#david dramm

Finally a post on that drum set built out of bass clarinet sounds. Thrash and Variations by David Dramm uses a part for drum set as the electronics to the piece. The drum set is however not a regular drum set but is created entirely out of bass clarinet sounds. You can find a small excerpt of the piece here. Below is an audio example to illustrate the bass clarinet drum set that we made.

Now I am going to give away some of the secrets to what you are hearing. Here is how the different drum set sounds were created on the bass clarinet:

bass/kick drums Slaptongue. The different types of kick drums were created by overlaying samples and by using different mic positions.

snare Air through the tube with the mouthpiece off. The air flying past the rim of the neck opening on the bass clarinet creates the resonance. The attack was fine-tuned by overlaying different consonants.

snare roll Voiced flutter tongue through the tube with the mouthpiece off

closed hi-hat Short air burst through the tube with the mouthpiece off

open hi-hat/cymbal Blowing air between the mouthpiece and the reed created this whistling sound. 

The precise articulation (consonants at the attacks) used and notes played were important for all sounds as well as the microphone positions used to record the different sound types.

To get the full energy of the sounds, we occasionally used compression to amplify the softer elements of the sound, making it as if you are actually listening from my perspective as a player where you can hear all the little detail. For the rest: just panning across the stereo field mimicking the lay-out of a real drum set, and smart rotation and timing of samples to make it a little less mechanical.

It was the snare drum that gave the most troubles, I kept getting more of a tom sound. Actually, I like that tom sound, someone should use it some day in some piece. I made sure to use it a little in the excerpt.

Till next time, MVG 

In August I had the opportunity to work at the STEIM studios in Amsterdam for 4 days together with digital composer Jessica Aslan. Jess and I met at a STEIM orientation workshop in May and made plans to work together more intensively in the future during that time.

During our residency we started working out several older pieces for bass clarinet and electronics from the 70s. Originally for analog electronics Jess and I built some first versions of Max/MSP patches to move those pieces to the digital domain. By the end of the residency we had a working version of Intra by Ton Bruynèl. Written in 1971, it was great to experience playing this piece which is probably the first piece for bass clarinet and live electronics in history!

Composer David Dramm came by during our residency and we had a great time working with him on building a drum set out of bass clarinet sounds. I spent hours blowing, clicking and rattling my instrument and listening to what I would usually ignore while Jess placed mics in all kinds of unconventional positions.

The remainder of the time we spent on taking lots of bass clarinet samples for the piece Jess and I will be writing, talked a lot about basics of bass clarinet and basics of electronics. Since the residency I and Jess have been working a lot more on all that we got started at STEIM. In December we continued our work together in Edinburgh, focusing this time on the piece for bass clarinet and live electronics that we are making together.