Category: Percussion

News – July 30th, 2019 – Teaching, Filming, and Turning

, ,
Trent Davis

Teaching

I recently got to teach a class on Router basics. Other than it having to be rushed due to the time constraints, it went well. I’ll be converting the documentation for this class into a post on this website, much like I did with my Dado Information class.

I was also working on a beginning woodworking class for Skillshare but life got in the way and I wasn’t able to finish it before the deadline. While making the class, I realized that the subject matter was much too broad for the amount of time I had to put it together. I’m still going to put together some Skillshare classes but I’m going to have them be more focused and less broad.

Filming

I’m working on a video that will walk through how I am making a small 8″ snare drum using stave construction. I filmed Day 1, which ended up covering everything up to the glue-up. As the glue was curing, I started editing the video. That’s where I discovered a pretty big problem.

Lets see if I can explain this…

My snare drum is going to consist of 16 staves. A circle, as you are aware, has 360 degrees. which divided by 16 is 22.5. This amount gets divided by two, since the staves will each have two sides, so each edge needs to have an 11.25 degree bevel.

Still with me?

Now, I use a digital angle gauge. I first square it to the table, then attach it magnetically to the blade. When I do that, it changes from 0-degrees to 90-degrees. This means that when I angle the blade, I need to set it to 90-degrees minus 11.25 degrees. This comes to 78.75 degrees. I knew this, but for some stupid reason (probably because I was distracted with trying to get this on video) I accidentally set it to 79.75 degrees. This makes each edge of each stave one-degree off, which multiplied by 32 edges comes to a total of a 32 degree gap for the drum shell.

Of course, being an idiot I just assumed that the glue was making things too tight so I clamped it down and didn’t think much of how off my measurements were. I didn’t notice the actual problem and its cause until I was editing the video. By this point, the glue had pretty much cured so there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

It’s time to start from scratch, being a little more careful this time.

As a present for you, since you’ve been so patient with me sharing this story, I’ve decided to upload the edit of the video I shot. Keep in mind that it’s a very early update. I was leaving room for a voice-over in parts so some of the shots are too long since I was going to edit in the voice-over then cut as the video to work with the audio.

Turning

I’ve been doing a good amount of woodturning lately and I’ve been getting into bowl-making, which although I’ve been turning for years, I never really got into. Below are some examples of my turning experiments.

One downside to bowl-turning is that I really don’t have anything to do with these. I don’t have a desire to place decorative wooden bowls around my house and most of these don’t have a food-safe finish so they’re not really functional. This is why I wasn’t really interested in bowl-turning in the first place. I like that I’m learning some new techniques but I suspect that I won’t be making a whole lot more bowls.

Bright & Shiny

,
Trent Davis

A few years back I started recording an album with the local band Bright & Shiny. It appears that the album is now on Production Hell and may never see the light of day.

I was given temporary tracks to record along to. This was helpful but frustrating at the same time since the main songwriter likes to play “free-time” with fluctuating tempos. As the drummer, being the one who is in charge of the tempo, I was concerned with this. I have spent my life trying to have a more consistent tempo and now I’m having to fight that. That being said, I tried to get the tempo to be more consistent while allowing the songs to have the varying feel that the songwriter was after.

Since these songs may never see the light of day, I decided to share the video performances here in hopes that it might generate enough interest in this project to get it finished. I was working on videos that show the main drum performance along with little pop-up videos of the backing percussion. Sadly, I only got this far with the first song, but this is why there is a black border around the videos.

I’ll present each song along with some notes on each one. Keep in mind that the tracks I’m playing along to are not the finished performance from the rest of the band.

Soothsayer

This is one of my favorites. As such, it’s the one that I got the furthest with. This song is inspired by the character of Lodz from the HBO show Carnivàle.

I created a tempo map for this song. The first half is played loosely to a click in that the beginning of the chorus speeds up a bit then slows down towards the end so it lines back up on the click as the next section starts. Once the song changes about halfway through, the tempo goes all over the place, speeding up then slowing down, then speeding up again with no rhyme or reason, never getting back on the original click. I had to do my best to keep it sounding smooth and intentional.

The Places We Must Go

I really like this one and I would love to hear how it would have ended up. I had some pretty big plans for this one, percussion-wise.

Crooked Tree

I got a chance to dust off my brushes for this song. I have since done a lot more brushwork so I cringe a little bit when I look back at this video. Still, I think it sounds pretty good.

Christopher and Anna

The backing vocals are missing from this scratch track so there are some awkward pauses here and there.

Fallen Trenchcoat

This song starts out pretty mellow but builds in dynamics towards the end. If memory serves, this song is about three-ways.

Don’t Take My Meds Away

They pulled a fast one with this and added an extra section after I had finished my recording. I had to splice in a previous take of different section at the end when it starts to fade out.

Genesis Story

This was the first song I recorded for Bright & Shiny. I was really fighting the tempo on this one and I chose to keep it tight with the click. As a result, it doesn’t flow very well. What I should have done was what I ended up doing with the rest of the songs which is meet in the middle, acting as a bridge between a tight click and the loose “sloppy” sound of the wavering tempo.

I like the chorus because I get to play a driving Charlie Watts beat like the one he plays in Midnight Rambler in the faster section.

Your Face Is Upside-Down

I tried to take a different approach with the beat for this song. To match the title I turned the beat upside-down by swapping the kick and snare parts during the verses.

The End Holding Your Hand

There are some rather tasty double-bass triplets at the ending buildup in this song.

This Waiting

There are some decent driving beats in this song as well as some subtle hi-hat pedal work.

That’s all..

I would love to finish this project but it seems to have died. If anyone is interested in seeing this get finished, let me know and I’ll pass this along to those involved. Maybe we can generate enough interest to make it happen.

News – March 6th, 2019 – Cymbal Cart, Lathe Bed Extension, and YouTube Videos

, ,
Trent Davis

I finished the cymbal cart

The cymbal cart is finally complete. It holds all of my cracked cymbals and has freed up a lot of floor space in my shop. This was a fun project and was great welding practice. I realized that I still have a long way to go until I can consider myself a good welder. This means that I have a lot of good things to learn. It’s pretty exciting, actually.

Lathe Bed Extension

I just installed the bed extension for my Nova Comet II lathe. I can now turn something up to 41-1/4″ in length. I intend to make a number of rainsticks and tube toms with this configuration. The cool – and slightly ridiculous – thing is that I can add another bed extension if I want to. In fact, I can keep adding them as far as I want. I guess that would come in handy if I wanted to turn a telephone pole or an alphorn. You laugh but I just might make an alphorn.

New clips on YouTube

I got a good opportunity to record the other day but I didn’t have anything in particular that I needed to get recorded. Instead, I just played. I put down about 8 minutes straight of brushwork to use for the backing track for YouTube videos then I played a series of short beats for stinger music.

The video above is one stinger beat that I particularly liked because I got to play around with my chime cymbals a bit. If you’re interested in what a 12″ Sabian Glennie’s Garbage sounds like, that’s the last cymbal that I hit.

The next video is part of an eight-minute improv brush performance that I’m going to add bass guitar, keyboards, guitar, and percussion to. The end result will be an eight-minute background track for some of my YouTube videos that I’m working on.

News – September 4th, 2018 – Live Performance and Woodturning

, ,
Trent Davis


Live Performance with Cody Weathers

I got to perform with Cody Weathers and The Men Your Mama Warned You About this past weekend.  This is only the second time I’ve sat in with them, the last time being almost a year ago.

I felt that the show went well.  I didn’t have time to do a rehearsal and I wasn’t that familiar with the songs but we got through them without any major problems.  Cody is the singer/songwriter and usually plays drums.  The guitarist was unable to perform so Cody asked me to fill in on drums so he could switch to guitar.

The music is sort of a Dave Matthews meets Ella Fitzgerald in that it is slightly funky rock with scat vocals mixed in.  It’s a lot of fun to play.  

I’ve included recordings for seven of the eight songs we played below.  Keep in mind that I was very unfamiliar with the songs so be gentle in your criticisms.

At First Sight
Mad About You
Deep
Catnip
Puppy
Thin
Dead Man’s Blues

For those that are interested, here is a list of the gear I used during this show:

Drums (Premier XPK)

  • 14″ X 20″ Kick
  • 5-1/2″ X 14 Wood Snare
  • 14″ X 14″ Floor Tom
  • 4 X 6″ Tama Mini-Timbale

Cymbals

  • 13″ Sabian AAX Studio Hats
  • 16″ Sabian AAX Studio Crash
  • 12″ Sabian Glennie’s Garbage
  • 10″ Custom Wuhan China Crash
  • 12″ Custom Wuhan China Crash
  • 21″ Sabian AA Raw Bell Dry Ride
  • 22″ Sabian Omni
  • 13 different custom chime cymbals

The two custom Wuhan china crashes and the 13 custom chime cymbals are all ones that I made myself by modifying cracked cymbals.  You can see my process for modifying them in the article on Cutting Down a Pair of Wuhans.  This isn’t the exact cymbals that I used for this show but it shows my process for making custom cymbals.  You can hear them in the recordings since I play them quite a bit.  The Wuhans have a very trashy hiss-like sound and the chimes are … well … chimey.

Finally Turned a Few Bowls

I’ve had a lathe for years but never had an interest in turning vessels (cups, bowls, vases, etc…).  I finally decided to give it a try this past weekend and I have to say that I’m hooked.  I don’t really have the right tools to pull this off easily but I’m getting the hang of it anyhow.

In the process I got to be familiar with Howard’s Beeswax & Orange Oil finish.  I was introduced to this through the videos of Carl Jacobson.  If you haven’t checked out his videos then I very highly recommend you do.  He is one of the nicest, coolest guys you’ll ever meet and his woodturning is amazing.  

I had previously used Hut Crystal Coat with generally positive results.  I think I’m more satisfied with the finish of the Howard’s since it has a more silky feel to it.

From this…
…to this.

It’s kind of difficult to tell but the piece pictured here is pretty small.  I went digging through my box of turning stock and found a piece of (what I believe is) bubinga.  It was pretty small, too small to use the Nova chuck to hold it.  I got to use my cole jaws which could just barely hold it securely.  I like the way it turned out.

News – June 5th, 2018 – Rainstick Prototype

, ,
Trent DavisOne Comment

I Decided to Make a Rainstick

I’ve wanted to try my hand at making a rainstick for some time.  Not that I really enjoy playing with them but it seems like a fun project, especially with the amount of experimentation you can do.  Like most of my projects, I start with a prototype.  Like a fool, I forgot how horrible it is to turn MDF on a lathe.

I started by cutting staves on my table saw.  I used the Stave Calculator to calculate the dimensions and angles for each stave.  Since it is only six stave, the calculations are pretty simple but I always like to double-check my calculations.

I applied glue between each of the staves.  One thing I didn’t get a picture of is how I laid each stave next to each other and applied strips of tape to what is now the underside of the staves so the whole thing can be rolled up into a tube.

After applying the glue, I rolled it up and added more tape to act as a clamp.

I cut a piece to act as an endcap and glued it to one end of the tube, using the lathe to clamp it together while the glue dries.

After it was all dry, I drew a grid on each stave and drilled holes through one side, then at corresponding locations on the opposite side.  I then took some 1/4″ birch dowels and sharpened one end with a pencil sharpener so I could guide it through one hole and into the opposite one without having to deal with the alignment of the two holes being slightly off.  These dowels were glued in place.  It looks pretty deadly at this point.

Here’s an internal view.  You can see that there is a lot of glue in there.  This is fine because it just adds more bumps for the rainstick filler to bounce off of.

I trimmed off the spikes and put the prototype on the lathe.

After a lot of turning, I got it it so the thinnest parts of the walls were about 3/16″ thick.  Since this is just MDF, I don’t really want to go much thinner.

As you can see, I made quite a mess.

I left one end open so I could experiment with different fillers.  I tried unpopped popcorn and rice.  I also want to try sand and B-B’s,

I’m ready to make my first real rainstick.  I’ve decided on a few things.

  1. The diameter is too big.  I’m going to aim for about an inch narrower.
  2. I’m also going to aim for thinner walls if I can make it work.
  3. The dowels need to be thinner as well and more frequent.
  4. Rice is a great filler but I need to add a lot more.

I’ll do a detailed write-up and possibly a build video when I make a real rainstick.

Any ideas?

Have you ever made or even just played a rainstick?  If so, do you have any ideas of different construction techniques or materials that would make this more interesting?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

If I use your idea, I’ll be sure to credit you.  I might even feel the urge to send out a free rainstick to whomever gives the most interesting idea.  The idea needs to actually work, however.  Filling the rainstick with gummy bears is definitely interesting but lacks certain acoustic characteristics  that I am looking for.

Don’t ask me how I know this…

News – August 29th, 2017 – Recording and various other projects

, , ,
Trent Davis

A lot has happened in the past few weeks that has kept me from updating my blog.  I’ll try to summarize the important bits.

 

Recording for Bright & Shiny

I spent some time working on a few more tracks for Bright & Shiny as well as reworking a few older tracks that I wasn’t happy with.  I ended up re-recording a song that I was really struggling with since the timing is all over the map and I am playing along with pre-recorded tracks.  After recording the song sixteen times (no exaggeration) I finally came to the conclusion that I simply can’t release something to go along with this song that I would be proud of.  I spoke with the engineer and he said that they’re going to re-record the other parts with a click and get that to me so I can put down some decent drum tracks for it.

 

 

Slow-Motion video of new ride cymbal

I made a slow-motion video of my Sabian Vault ride cymbal that I featured a few weeks back.  This was mainly just a test to see what quality I can get out of my phone when filming at 120 frames-per-second.  Here’s the video that I shot:

 

 

 

Recording for The Map of Alice

I will be producing the recording of three tracks for The Map of Alice, the local gigging band that I play with each week.  I’ll be posting the progress here on this blog.  I will also be making a music video for at least one of the songs, possibly all of them.

 

 

Web site creation for The Map of Alice

The time that I haven’t been spending in the studio, playing live, or watching Twin Peaks, I have been spending on the new web site for The Map of Alice.  I’ll announce when it has gone live.

 

 

Studio desk plans

I’ve once again changed the plans for my studio desk.  My problem is that I only want to do this once so I’m being rather picky about how I put this together.  I don’t have anything finalized yet but I’m getting close.

 

 

Shop issues

Work in the shop has been minimal, at best.  I can’t even walk out there right now.  My main problem is that I have too much building material.  I’ve got piles of scrap lumber, cracked cymbals, metal stock, electrical components, and aquariums.  Yeah, that’s right.  There’s a big 55-gallon aquarium taking up a big chunk of space in my shop.  The kicker is that it isn’t even mine.  Now that the busy August month is pretty much over and the weather is (hopefully) going to start cooling off pretty soon, I’ll be able to focus on getting my shop into a usable state again and start cranking out some more build projects.

 

 

My daughter turned 18!

This actually took up a good chunk of my time.  My daughter, Audrey, turned 18.  We had a few get-togethers but mostly we’ve been trying to help her make the transition into adulthood.

 

 

That’s it.  I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things but the point is, I’ve been busy.

News – July 24th, 2017 – New Sabian Ride

, ,
Trent DavisOne Comment

This weekend I added a new cymbal to my setup.  It’s a Sabian Vault Custom Shop HH 22″ ride with a semi-lathed pattern on the top and a completely lathed underside.

 

I used it at our regular Sunday gig at McNallly’s Taproom (we play each Sunday from 3:00 – 5:00).  The band plays Gypsy Jazz so it was a good venue to try out this cymbal.  I added a Pro-Mark Sizzler to it to see how it would work and it performed admirably.  I typically use a 20″ Sabian Ed Thigpen Crystal Ride with the sizzler but this 22″ cymbal is my new favorite.  Tapping it with my brushes caused it to sizzle for quite a while and it didn’t get the annoying vibrato sizzle towards the end that other, thicker cymbals get.  It complimented the cut-down Wuhan cymbals well, although it made my LP Granite Blocks rather hard to reach.

The lathing and hand hammering make for a beautiful cymbal, but also of note is the pronounced bell.  I haven’t had a chance to use this at higher volumes yet but some preliminary tests show that the cymbal crashes well, and even though I’m not one who crashes their ride cymbals, I ended up crashing on it several times and I loved the sound.

 

I’ll post some video of the cymbal soon.  It’s got a nice satisfying wobble to it when you hit it and a nice, dry, smoky sound.

 

News – July 18th, 2017 – Apprehension Engine Build

, ,
Trent Davis2 Comments

Several months back I discovered a musical device called The Apprehension Engine.  It was created by Tony Duggin-Smith for Mark Korven who is a film composer who was looking for some new sounds to use when creating horror film scores.

I’ve knocked around the idea for a while and I’ve decided to build my own.  I have experience creating soundmakers of this type, and I also have experience wiring up electronics in instruments, but I’ve never combined the two to create something like this.

My approach is going to be slightly different, however.  I’m going to be outputting a stereo signal, with each signal bus going through its own reverb tank, each with a slightly different decay time.  I’m also going to be implementing several other noisemakers that I have worked with in the past.

I’ll be posting detailed project updates as it progresses and a complete walkthrough when it is complete.

Check out the link below for more information.

Sounds of the Nightmare Machine

Horror Musical Instrument – The Apprehension Engine

 

 

News – June 15th, 2017 – Performance video update

, ,
Trent Davis

The recording for the upcoming album by Bright & Shiny is progressing well.  I have been playing around with the video for a few songs and although it isn’t finished, I decided to share an early version of one of the videos.

I’m playing around with the title sequence and cutting back and forth between different camera angles.  Although the drum performance is pretty much finalized, the rest of the song is not the finished version.  Also, none of this has been mixed and mastered.

A few interesting things to note with this song is the use of some of my “Rescued Cymbals”.  In addition to the small chime cymbals that I use in pretty much every song, I am also using two cut down Wuhan Lion (or China) cymbals which are positioned above my two main rack toms.  I’m also using a 12″ Glennie’s Garbage positioned above my hi-hat.  This is quickly becoming one of my favorite cymbals.

Enjoy…

News – June 5th, 2017 – Recording Progress

, ,
Trent Davis

Recording Progress – Bright & Shiny

This weekend I managed to get time to record two more songs for Bright & Shiny.  The two songs are titled This Waiting and The End Holding Your Hand.

I was particularly happy to get The End Holding Your Hand recorded because of how I go about recording.  While I am working on a song, I listen to it repeatedly while I drive to-and-from work each day.  I use that time to write out different parts and memorize the structure of the song.

Unfortunately, I don’t get many opportunities to actually record since I need to get the family out of the house.  This means that I may sometimes end up listening to a song quite a bit before I get to actually record it.  In the case of this song, I listened to it repeatedly for over three weeks.  As you can imagine, I was pretty damn sick of it by the time I got around to actually laying down the tracks.

When I record, I also film.  I am working on videos of each song to compile into a mini documentary on the recording of the drums and percussion for this album.

I only have two more songs to record then I’ll be focusing on the auxiliary percussion.

Here are rough-cuts of the drum performance videos.  The drum tracks need to be mixed properly and the track I’m playing along with is only a temporary scratch track.  I’ll update them when I get a final mix of the songs.

This Waiting

 

 

 

 

 

The End Holding Your Hand

 

 

 

 

 

These drum tracks are a little more sparse than I typically prefer but that is intentional since I needed to leave space for auxiliary percussion.

Here’s an example of a song with finished percussion, although it isn’t a final mix.

Soothsayer