Drum beats

I heard that famous artists such as Jonny Cash and Queen originally recorded their drum beats using boxes and household objects so I took a shaker and planned what other instruments I could use. This drum beat would add a definite rhythm to my song and make it seem more solid. I could also then play with the tempo of the drum beat, making it faster for the chorus and then slower for the verses, to add dramatic effect.

I looked at different ways around my house to produce sounds and experimented with which ones I  could use. I decided that they would probably sound different once recorded so I wanted to record a  sample of all of them and then layer the best ones to produce a drum beat.

-Shaker - snare sound - The problem with the shaker was that it produced different noises when shaken  in a slightly altered way meaning that I only  recorded short perfect sections and tried to paste these  together on Mix Craft.

-Box, tables - bass drum - I tried tapping on my tablet and this sound was terrible as it recorded as tinny   and unprofessional.

- Cymbal - pan lid - It was more effective just using a cymbal actually.

-Other drums - pans and handles of spoons

-CD frame - This sounded almost like a DJ sound of a disk being scratched and so I didn't like it that  much for my project.

-Shutting a small plastic box - another drum.

-Pasta for brushes - pasta breaks when hit on saucepans, this may not have been my best idea.

 I searched for articles and videos on how people make sounds with unconventional objects and found this video and article (Electric):

I thought it was very environmentally friendly that they made their instruments out of rubbish and thought that maybe I could use unusual instruments in my piece.

 I don't actually play the drums so I experimented with different sounds for each instrument and then  muted and layered them. It was difficult to not have pauses in between the different sets of sounds and  I think these make the recording a little rougher. There is also a slight tempo problem at the start  where the beat is slower than the piano, this is not as good as I had wanted it to be.

 I originally was thinking about using a swing beat like this: 

However for my song this didn't fit in properly. A swing beat is most commonly found in jazz songs and  I was already thinking about creating a country jazz song rather than conventional jazz.

 I also put the sound on these instruments right down so they are more background noise rather than  the focal point. Also to tone down the tinny sound of the bottle which I used ( I also added the effect  classical reverb in order to do the same thing).

I played around with upbeats and downbeats which gave different sounds to the song. I felt like the downbeat sounded more disjointed so stayed with the more commonly used attention to the upbeat.

Works Cited

“Electric Junkyard Gamelan makes music with household objects.” QCTimes. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2012. <http://qctimes.com/‌entertainment/‌music/‌article_62a529de-a222-11de-94db-001cc4c002e0.html>.