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Underground > Temple >

Bang the Drum

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19:42 / 03.10.01

I am buzzing like mad! I’ve fallen in love! Someone catch me before I faint!

I’ve just played steel drums for the first time.

Admittedly, it was only a shallow miniature version, but the tones.... wow! I know nothing about Jamaican music (I’m a total twat when it comes to traditional music of other cultures - give me dirty hip hop beats and I’m happy), but I just gotta, gotta, gotta have some! I want to pervert those beautiful tones to my own vile ends.

So, for anyone who wants to help me out:

I already have a beginners percussion set up: djembe, sickle drum (also known as a talking drum or hourglass drum), a couple of miscallaneous drums of varying sizes and quality, steel chimes, Sri Lankan wood chimes (awesome sound - always playing random melody), two-and-a-half meter rainstick, and various shakers and tambourines.

I want to add to this in creative ways, and I’d be really interested to have suggestions. Steel drums have become an obsession in the space of an evening. I’m also very interested in getting xylophones (wooden and metal - don’t know what metal) - I’m getting sucked into percussive melody, because that’s what I often try to achieve when playing kit drums. I also need some lengths of industrial steel (maybe sheets and pipes), and a way of mounting them on drum hardware (shouldn’t be too hard). I played some heavy duty steel steps in church a few weeks back, and they sound enormous (like a clattering tonal “clang” sound, very loud). I also want sounds that are evocative, and can be used in a spiritual context.

I’m very interested in putting together a homegrown set of percussives, without resorting to your typical congas-based set up. Any ideas for ethnic instruments or homemade bits and bobs would be great.

12:29 / 04.10.01

quote:Originally posted by expressionless:

They were carved by the drum maker. They must be universal symbols, because I've seen them on the base of a great many ethnic djembes.

If there's anyway that you can recreate them and send them to me I can maybe find out more details about them for you.

If not, we'll just have to figure out a way we can play some West African together so I can see the drum.

12:56 / 04.10.01

Jack the Bodiless has got access to a scanner, so I’ll see if I can go round there and post them on the thread.

Your latter idea sounds much more fun, though. Given a few months I’ll have a couple of friends in Sacramento (including a few family connections). How close is this to San Fransisco?

Still haven’t booked a holiday for next year...

13:13 / 04.10.01

quote:Originally posted by expressionless:
Jack the Bodiless has got access to a scanner, so I’ll see if I can go round there and post them on the thread.

Your latter idea sounds much more fun, though. Given a few months I’ll have a couple of friends in Sacramento (including a few family connections). How close is this to San Fransisco?

Still haven’t booked a holiday for next year...

Only a couple of hours away.

14:07 / 04.10.01

This is sounding like a plan...

Dueling djembes! Bet mine’s louder than yours.

06:16 / 09.10.01

Quick question for any djembe players: how can you work to keep up endurance when playing very fast beats in the centre of the drum (where there’s no response back from the skin)? I was playing some very fast beats on Sunday that relied on the bass tones filling out the sound, and it was agony. Is there an easy way of doing it, or is it just lots of practise?

Playing slower stuff, or complex rhythms I can do for hours: it’s the fast stuff that makes my arms lock up.

13:38 / 09.10.01

quote:Originally posted by expressionless:
Quick question for any djembe players: how can you work to keep up endurance when playing very fast beats in the centre of the drum (where there’s no response back from the skin)? I was playing some very fast beats on Sunday that relied on the bass tones filling out the sound, and it was agony. Is there an easy way of doing it, or is it just lots of practise?

Playing slower stuff, or complex rhythms I can do for hours: it’s the fast stuff that makes my arms lock up.

Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots..... of practice

The strange paradox (for me at least) with the West African stuff is that the more complex rhythms are easier to play for long periods of time than the simple 'base' rhythms that lock in with the djun djuns and other big drums in the 'orchestra'. Those small, foundation rhythms can get away from you.

The bass 'sticking' in the center of the drum is also just building up muscles and practice, especially since the 'correct' way to play is with no wrist action and having all the motion come from the arms moving at the elbows. Damn tiring.

I'm always astonished by the master drummers that not only can hold those rhythms but also do it while standing up with a 30 lbs. drum strapped to their body.

One last note... if you really are getting NO response from the center of your skin, is there the possibility that you need to have your drum tuned/tightened? There should be a decent amount of 'bounce back'.

14:03 / 09.10.01

There is a response, it's just not like the bounce felt at the edge. I tensioned the skin a while back, but it might pay to have another look.

I play from the elbow. Man, I was hoping I was doing something wrong technique wise.

I know no-one who can teach me anything on djembe, so I've approached it from my own angle. The fact that I only use it in church has forced me to find ways to make it fit a range of different style. I'd love to find out more about how you're "supposed" to play it.

00:29 / 14.11.01

The Yoruba/Santeria thread reminded me of this.

Last Sunday I took a drum and Kalimba class by a congolese drummer and the drum rhythm he taught was one that invoked and praised the Mayombe spirits of the Congo.

All these western hippie types unknowingly singing and drumming a necromantic song of what even most Santeria practioners consider 'black magic' was pretty cool in a demented sort of way.

It was a rockin' rhythm though. I guess it would have to be to literally wake the dead.

[ 14-11-2001: Message edited by: Lothar Tuppan ]

22:26 / 10.05.02

Does anyone want a CD, tape or minidisc of expressionless drumming for shamanic purposes? If so PM or e-mail me your home address.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

16:47 / 15.10.05

I've just aquired my first drum.

I was guided to buy a simple toy tambourine from the joke and party supply shop where I get a lot of my ritual kit these days, and take the bells off. It's cheap and simple to the point of being naff, but I've given up arguing about this sort of thing anymore. At least it's made of natural materials, skin and bent wood instead of plastic.

It's going to require a lot of adaptation before it's done, and it may well prove to be in a permenant state of flux. I've decorated it a little, drawing designs on the skin, but what it really needs is tons of rattly crap hanging off the edges.

Despite the fact that it's unfinished, I'm supposed to start working with it now because that's how I'll learn what else it needs. I'm sort of not sure how to proceed. All I'm doing at the moment is sort of tentatively playing with it, seeing what different noises I can get out of it and how they make me feel, but it doesn't really seem to take me anywhere. I've used drumming before fairly successfuly, improvising with things like boxes of matches or my fingers and the back of my skull, but this is different somehow.

*

19:24 / 15.10.05

It sounds like you're doing just right to me. Eventually you'll find a rhythm it will respond to, and it will wake up.

00:43 / 17.10.05

Do you know anything about Japanese Taiko drums and the traditional use of them? I've always thought that they were used to ward off evil spirits.

07:13 / 17.10.05

A healer friend of my mother-in-law's gave me a "drumming" once- playing a drum all up and down close to my back. I could really feel it buzzing in my lungs, and she said it tends to go where it's needed, like reiki. I had been having lung problems for a long time, and it did make me feel better.
David Carradine mentions something similar in Spirit of Shaolin, where a friend of his has a healing system that uses gongs tuned to different pitches placed around your body, along with something like Alexander technique.
Dolphin sounding is supposed to have theraputic value, and I've heard of "sound tables" designed to simulate a dolphin scanning you. Of course, sound can also be used as a weapon, the police and military have curdlers and photic drivers to give you epileptic fits, and audio subliminals used in interrogations.

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