Percussion
Pounding the beat with a huge mechanical version of Roland's TR-808 drum machine
If you're a fan of 1980s music, then there's a very good chance that you'll already be familiar with the electronic beats provided by what's widely regarded as the drum machine that started it all, Roland's TR-808. It set the mood for Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing, fired shots at David Byrne in the concert movie Stop Making Sense and was the inspiration for the naming of the band 808 State. In his own homage to the iconic device, electronic music tinkerer Moritz Simon Geist has mechanically reproduced 11 of its key sounds using real instruments played by robots within the supersized, wall-filling frame of the stunning MR-808. Read More
The DUBE takes an out-of-the-box approach to percussion
If you’re getting weary of trying to wrap your head around things like smartphones that answer questions, self-driving cars or microscopic machines, perhaps this might be more to your liking ... a wooden box. Well OK, the DUBE isn’t just a wooden box. It’s actually a percussive musical instrument, that caught our eyes and ears last week at NAMM. Read More
Debuted at the aural Aladdin's cave that was Winter NAMM 2012, the Z-Stik is a wooden zigzag-shaped multi-use percussive instrument that its creator says "combines the most intriguing elements of a rhythm stick, a shaker, a fingertip drum, and a rain stick." The Z-Stik can be tapped and patted in various ways to achieve nice, organic-sounding percussive hits, and shaken to, well, sound like a shaker. "You can get tones from deep bass drum all the way up to bongo drums and everything in between clean or snare," says creator Greg Dahl. Read More
Eight years ago, California musician Andy Graham had a fateful meeting with a shipping crate. The container had a tightly-wound steel strap wrapped around it, and was slightly dented at the top, creating a small gap beneath the strap. By slapping that strap against the crate, Graham discovered that he could make all sorts of interesting noises. That experience motivated him to create the SLAPEROO, a unique musical instrument that we spied last week at NAMM 2012. Read More
For many of us, washing clothes by hand is no longer a necessity. Yet the simple ridged device used before the advent of washing machines is still in production today and continues to be used all over the world. Leaving soapy water well behind, the washboard found a new life in the hands of musicians playing everything from skiffle to dixieland, and jazz to blues. Solo guitar players can now provide their own inexpensive snare-like percussive accompaniment, by attaching a Pik'N Board to their instrument. The mini-washboard is positioned below the picking area of an acoustic guitar, with players extending the pick stroke to tap out a latin beat or scrape in some cajun spice. Read More
