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I've been fascinated by mallets and different textures of strikers in percussion
for years and for a period, I became obsesses with the plethora of
sewing Thimbles that are available in many different materials.
On a trip to New Orleans years ago, I discoverd a cool old fashioned
store that sold dozens of different thimbles (as a novelty section of the store).
I bought wood ones, metal ones (with different softnesses of metal), ceramic ones,
plastic ones, etc.
Today at the fabric store (along with finding bitchen dayglo orange velcro)
I found these tranlsucent rubber ones in very nice colors.
Of course I'm on an ORANGE jag right now so those are the ones I bought
but they sound fantastic on frame drums and even a student tried them out
on an electric bass to good effect.
They are soffter than fingers or thumbs so don't have a lot of attack which is very cool.
I put a picture of them on the pictures list for the tribe. Check them out.
(they were $2.50 USD a piece and I bought 4 four my four fingers of my right hand
but I may go back and buy 2 more so that I can use all six fingers that I use
in Tar, frame drumming
for years and for a period, I became obsesses with the plethora of
sewing Thimbles that are available in many different materials.
On a trip to New Orleans years ago, I discoverd a cool old fashioned
store that sold dozens of different thimbles (as a novelty section of the store).
I bought wood ones, metal ones (with different softnesses of metal), ceramic ones,
plastic ones, etc.
Today at the fabric store (along with finding bitchen dayglo orange velcro)
I found these tranlsucent rubber ones in very nice colors.
Of course I'm on an ORANGE jag right now so those are the ones I bought
but they sound fantastic on frame drums and even a student tried them out
on an electric bass to good effect.
They are soffter than fingers or thumbs so don't have a lot of attack which is very cool.
I put a picture of them on the pictures list for the tribe. Check them out.
(they were $2.50 USD a piece and I bought 4 four my four fingers of my right hand
but I may go back and buy 2 more so that I can use all six fingers that I use
in Tar, frame drumming
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Re: Using thimbles on ones hands as beaters/strummers for string, percussion and other instruments
Mon, August 3, 2009 - 8:26 AMI've often wondered if I could play doumbek with a thimble on my left forefinger, for playing a bell, zill, block or cymbal. Anyone else though of or tried that? -
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Re: Using thimbles on ones hands as beaters/strummers for string, percussion and other instruments
Mon, August 3, 2009 - 8:57 AMI use all but my pinky and thumb for left-hand rolls, I wouldn't want a thimble on any of them. I do like the idea of having other percussion "handy", though. I sit on a cajon while playing doumbek, and I can get beats and knocks from the cajon, and I have a foot pedal I can use with various instruments.
I've been thinking of attaching bells, blocks, rasps and rattles to an old washboard, then fixing another piece of wood to the washboard at a right angle as a seat, so I can fit the washboard / seat against my cajon and hold it in place with my weight.
You can also get cowbells with spring-loaded beaters that you can mount and strike with your hand or make beaters from flexible wooden skewers with a large bead attached and mounted to a bell/block/etc with rubber bands and a spacer. -
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Re: Using thimbles on ones hands as beaters/strummers for string, percussion and other instruments
Tue, August 4, 2009 - 1:09 AMFor a multiple darbuka set up that I used to use in dance classes where I wanted a lot of oooomph without
having multiple players I used
1) a Purecussion Flat 20" bass drum (with no shell, just a single muted head)
onto which I put a cymbal holder that held a brass drumset tambourine.
2) three custom made stands that held three different sizes of drums from a miniature darbuka
(Alexandria styled), a regular Alexandria darbuka and a very large dahol (the turkish metallic
style with a tambourine in the enterior. I'd tune these so that all four darbukas (including the
Kobi Hagoel model I held under my arm) would have a nice four note melody using the 'dum' sounds
3) an LP Gajate Footcontrolled cowbell holder with a Tama kick drum pedal onto which
i fastened
a) a large purple plastic (the deepest note they make) LP woodblock
b) a Rhythm Tech black crescent plastic tambourine with the jingles removed (you can slice
through plastic and just pull out the entire pin, removing the jingles and replacing the pins)
I then glued one side of a velcro (sticky) to the outside of the crescent and to several strips of the
opposite velcro (fuzzy) I sewed different bell and shaker textures. I used really dry Indian bells,
Seed Pod gourds, Goat Hooves, South African moth husks (sewn up with rattles in them, really
loud large bells, etc.
With all of these textures you can very quickly rip the velcro off of one and put another texture on but the
Wood Block (or cowbell or whatever) nestles into the Tambourine/Shaker (you put it on first, bell second)
so that when the beater hits the wood block it also sets off the shaker sound.
Tuning the kick drum to a pitch that works with the tuning of the four darbukas and you have a really cool
melodic sounding ensemble that one person can play.
What I love about this setup is the you can start playing a simple darbuka pattern and then suddenly bring in
the left foot playing quarter notes............layer in the kick drum with the right foot just playing the 'dum' patterns
of your rhythm and then suddenly , melodicize the whole shebang by transferring the 'dum' patterns with your
right hand to the lower pitched darbukas sitting in the stands.
In this way you can do very hip 'terrace dynamics' and really add to the vibe and energy of the class even though
you are playing very simple patterns.
**********
Oh, and Dave, I only use these things to create different textures for recording............just something to
do to create a different vibe when I'm in a recording studio with a singer/songwriter or when I'm
going to create a drum loop for my own songwriting purposes or live.
I make a lot of loops in my life so I'm fascinated about 'treating' my organic drums and percussion with
physical processes in order to make them sound like they are processed electronically (when they are not)
or just to create really new sound.
So , in a serious darbuka situation, however, I'd never use thimbles.......they are just too slow. -
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Re: Using thimbles on ones hands as beaters/strummers for string, percussion and other instruments
Tue, August 4, 2009 - 1:19 AMoh yeah, and one more little note.
putting a bone, metal, plastic or wooden ring on your holding hand thumb can be
really cool for creating clave-esque sounds on the body or rim of the goblet drum.
I do this a lot to when I play Brazilian Atabac, where you can play the whole rhyhtm
with your left hand while laying out a syncopated clave figure with either your normal
left hand ring finger or a very large ring that fits on the first joint of your holding thumb.
Velcro some shakers or bells to your hands and you can double up all of those sounds.
I haven't done it , but it strikes me that one could even make little velcro rings for the
playing hand so that if you are always playing at least an 8th note in that hand (like in
traditional Beledi, Maksum, or Saidi fashion that you would get a constant 8th note
jingle sound. Trapset drummers have been doing that for decades.
In fact if you happen to be a stick drummer, too, just screw in a couple of tambourine jingles
on a smallish drumstick and then play a single stroke hand over hand 'Bo Diddly' rhythm.
Not only do you get the syncopated clave rhythm but you get a continual 8th note jinle
rhythm, not unlike the combination of the maracca player and the drummer in Bo Diddly's
original lineups.
Along those lines, as well, I got hip to Glen Velez and Randy Crafton (this about 25 years ago)
using Teva sandals (with their velcroed straps) and inserting different sized and sounding maraccas
into their sandles so that they could play polyrhtymic figures with their feet as they played in
odd times signatures. I became obsessed with velcroed styled sandals after that (as well
as buying a dozen different textures of maraccas from Rhythm Fusion so I could create lots
of different textures. That was a fun exploratory phase. -
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Re: Using thimbles on ones hands as beaters/strummers for string, percussion and other instruments
Tue, August 4, 2009 - 9:24 AMGreat ideas, Rick!
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Re: Using thimbles on ones hands as beaters/strummers for string, percussion and other instruments
Tue, August 4, 2009 - 1:57 PMHaven't tried velcro rings, but I've strapped jingle and shaker anklets to my right wrist for that automatic accompaniment. Great ideas, Rick! -
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Re: Using thimbles on ones hands as beaters/strummers for string, percussion and other instruments
Fri, August 7, 2009 - 10:15 AMHmm, I'll have to look at some of these ideas. I'm always looking for ways to improve my "djembe kit" (as I always think of it). It started as a simple stand for my medium-sized djembe. Then, on either side, I mounted a differently tuned "mini-djembe" (do those little things have a name?). It's evolved now to include a tambourine (horizontally mounted right in front of me), a bell on either side of the tambourine, and a pouch hanging below the tambourine to hold shakers, zills, castanets, and rhythm sticks. I'm running out of room, though, so any tweaks have to be small! -
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Re: Using thimbles on ones hands as beaters/strummers for string, percussion and other instruments
Tue, August 11, 2009 - 12:49 AMthese Gagate Floor Pedal holders for Cowbells and things are awesome and don't take up to much space.
The cool thing is you can just play both feet on your major DUMs in the piece without having to learn
a really complex new set of independent skills for making your feet
If anyone's interested in learning how to independent with any limb, I can show a really simple and holistic way to accomplish that. It's how I'v3 taught trapset drummers for thirty years.
I just put in a video studio for teaching my rhythm intensive to people I've met in my touring all over the world
so as long as someone has a chat program, a webcam and a decent broadband connection I can give them a
lesson remotely.
I try to be really generous with knowledge on line but I also make my entire living from touring, recording and teaching so I charge normal
drum lesson prices for these remote classes.................not a hard sell but a resource if anyone resonates with that.
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