Please share ideas on homemade percussion

[moonwookie]

The LA Decompression was my first experience with a drum circle and I was amazed. What seemed like pure noise from a distance gradually differentiated itself into a base rhythm with all sorts of swirling riffs drifting around it. I found I could actually hear individuals if I just kept my eyes on them and cast about with my ears for what a drum like they were playing would sound like.

This led me back to my childhood days of random banging on whatever my parents were careless enough to leave lying around. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, and unfortunately still don't. However, since I want to bring as much of myself as possible to Burning Man next year, I have been giving thought to what would be the cheapest yet most fun way to indulge in a little banging in my adult years. I recently emptied out a coffee can and was more than a little stunned at what noises I could get out of just that. I even found that if I used two pencils with rubber erasers as drumsticks, I could more easily get tones out of the metal end. Find some way to add some rattle underneath the plastic end and you have a snare drum. Seal up a couple of used cans with some sand or maybe rice inside, then alternate that with a knife scraped along the ridges on the outside.

I'm trying as much as I can to think along the lines of "use what you've got", or in my case, what I expect to have by the time I leave next August. I know the variety is effectively endless, but I know there are people out there who have experimented and come up with all kinds of crazy stuff. Please share if you can!

[theCryptofishist]

Warning.
This is going to lead to a bunch of nasty comments about hippie drum circles. Try and take it in good part.

[moonwookie]

Oh, I know. I can just hear them. No fear. Just looking for more and more ways to go nuts with my creative mind. Reusing battery powered Christmas lights for my bicycle, weaving a strand into them for a hat (with different little sculptures around the lights themselves, using them as interior illumination - Houses of the Holy hat...hmmmmm).

Lots of time for experimentation, but eventually I will have to buckle down and make sure all of it is ready to go with me.

[trilobyte]

I'm giving this a nudge over to the Preparation -> Q&A board. The 2013 Art & Performance boards are more for announcing projects and events that have been fleshed out. Good luck finding the right things that work for you (I vote for using what you've got, too), I imagine the possibilities are limitless.

[Sham]

I spent the better part of my day banging my head against a wall. It was both percussion and concussion.

[BBadger]

Sometimes when I fart into wet soil the reverberations sound like a drum and can be felt by others around the camp-fire. I suggest you only bring your drumming if there is wet soil at Burning Man.

[ygmir]

Sometimes when I fart into wet soil the reverberations sound like a drum and can be felt by others around the camp-fire. I suggest you only bring your drumming if there is wet soil at Burning Man.

trying to imagine BBadger sitting in mud, while other are around a campfire, farting.

[Bob]

Thrift stores usually have cheap drums. Check the toy section too.

Honestly, this is the best thing I've seen at Burning Man in a decade:

[media]

[Foxfur]

This will get you some action for sure:

[media]

For high-hats you may want to investigate the trashcans that have the foot-lever raising lids.

[theCryptofishist]

Dried beens in plastic easter eggs are made to order maracas.

[moonwookie]

I would love to assemble a rig and add essentially random stuff. Living where I am, preparation (aka knowing what they hell I'm doing before I get there) would be impossible, but what a cool thing to discover - seek the order that lies underneath the chaos, the very same order that once again sinks into the dust and blows away in the wind (because I will have NO idea how to reproduce anything that comes out sounding good!).

[The Rod]

Hank Drum: http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/hank-drum.html

Back in my Society for Creative Anachronism days I remember a house hold called Rolling Thunder, made up of mostly drummers and bellydancers. They would host one of the largest drum jams every night at all the major camping events. On special occasions they would dig big pits in the ground, 3 or 4 ft deep and sometimes up to 5 or 6 ft wide and then stretch skins over them to create giant drums with an incredible bass rumble that you could feel reverberating through the ground...

[moonwookie]

Hmmm...don't have the technical resources to make me one of those tank drums, but they do sound sweet. I have to keep my eye out around my neighborhood, to see if anybody casually tosses anything that looks like it could be "retooled" using the basic bits and pieces I already have.

[moonwookie]

Let the kids show the way...

http://www2.wfla.com/news/news/2010/mar ... 6-vi-5454/

[Ugly Dougly]

We need more hippie drum circles.
One year, I got one of those half barrels from The Home Despot, and a big goat rawhide from Tandy's and made a big drum.

[Ugly Dougly]

I've been checking to see if there is any interest in this.
Resonance Faire

Homemade Miusical Instruments

Join farces?

[teardropper]

I am shocked, shocked I tell you. I'm sure it can still take an ugly turn, but by now, who cares, good was done. As a drummer in real BM functions, drums play an important role in our mythic culture. And these homemade creations are terrific. Play on, circles, play on. Bring yer stuff and participate...!

[Ugly Dougly]

Oh, TD, tell me it isn't true?

Are you or have you been associated with known drum circles?

I used to have a great darabuka, but it got stolen someplace in Hippytown, Oregon. Gonna have to get a new one.

[teardropper]

Sir, I believe I am protected, especially in BRC, by my 5th Amendment Rights.. And it's sorta'. Do art cars count? Your drums are cool. I would.

[maladroit]

I played in a large drum camp on Esplanade for a few hours this year. Most of the drums were homemade...barrels, sewer pipe, etc. It was definitely fun though I'll probably not spend as much time there again. Worked that out of my system I guess.

[teardropper]

Were they hippies?

[maladroit]

So many chakras were complimented.

Nah it was your burner cross-section. Some bros, one or two people who knew what they were doing, some dusty typical burner girls and guys, and a drunk sparkly raver girl beating the metal chimes in no semblance of rhythm whatsoever.

[teardropper]

So I guess with homemade drummin', you've got camp based and portable. Do you want to take to someone else's camp or do it at home? This has been my problem drumming in general, dragging my stuff around the playa, which is a whole separate post, except I will say: bike trailer.
I am looking at this thread, and thinking personally, in terms of portability. Taking it on the road, so to speak. What does have there?

[Ugly Dougly]

Glad you like my drum, Tear Dropper. I gave it away - to someone who I hope will appreciate it. But don't despair, it's dead easy to make another. Just takes one of those half-barrels from the garden store and a sheet of goat rawhide.

Back in the prehistoric era, I can remember hordes of drummers, wandering around the playa. The key for that kind of mobility is, I guess, small drums like djembes and bongos.