Three minor musical advances

Three minor advances in music, for me:


1)  As I think I mentioned, a few months ago I bought an acoustic guitar for about AU$15 (around US$12):  nice tone -- but the bridge only allows the middle four strings.  And then when I was re-stringing it, I broke the D-string -- so it's just [blank] A [blank] G B [blank].  This set-up is making me play differently (I noodle around while watching t.v.), with more use of "drone strings" and playing up and down the neck, rather than across.


2) As I might(?) also have mentioned, for the last four(?) months I've had drumsticks in the car:  at stoplights I play the steering wheel.  My hand work is improving (although not my feet) -- but the interesting thing is that Tuesday of (I think) two weeks ago (so, April 2nd?), on the way in to work I noticed that my drumsticks (a matched pair) actually had a slightly different diameter:  and now I can't un-notice that.  So that's an extra level of sensitivity.


3) With the exception of two songs from about 15 years ago, all of my songs are either standard major/minor chords, or power chords.  But last night I wrote a song (verse and chorus guitar; no melody line or further arrangement yet) with a verse of major chords (but with a suspended 4th occasionally added on the A) -- but the chorus alternates between a D-major and the four thinnest open strings (which is D G B E -- so I guess a Gminor2?), and finally ending on a power chord with the root on the A-string, seventh fret.  So, something a little different.


I'm still not in a situation (or current inclination) to easily record:  one of these days...


--GG

Made a drumstick holder

This blog entry is part of a series where I document to myself "Yes -- I really did accomplish things this vacation!"

Some people like to go on trips during their vacations, to get away from their real life.  I prefer the opposite:  I like to putter around the house and yard, getting things done (from my "To Do" list).


The story behind this project is that I hate to see perfectly good raw materials get thrown away.  A house down the block from the kids' school was having its wooden porch refurbished, and there were a few useful-looking pieces of wood in the dumpster.

I pondered it for a few days, then grabbed two brick-sized pieces after dropping off my kids -- figuring that I'd pick up some more when I got the kids after school.  Unfortunately, when I returned that afternoon -- the dumpster was gone!!!

So, I mostly missed out.  But, at least I got these two pieces of hardwood (the pen is a size reference):

As you can see, they were "mostly painted" white.  I wrote the date of acquisition, and the location, on the pieces of wood -- as I typically do -- but I didn't know specifically what I would do with them.

And then, sometime between then and my week's vacation, I decided:  drumstick holders!


You see, I have a few different pairs of drumsticks, of different weights,  thicknesses and tips.

But they're not stored in an organized way -- so I'm often trying to find the other half of a pair:  the drumstick holder would keep them organized and accessible.


I examined the ends of the wooden blocks, and decided that I'd keep the ends as there were -- just for character.  However, because the ends weren't symmetrical, I wanted the ends on the completed project to be in a certain orientation.  So, decided which end was "up", and indicated this with a piece of masking tape.  (No photo.)

I then cleaned up the sides and the bottom with a handplane (a scrub plane for rapid stock removal, followed by a smoothing plane) -- but I left the top painted.  (No photo.)

I then used a marking gauge to define the rows, and a trysquare and dividers to define the columns.  I then used a bradawl (shown) to start the holes.

I tested the holes based on one of the drumsticks -- more on this later -- and used one of my hand augers to make the holes.  The drumstick holder shown above is for the "regular-sized" drumsticks:  I made another one (shown later) for the unusually-sized drumsticks.

Between the two sets of drumstick holders, I got to use all three of my augers (see below).  (Correction:  I have a fourth one that's remarkably wide -- but it's not yet mounted to a handle.)  I've only owned the one in the middle for about a month, and hadn't yet used it:  I picked it up at an antique shop for a very good price, and I knew that it was a size I didn't yet have.  The other two I've had for about ten years, and (I'm pretty sure) haven't used on any "real" project -- until now.

You can't quite tell in this photo, but the middle auger -- the one I recently picked up -- has a smoothed-out branch as its handle.  I liked its rustic-ness:  the two ends are of slightly different length, and the handle has a slight waviness to it.  It has character. 

As it so happened, the auger that I picked up recently was the one that I used the most for this project: seven pairs of holes, rather than the one pair each for the other two augers.

The newer auger needed a little bit of sharpening with a file, but was otherwise in usable condition.  I'll discuss the handle modifications in a moment.

Yeah, I could've used a spade bit.  But using the hand augers was more interesting.  And I got to learn something:  I improved my skills and refined my technique along the way.


Here's the first two holes, using  the new auger.

Here's another shot, where you can see my green "depth indicator" masking tape -- to make the holes all the same depth.  Notice, however, the squared-off ends of the auger's wooden handle.

Progress!!!

But, even after I brush away the shavings, some wood was still hanging on:  because the auger bit didn't have "spurs" to slice the surface of the wood, there were still some pieces at the opening of the hole that were still connected.  This also caused some tear-out around some of the holes, which I'll discuss later.

Cleaning up the surface with a sharp chisel.  This is my "go to" chisel, which covers about 98% of my chisel needs.

Here's the surface, cleaned up a bit.

It was about this point that the square-ish ends on the handle were starting to bother me:  every time I made a turn, the corner of the handle -- much like a crisp end of a large dowel -- would dig into my hand.  So, I decided to round off the end, to make it more comfortable.

Here's my go-to rasp:  not fancy (plastic handle!) -- but it works.  I wrapped a rag around the other end, so that it wouldn't chew up my fingers or cut me (I've done that before!).

Here's the (mostly) rounded-off ends.  I then made the curve of the ends a little more symmetrical, and smoothed off the surface a bit with a coarse file.

Here's me using my second-largest auger on the companion "drumstick holder".  My largest auger would have been far too big for the job -- and I still need to figure out how to mount it onto a handle.

And, the mid-sized auger.

Here's the finished products -- after two coats of Danish oil.  If you enlarge the photo you'll be able to see some tear-out (running "with the grain") around the holes.  I could've prevented that by clamping a sacrificial thin board on top of the "hole-making" surface, doing my layout on that, and drilling through that board into the "real" workpiece below.  But I figured that doing that was more work than this project deserved:  it's a "functional" piece, not a "beauty" piece.

As usual, I wrote the source of the wood (date and location), the date I finished it, and signed my work.  I've made the photo deliberately blurry.

And here's the two drumstick holders in action -- kind of.

To the left is the "atypical-sized" drumsticks:  some tympani-ish beaters; a pair that my late paternal grandfather made for me on his lathe; and a massive taiko-style pair that I made out of large hadwood dowel that I picked up at the hardware store (but I rounded the ends a bit, to minimize the denting of my drum heads).

On the right is the "typical-sized" drumsticks, as I had intended to use it:  pointy-end up.  This would allow me to visually select among the different tips (e.g. nylon vs. wooden; acorn versus barrel).

But -- it turns out that the "example" drumstick I had grabbed, when choosing the auger size to drill the holes, was slightly narrower than some of the others.  So not all of my "regular"-sized drumsticks would fit.  Ah well.

So, I ended up using them tip-down -- which means that I can grab them by the handle, not the tip.  And I guess it'll just be trial-and-error in figuring out which pair is which.

And, that's the end.  :)


--GG

DIY Blastix or bundled rod drumsticks

Earlier I posted a blog entry on home-made drumming "brushes" -- which were actual dishwashing brushes.  I also made some mega-heavy, Taiko-style drumsticks.  This current blog entry is somewhere in the middle of that range of exploration:  some homemade "bundled rods" or Blastix.

Bundled rods are basically thin dowels, bundled together and used as drumsticks.  They're partway along the continuum between drumsticks and "brushes".

My thought was: instead of paying $15-$25 (horrors!) on a factory-made "bundled rod" drumstick, how hard would it be to make my own?  And, would it sound OK?

For raw materials, I bought a pair of bamboo sushi mats from Daiso, a retail chain where everything in the store is AU$2.80.  I also bought a pair of bamboo placemats from their competetors, Danda, where everything is also AU$2.80.  My basic outlay was therefore $5.60 per pair of drumsticks.

However, I also ended up paying $7.19 for a roll of decent-quality green duct tape (green tape is more interesting than silver or black).  Technically it was "cloth tape", with embedded threads for strength.  Since this project only used a few feet of the roll, I'm not sure how much of the total cost of the roll I should assign to the DIY Blastix:  maybe 30c?

And I also used a bit of glue.  More on that later.

As you can see from the photo, the two types of mats happen to be the same length.  This is useful for comparing the sound of the two materials, as the length of the material is held constant between them.

As you can see, my hand width indicates that the finished product should be missing the top two rows of string, but the lower rows might as well be retained in the final product:  it makes the rolling easier, and provides a bit of substance under my grip.

In addition, my approach is to remove only the second-from-the-tip row of string:  retaining the row on the end helps to keep the bundle together, and because it's at the tip, it should be pretty easy to remove after everything is assembled.  In contrast, the "second row" would be a nuisance to try to remove, post-assembly.

The weight and cross-section of the sushi mat is different than the black-stained placemat.  I think both are bamboo.  However, the placemat strips are round in cross-section, and thinner than the sushi mat.  Here you can (hopefully!) see that the sushi mat has a series of half-circles (or maybe 1/3 circles?).

I decided to roll the mat with the curved portions outwards:  it would make a smoother exterior, which would be less likely to dig into my hands.


Here's a shot of the sushi-rolling mats, with the second-from-the-
top strings removed.

Note the heavy-duty waxed paper, to keep the excess glue off my workbench.

Handy hint:  the waxed paper is actually the bag from inside a dried cereal box.  It's heavier-duty than "regular" waxed paper.  Because the inside of the bag tends to have cereal dust, I write "outside" on the outside of the bag, and make sure that the clean "outside" of the bag is what touches my workpiece.

This photo shows the gluing pattern that I used:  a strip down each side, along the thicker "ends" of the placement, and then one stripe of glue along each interwoven string.

I'm just using regular white woodworking glue (PVA, I believe).  However, it's the "Exterior grade, water-resistant" type of glue:  I figured there was no point in building something that a hot summer's day would destroy.


After laying down the glue, I held the mats tightly to the work- surface, and rolled them as tightly as I could -- being sure to keep the ends nicely aligned.

Note that I intentionally rolled one mat clockwise, and the other counter-clockwise.  This resulted in a "matched" set of sticks that were mirror-image of each other.

Then I took the green "cloth tape" and wrapped each stick twice:  two layers along the "upper" string's glue-line, and two more layers on the "lower" string's glue-line.  "Upper" and "lower" refer to my hand placement on the stick.


After gluing, I further aligned the sticks by forcefully tamping down the butt ends against the workbench.

You can see the size of my fist, relative to the project:  the upper band of green tape is peeking out between my fingers.


There was still a little alignment work to be done, so I also tried to tamp it down a little bit with a mallet.  It helped a little.

(The mallet was created by my late paternal grandfather, BTW:  it's my "go to" mallet, and ends up getting used on just about every project that involves striking against wood.)


Finally, I set up my creations to glue up overnight.  I placed them in an old cake pan, in case the glue dribbled.  I also placed them with the tips pointing up, so that the excess glue would drain away from the tips:  I wanted to ensure that the "bristles" could move freely, rather than accidentally get bound by glue.

Here are the (near-)final products:

For the purposes of illustration, I took the picture partway through unravelling the end string.


Finally, here's what they sound like:




One of these days I'll purchase a set of actual Blastix or "bundled rods", and compare them to my home-made devices.  Eventually.  :)


--GG

Actual drum brushes

Two days ago I became curious about the origin of "brushes" for drumming.

I did a bit of a web search, which turned up the  history of "drumming brushes", contained in this very informative article.  Apparently they were actual wire flyswatters (fan-shaped, rather than square-shaped); and also people used whisk brooms.

(As an aside:  oddly, you can't find whisk brooms here in Australia.  Duunno why.)


Anyhow, I became curious as to whether "actual" brushes would work -- so I picked up a pair of dish-scrubbing brushes, and a pair of grout-scrubbing brushes, and gave 'em a try.  Here's the Y'allTube video clip:




BTW, here's the drumhead, which a few years ago I let my daughter decorate with permanent markers.

And, here's the drumhead with the brushes on it:

I'm pleased with how my experiment turned out.  Cost me about ten bucks, all said:  $2 each for the dish-scrubbing brushes, and $3 each for the grout-scrubbers.  That's a reasonable price to pay to satisfy my curiosity -- and expand my range of possible drum sounds.  :)


--GG

Taiko-style drumsticks

Regular-sized drumsticks feel insubstantial to me.

I usually use a pair that my late (paternal) grandfather made for me, which are a little larger diameter.  But I was looking for something even heftier:  something like is used in Taiko drumming (you don't have to watch the whole thing; you get the idea in the first 15 seconds):




I stopped by the local drumming supplies shop, but they didn't have anything relevant in stock.  The guy said he could order something in for me -- but it would be about forty bucks.  Nah.

So, I went to the local mega-hardware store and picked up a hardwood dowel (25mm by 0.9m long; so, about one inch by three feet).  Cost me three bucks.

Cut it in half,  then rounded off the ends with a rasp, then a file.  Wanted to minimize the denting of drumheads by making the contact surface less of a crescent shape, and more of a sphere.


Here's a comparison of the old end, and the modified end:

Here's my hand in the shot, to give a sense of scale:

And, here's a comparison of the three different sizes:

And, here's me making a comparison: 




As the little annotations say, I'm not sure if I can tell the difference in sound (with the built-in camera mic).  But they **feel** heftier -- so that's worth something.


--GG