tends to scare folks in the audience. A percussion instrument I sometimes play to music is perhaps more like concussion. Artillery.

Rex

Subject: RE: Odd percussion instruments
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 04 Dec 02 - 02:53 AM

Richard H - the instrument you describe is known in German folk musik as Teufelsgeige = Devil's violin.

The oddest percussion instruments I played are in our local Volunteer Fire Department. I told my fellow firefighters that our fire house is full of music, and proved it by banging tow bars with a hatchet, coupling keys with the metal tipper of my triangle, and empty fire extinguishers with keys. We formed a rhythm group and banged happily away, sometimes shouting "cha-cha-cha".
At this occasion I added a big "whoof" blowing a B-nozzle with an euphonium mouthpiece (this is no percussion instrument, but it fitted very well).

Wilfried

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 04 Dec 02 - 12:14 AM

We certainly march to the beat of a different (if not distant) drummer around here.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: GUEST,Claymore
Date: 03 Dec 02 - 12:35 PM

John, In West Virginia those seed pods are called "Noisy Children" and come from a form of the Locust tree.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: GUEST,JohnB
Date: 03 Dec 02 - 12:30 PM

When I do Blacksmith demonstrations at folk concerts, I always end up hitting Red Hot Metal on the Anvil in time with the music. Even get a round of applause now and again for a particularly interesting syncopation.
The other strange percussion thing I have at home is a bean pod. Not sure where it originates from, it's about 2 1/2 inches wide by 14 inches long and has the dried seeds inside, which are loose and rattle.
JohnB

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: InOBU
Date: 03 Dec 02 - 10:59 AM

Hi Garg... I have an old set of horse bones, I found as part of a whole horse, or his whole skeliton, on a beach in Kerry... nicely dried and a tad green from the sea... lovely look lovely sound... As to odd percussion instruments, Gene Shepard used to play his head with small hammers, I think he called it the Cuffinspeal, cheers Larry

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 03 Dec 02 - 12:24 AM

Glad you like a good solid bone - Harpy
Most women do.

Thanks for the poem...its nice to know we are not alone.
The verse's not perverse, and yet, its tone alone,
Says, Sale will Sail in a full winded gale.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: harpgirl
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 11:52 PM

you know...this one:

Subject: RE: BS: Love on the internet?
From: GUEST,Songmeister's secret admirer - PM
Date: 11 Nov 02 - 10:51 PM

                              Ode To a gargoyle

             The gargoyle guards my sullen heart
          I'm safe to dwell beneath his impish grin
         I watch the nighthawks dodge his winged alert
         Tannins bruise his lips and secrets stay within
      But lo' I hear the whippoorwill when he has banished care
         A trilling waterfall and laughter fill the air

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: harpgirl
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 11:45 PM

I like the bones and I'm gettin' a pretty good sound out of them since I have been paracticin'... gee, garg...you must have liked my poem about you. You've been talking in rhyme alot!!! hg

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 11:38 PM

Given the spelling and context of your original posting...Staggering Eagle....

Your bladder was gladder than mine....when you began this thread... fine?

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Somewhere in the distant MC past...and the past of polite society....it was and embarassing discrace to be DRUNK in PUBLIC.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 11:34 PM

Given a lacking of spoons,
I just as soons
Prefer the crackin, knackin, clacking of bones, Ham bones, soup bones, chicken bones, good ol' buffalo bones.
Rhythem soft and rhythem deep,
In a pinch give me a sheep.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 11:28 PM

Nothing "odd" about them...but I like spoons.

Available anywhere food is served...and what folk-type gathering does not include spoons?

While most are drawn to metal ones.
I can endure the plastic ones.
But, for most queer old folky tunes
I prefer wooden spoons.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 10:45 PM

There's a fellow who does the art show circuit who makes and sells what is essentially a "prepared hammer dulcimer". I'm sure he borrowed the idea from avant garde composer John Cage who "prepared" pianos by inserting bits of wood, metal etc. between the strings. He intertwines various metal objects such as washers, car keys, bolts etc. between the strings of the dulcimer. You can play the strings or you can tap on the metal objects themselves.

I remember one festival where he was set up just a few booths away from Jerry Read Smith, noted maker of real hammer dulcimers. Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous....

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: Paul G.
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 10:27 PM

Well, the percussionist for my band is really quite inventive. My favorites are his making the sound of flames by crunching dried leaves inside and orange and red hankerchief for the song "Jacksonville Is Burning", and thumping on tin coffee cans for "All You Need (is a good cup of joe)". He also uses an assortment of kitchenware (pots,pans, and dish racks). He's really quite a strange fellow now that I think about it...

Paul

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: michaelr
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 09:55 PM

I've recorded an empty sheetmetal chassis with hardware that's sort of loose in it; it makes a long-decaying metallic buzz/rattle sound.

I've also recorded myself rhythmically rubbing the threads of two long machine screws together. Very cool!

Both these sounds can be heard on Greenhouse's CD "I lie Awake". The song is "April Morning".

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Odd percussion indtruments
From: GUEST,Richard H
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 09:41 PM

Mooh mentioned a "shule-a -roo". A musicologist from Maine gave me a weird percussion device of similar description. It's a tallish stick with symbols at the top, wood block, cow-bell and streamers attached. There's a spring at the bottom where you bang it on the ground - it probably could double as a pogo stick if you were caught in traffic and late for a gig.

There is also a wire running down one side where you're supposed to put an inflated pig's bladder.

I mentioned it on another site and someone did know the name but I forget what it was.