Sorry about yesterdays post. Thats what happens when you wake up and read theoretical textbooks about music first thing in the morning.
But I had a great day!
Got rung quite early to go pick up some ordered stuff at RS components and this put me in Penrose with money in my pocket so I decided to go searching through metal salvage yards. Coupla years ago you weren’t allowed near them, ’cause of osh I suppose, but I’d forgotten that and went looking anyways and was allowed free scuttling about in all I found.
I saw a percussion thingie at the Rock shop a day or two ago and it was so simple I decided I want’d one. Basically it was a compression spring about 350mm long at maybe 30mm diameter with the spring itself being about 3-4mm thick and this was welded, at one end, to a metal bowl of a half sphere shape and the instrument was held on the stomach at the junction of the spring and bowl and then the spring was struck and skritched, ala guiero etc, and the bowl lifted and lowered from the body.
Sounded TREMENDOUS!
So bloody simple and easily made it set off a whole bunch of ideas about using springs and resonators. It’s basically the same concept as the jew harp which uses a spring vibrating, but more of a tine, and the space in the mouth, the bowl, to modulate the sound.
A spring, of spring steel, is inherently sound able as the steel has an internal rigidity, structurally, that allows applied force to be counteracted upon while at the same time being malleable. Guitar strings are actually made with spring steels for this reason for their resistance to stretch compared with other steels.
But this instrument doesn’t need to be spring steel so much as it has to follow the shape given a spring. A length of mild steel wire wound around a former to make something resembling a spring will do the job just as well. Not quite as well, but within degrees of separation that wouldn’t matter unless you were in a laboratory. I say that because compression springs of the size required are something of a rarity though I did find one by stopping in at a motorcycle mechanics shop which is a veritable rats nest of spare parts and asking for a fork tube spring. The point is that spring steel isn’t needed and mild steel will do the job if you don’t plan on sitting on the finished article.
Anyways I ended up with some 75mm aluminium tube at lengths very suitable for air tuned tubes either as big flutes or used under marimba type bars. I’m kinda also looking at thumb piano’s and marimbas lately so flat and round straight lengths of spring steel were also part of my searching. I think with scavenging the idea is not so much to be looking for anything in particular but to have lots of ideas about the endless possibles and then rummaging about and seeing what strikes ones fancy. At one place, which was an absolute messy and dangerous hole ( I loved it!) I came accross this.
Plugged it in and it goes. I gave them ten bucks but could have got it for much less but when perusing places like these I reckon it’s best to give people more than less on the simple assumption that people are more llikely to enjoy the company of givers as opposed to takers.
Its going to be my first circuit bend project. If you don’t know about circuit bending then this is a nice bit of reading
The man himself can be found here but he doesn’t give much away.
I also managed to find a bunch of Toa compression drivers for $15 each, that came from the old Rugby stadium in Kingsland, which may be used as is or broken down for use as talkboxes and use the shell as forms of acoustic radiators… who knows!
This is the bunch of stuff I managed to bring home. I’ve kinda been looking for a big saw, spring steel again as it happens, as I know how to bow them to play them and I’ve had in the back of my mind making a holder or frame to better get the vibrations from the saw and also make the tuning easier with a lever mechanisn to hold the head or top of the saw. The big pot and dish are obvious candidates for resonaters and then theres the springs.
Top right is a fraction of an expansion spring about 700mm unstretched and I’ve been thinking about doing my version of Phil Dadsons number one tool, a string on a drumhead, and this spring stretched out could be quite interesting.
Phils stuff revolves a drumhead sitting on its body then two rods go up from each side of the drum body to a point where a string is attached. The other end of the string is attached to the drumhead. Basically the two rods can be pulled together and this lowers the stretched strings pitch. Phil has two versions I’ve seen, one about 1200mm long and the other about 1500mm long which is a newer one, and he makes some absolutely amazing noises with them, bowed, plucked and rubbed plus using the drumhead percussively. I want to get rid of the drumhead as a resonator and use a resonator similar to the dish in the photo of all the stuff, lower middle, and have another dish hingeing off its edge to control the enclosed airs area alike the mouth cavity used with a jews harp or the african talking drum. At the other end of the stretched spring I’d have a mechanism to allow me to stretch the spring length and raise the pitch with a lever of some sort so with the rods going to this point I could lower the pitch and then using the lever raise the pitch. Springs sounds more like square waves so it’ll be more a noise intrument than a single string harmony instrument.
The other spring is the motorcycle fork spring and the bunch of little ones will be used on a plate reverb ala Bsidebeats.
And these contraptions are gearheads used in gas bottles to show the capacity. They are totally mechanical with the arm working the gear and the shaft driving a gauge. I want to use them to drive pots somehow. The gearing is such that a full turn of a pot, about 320 degrees, can be actioned with about 170 degrees.
I’ve actually had a few weeks off from instrument making and performing at Vit S but with getting th Bart Hopkins book from the library I’m well back into it.
The books called Musical Instrument Design.
You Videohogs might like this page
I haven’t looked but it might be interesting. Sometimes super nerds have the blessing of also being great speakers.
