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BASCAILLE - Experimental Percussion

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Another instrument using frame drums and springs.

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Gong Building 1. Samples and Issues.

Building a gong, another very important part of my project, which is very ambitious as well. Specially since I never did anything with metal before. With this part of my project I have a lot of headache and discovered my obvious limitations. However, I already manage to cut the main circle for gong and three additional circles for samples. Materials used is 3mm thickness, 1mx1m aluminum sheet. 

After one day of hammering and formatting one of the samples, I attached quite good results that made me happy for a while.  

Unfortunately it sounds rubbish and because metal is so thick I have to heat it once in a while so it would became softer, which will be very difficult with the main, big gong. So I had to make a decision, so I will try to cut another circle from 1.5mm Steel and hope that it would work better.

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Sound installation from Tamaki Watanabe & Walter Zurborg at the Atelier ODB in Lyon, France. 2014.

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Loosing Performance Studio. Reconsidering the Space.

Day has come and after fighting to get performance studio for degree show we finally lost it for good. It is time to find new space.

Recently I’ve got an offer from my course leader to take a part of room 230 which few times smaller then performance studio and turned it into my installation space. He said that i can do whatever i want with it, witch is quite cool, might even manage to turn it into small Japanese style room.

Thought, it is quite a big risk that rather than feeling relaxing and minimal it will feel claustrophobic and crowded, but hopefully I will be able to find a way to avoid that. 

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First Bigger Work in Progress Crisis

It’s been a while since I started to work on this project, and it is not that much left till deadline. However there is still a lot of things that I have to do and in few of them I found my clear limitations. First of all, gong making. I found my clear limitation in lack of knowledge in working with metal, also it’s been really difficult to manage to get into metal workshop and get people to help me. Still have a lot of doubts if this gong project will work out, even after making tons of progress towards it.

Another limitation is discovered with programming. The task that I want to do is really complicated, could might even say that its require advanced programming skills which I do not have, but still trying to find my way and do something about it.

Finally, got quite stressed out about space issues and after loosing performance studio it’s been quite challenging to find new space and try not to get competitive within our small course-mates group. A lot of nerves and time spend on this which is annoying since there is less and less time left to finish my final project.

Hopefully I will manage to get over this soon and move forward.

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Koka's Violin No. 1'

Very interesting experiment, this reminds me of the spacy sounding Yaybahar by Görkem Şen! In the man's own words: 'Here is my violin. It's totally acoustic, no electronics at all. Inspired by Norway — it's called Valhǫllfele or Viola da Valhǫll.

Sound is routed directly from under the bridge to a big membrane, through a metal spring. This is the first prototype made with some scrap materials, which I found at Bitraf.

In theory sound can be largely optimised with the use of proper materials, which I already ordered. And yes, please don't judge me for my performance, it is just for the demonstration, I have not practiced a single minute for more then five years.'

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Building Ping Pong Machine

Sketch for ping pong machine witch would ideally release ping pong balls on programmed time. Those balls will fall on the shamisen-cello instrument and will trigger percussion sound out of it.

The upper box will be made out of 5mm plywood sheet that I cut with paper knife myself. One side of the wooden box will be made out of clear 5mm acrylic sheet, so it would be possible to see balls and mechanism that is inside. box dimensions are 30cmX40cmX30cm.

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First Look on Programming. Stepper and Vibration Motor circuit.

This project will involve a lot of programming and soldering. Two main type of motors I want to use is stepper motor (mainly for ping pong machine) and vibration motors. 

Stepper motor code:

#include <Stepper.h> const int stepsPerRevolution = 200;  // change this to fit the number of steps per revolution // for your motor // initialize the stepper library on pins 8 through 11: Stepper myStepper(stepsPerRevolution, 8, 9, 10, 11); int stepCount = 0;  // number of steps the motor has taken void setup() {  // nothing to do inside the setup } void loop() {  // read the sensor value:  int sensorReading = analogRead(A0);  // map it to a range from 0 to 100:  int motorSpeed = map(sensorReading, 0, 1023, 0, 100);  // set the motor speed:  if (motorSpeed > 0) {    myStepper.setSpeed(motorSpeed);    // step 1/100 of a revolution:    myStepper.step(stepsPerRevolution / 100);  } } 

Stepper motor circuit:

Single Vibration motor code:

const int motorPin = 3;  void setup()  {  pinMode (motorPin, OUTPUT) ;  }    void loop()  {    digitalWrite (motorPin, HIGH) ;    delay(1000) ;    digitalWrite (motorPin, LOW) ;    delay(1000) ;  }

Vibration motor simplified circuit:

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Mesmerizing video about flute-maker.

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Research for Gong Building

Traditional suspended gongs:

Chau gong (Tam-tam)

The familiar "Chinese" gong (a 10-inch (25 cm) chau gong)

By far the most familiar to most Westerners is the chau gong or bullseye gong. Large chau gongs, called tam-tams (not to be confused with tom-tom drums) have become part of the symphony orchestra. Sometimes a chau gong is referred to as a Chinese gong, but in fact it is only one of many types of suspended gongs that are associated with China.

A chau gong is made of copper-based alloy, bronze or brass. It is almost flat except for the rim, which is turned up to make a shallow cylinder. On a 10-inch (25 cm) gong, for example, the rim extends about 1⁄2 inch (1 cm) perpendicular to the gong surface. The main surface is slightly concave when viewed from the direction to which the rim is turned. The centre spot and the rim of a chau gong are left coated on both sides with the black copper oxide that forms during the manufacture of the gong, the rest of the gong is polished to remove this coating. Chau gongs range in size from 7 to 80 inches (18 to 203 cm) in diameter.

The earliest Chau gong is from a tomb discovered at the Guixian site in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. It dates from the early Western Han Dynasty. They were known for their very intense and spiritual drumming in rituals and tribal meetings.[citation needed]

Traditionally, chau gongs were used to clear the way for important officials and processions, much like a police siren today. Sometimes the number of strokes on the gong was used to indicate the seniority of the official. In this way, two officials meeting unexpectedly on the road would know before the meeting which of them should bow down before the other.

Uses of gongs in the symphony orchestra

The tam-tam was first introduced as an orchestral instrument by François-Joseph Gossec in 1790, and it was also taken up by Gaspare Spontini and Jean-François Le Sueur.[2] Hector Berlioz deployed the instrument throughout his compositional career, and in his Treatise on Instrumentation he recommended its use "for scenes of mourning, or for the dramatic depiction of extreme horror."[2] Other composers who adopted the tam-tam in the opera house included Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini and Richard Wagner;[3] Rossini in the final of act 3 of Armida (1817),[4] Bellini in Norma (1831) and Wagner in Rienzi (1842). Within a few decades the tam-tam became an important member of the percussion section of a modern symphony orchestra. It figures prominently in the symphonies of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky,[5] Gustav Mahler,[6] Dmitri Shostakovich[7] and, to a lesser extent, Sergei Rachmaninov and Sergei Prokofiev. Giacomo Puccini used both gongs and tam-tams in his operas. Igor Stravinsky greatly expanded the playing techniques of the tam-tam in his The Rite Of Spring to include short, quickly damped notes, quick crescendos, and a triangle beater scraped across the front of the instrument. Karlheinz Stockhausen used a 60" Paiste tam-tam in his Momente.

Material for gongs: Gongs are usually made out of brass, copper, bronze or these material mixture with silver. Pretty decent gong could be made out of iron (steel) a well.  Some amazing gong making examples:

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Working Within the Space, Layout for Performance Studio

I decided to choose performance studio for my project since it is the biggest space available for our course in uni. I wanted to give a space for each instrument so people could walk around it and engage with it and also it would give a lot of space for sound diffusion. Since I am using a lot of objects and leads as well, smallest spaces would possible look more  like storage room rather than installation space. Anyway, this is my plan and thoughts on this room organization. 

Singing bowls position is different in the drawings since I decided that rather hanging them from the ceiling I want to put them on the speaker stands so in that way it would be easier to reach it with the vibration motors and also it would save time while installing the entire thing.

Speakers should be pushed more into center and non of them should point at drums since it would instantly create feedback loop. Amplification would be used just for pipe koto and for shamisen-cello hybrid and percussion would be left completely acoustic.

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The Baschet Brothers refers to two French brothers named François  and Bernard Baschet they were working on this instrument since the 1952. Lera Morankova (woman in the video) decided to build one of these instruments herself and add few improvements.

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Building Pipe Koto

As mentioned before, this interment design was strongly influenced by  the same name Terek Atoui’s artwork. The final result of designed instrument looks like this:

First of all, I started with building two wooden rings which are the base of the construction. My dad helped a lot with it, he cut the wood and found the way to drill and sand the wholes for pipes in the perfect size (which was difficult since we were using very hard wood so it won’t bend from stretching strings). Machine heads were attached on separate wooden parts which were strewed on to the one ring. For this instrument stabilization I decided o add  round drawers handles as legs so it could stand on the ground properly.  There is also three metal strips between wooden rings which holds them in place and do not let them to slide when strings are stretched on. After putting in copper pipes and stretching up the strings I made small bridges for each sting witch would direct a vibration of single string to one of the pipes.

After finishing this instrument I was thinking how I could improve sound that it is making. So I decided to attach small frame drum and a tum drum to the end of the few pipes via springs. This very simple mechanism created spring reverb affect and added more dept to the sound. All that it is left now is to attach and program vibration motors to it.

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Robot Guitar

Russian robotic guitar. Acoustic guitar played via MIDI using solenoids and DIY electronics by Demin Vladimir. 

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Mechanical Orchestra by Cabo San Roque

Steampunk galore. Awesome robotic instruments from Catalonia.