Needs More Cowbell

I was doing the weekly grocery shopping and I noticed this:

Who actually needs a single-sandwich frying pan?

I do. But not for making grilled sandwiches. 😀

Thumpa Thumpa Jingle Jingle

Nicole at work asked me if I was going to make a lagerphone as well.

As a matter of fact, yes.

Splish Splash

I wanted a splash cymbal. So I went on eBay and bought one. It’s a BTB20 brand cymbal, which I’d never heard of, but I figured as long as it sounded halfway decent it would be ok.

I listened to the demo sound of the different size splash cymbals before buying it, and decided that the 10″ one sounded the best. Then when I received it, I decided it didn’t sound like the demo and the 8″ one would probably have been better.

Wanted: A Few Musicians… and a Drummer

So I finished building the drumkit. Really.

Function Over Form Over Function?

Cymbals are (usually) round for a reason. Shapes other than circles can sound… interesting.

I wanted to make the 18″ crash and 20″ ride cymbals fit inside the bass drum. This was function: portability! So I had to cut them down. The 18″ one is still mostly round, but the 20″ one ended up mostly square.

tom Tom TOM

I always intended the drumkit to have a full complement of elements. That meant at least two rack toms and one floor tom.

IT’S NIIIIIICE

You may remember that I obtained some real cymbals to replace the clangy steel dishes I was trying to use.

It was time to let Animal Amir loose on the drums again!

Beat It

Over the course of several weeks I had to refine and re-engineer the bass drum beater mechanism. I only have photos of the final configuration, because I was too busy getting the damn thing to work to remember the camera. You’ll have to settle for my crude diagrams.

Essentially, the original design wasn’t good enough. A simple lever action didn’t provide enough velocity and/or force for the beater to hit the drum face hard enough.

Skinning The Cajon

At some point I decided that the cajon-style bass drum face simply wasn’t loud enough, nor bass-drummy enough. So I had to come up with a flexible stretched skin for it. Unfortunately, they don’t make file folders that are half a metre across. So I went to Spotlight (a large fabric and craft store) in search of some thick, durable, nonstretch, purple fabric. If you’ve ever been to a fabric store you know how many choices there can be… and how expensive some of them are! I ended up finding a suitable cheap material in the curtain section, but it was white, not purple. I’m not sure what you call it but it’s the lining that goes behind the “main” curtain fabric that shows in the room, to give the curtains opacity and weight. So it’s just plain white. To make the purple I also got some cheap ripstop nylon, which I figured I could layer on top of the curtain material. It turns out I was able to sew the two materials together reasonably accurately, and put tensioning beads in the edges just like I did on the snare drum skins.

I Am Not A Cymbalsmith

As you know, I’d been less than satisfied with my efforts to make cymbals.  After my own attempts, I spent an evening searching youtube for any examples that other people had posted, and came to the following conclusion:

Unless you are this guy, you shouldn’t bother trying to make cymbals at home.