Building An Empire, One Optimus Prime Cock At A Time...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
As those of you who follow me on the Twit-scape know, I completed the MATG last week, and began work on the third instrument, SpringThing. MATG turned out… interesting, I guess? Not quite what I expected, I’ll say that much.
As you can see, I used turnbuckles as “tuning pegs” and aircraft cable for the strings. The issue I’m experiencing is that I believe I’ve made the bridge too stiff (it is 3/32 plate steel) and not enough of the string vibrations get transmitted to the pickup. So I’m going to take it apart this week and cut out the old bridge and replace it with 1/32 steel, and use smaller gauge aircraft cable for the two middle strings. It sounds interesting, but not what I was hoping for. Easy to see where it can be improved, though. So there’s that. Here’s what it currently sounds like, but the new version should have much more body and sustain.
SpringThing is along similar lines, I guess. The frame will hold 6 different springs that I acquired at Ace. Along the bottom, where you see that plate, will be controls for some custom electronics. I’m giving it its own preamp, distortion, a compressor (Orange Squeezer type), and one of those looper things from Radio Shack. So SpringThing will theoretically be a comprehensive rhythmic looper doo-hickie. We’ll see how that plays out, and you can follow along with the hilarity on my Twitter feed, as always.
In other completely unrelated news, I’m starting a sister blog to this one that is focused entirely on music, rather than music tech. It should be up by the end of the week; (now up here) the missus is putting the finishing touches on the software, and it will also serve as a showcase for her bespoke blogging platform, of which this site is a distant grandparent. I’ll keep you posted on the progress on that front, and post here when it’s ready. I’m hoping for discussions that are more subjective in nature on that site; I generally try to avoid inflicting my opinions on you guys here with respect to actual music. That won’t be the case on the new blog. We’ll see how it goes.
27 comments
That turned out excellent. I'm looking forward to hearing the music that comes from it. How heavy is it?
I know percussive sounds were more your intention, but have you tried bowing it? I've been messing around lately with a little Turkish spike violin. As a result I've been bowing everything I have kicking around that can be possibly bowed. I was most impressed with the results of bowing a kalimba, makes me think I'll be creating some kind of steel rod bowed instrument thing soon.
I need to pick up a proper bow. I was able to bow it to a certain extent with a steel rod (coincidentally, in the context of your post) at least enough to where I could hear it _can_ be bowed.
There's a violin shop right around the corner from us. I'll pop in there and grab a bow some time this week and see what's what.
Oh, and it's not that heavy. It weighs more than a Strat but less than a Les Paul. Call it 12 pounds or so?
-CR
Have you considered using spring steel, pallet strapping, or bandsaw blades vs cable? They have a nice sound when tensioned.
JP
As a string player myself, make sure you get a cello or double bass bow, and some double bass rosin. Double bass bows are wider and usually have more hair on them - and double bass rosin is stickier than violin rosin, so the combo will move more mass.
Excellent to know. I have zero experience with such things.
-CR
I'm a cellist, and I agree with kineticmonkey. Even if you go for a cello bow - definitely get bass rosin.
Also - I am sure you already know that you probably shouldn't splurge for a super nice bow - as it'll probably get a bit roughed up. However - you will still probably want to stay away from fiberglass bows - as they don't have much weight and can easily warp. So either go for the cheapest wooden bow you can get - or maybe even a carbon fiber bow (which is light - but much stronger than the fiberglass ones).
If the violin shop you are thinking of also does their own re-hairing (something you will probably need from time to time).. talk to the guy (or gal) about what you are intending on using it for and see if they have any ideas. If the person is cool at all - they might have some experimental ideas of their own.
The shop is in Mesa, a town utterly devoid of anything remotely resembling "cool." I imagine going in to this shop and saying "yes, I need something for bowing aircraft cable" and the guy pulling iron on me and saying "GET THE HELL OUT OF MY STORE, YOU SPAWN OF SATAN!!!"
Or something like that.
-CR
Hahaha!!
In that case - I would ask for the heaviest "cheap" bow they have along with some bass rosin.... kthxbai
Best of luck, sir.
You could try to pick up an Ebow on Ebay.
I could also try to kill myself by holding my breath underwater in my pool. Ain't either one gonna happen, though.
In all seriousness, there's nfw an ebow could move these strings. Aside from its inherent gayness (which is, I'm fully aware, basically asking for it in this crowd.)
-CR
Instead of an ebow, how about picking up a random orbit sander from a garage sale and bolting some plate metal onto the sanding pad?
In my (limited) experience, classical string players are often aware of experimental music and eager to geek out on exotic rosin recipes.
In the abstract a DIY electroacoustic feedback machine based on this beast would be interesting, but if you did it via EM induction Ebow style, the fields necessary to move such large strings would indeed be gonad-shriveling.
I made a cello out of a fence post a while back and found the local strings store was surprisingly supportive - they gave me old tuning pegs and bridges to experiment with. They thought I was nuts, but they were helpful nonetheless! I used a cheap violin bow and it worked ok on baritone guitar and cello strings - I might have to try with a double bass bow and bass rosin now, thanks for the tip kineticmonkey - the best it sounded was hitting the strings with a tom mallet though... an ebow didn't do much.
Good news about the new music blog. Looking forward to it, no holds barred and all. Also, I'd suggest skipping the 're-hairing', for obvious reasons, and putting something a bit more abrasive in your bow. I wonder about experiments with material other than synthetic fiber and horse hair. Anyone have any experience with that?
PS: I DID buy an E-bow (albeit not on Ebay) a couple of years ago, but still have not taken it out of its box. Should I? Don't think it works on my new YouRock guitar though!
Put it back on eBay. You'll probably make a profit. Those things do one (played as fuck) sound. There are certain artists who have an E-Bow passport and are allowed to use it unconditionally. Marcus Fisher comes to mind. But in general, if you think you might need an E-Bow, much like a xylophone, you fucking don't. If you're sure, balls to bones, that an E-Bow is the only possible thing that will help you find your inner muse, then (AND ONLY THEN) can you have the E-Bow passport.
The reason I say this is that I, like every other producer who has ever spent time in an expensive studio, have watched thousands of dollars go down the toilet the minute the guitar player says "I think what this track really needs is an E-Bow part." Then he and the second engineer spend hours coming up with some cocked-up pedals-and-amps contraption that will theoretically result in some magic fucking drone. Then he commandeers the first engineer, and they go about attempting to mic this fucking mess and get it to sit in the mix, which takes further hours. The whole while this is happening, the rest of the band and the producer sit in the lounge playing ping-pong and watching Real World re-runs. At the end of this process, after all this setting up and recording takes place, the first engineer laminates the mute button down on this track. Every once in a while, he or the producer un-mutes it and sits around for a second tugging on their beards, and then they go "no," and hit the mute again. But nobody wants to just delete the track because they spent so much money recording it. So it just sits there, and everyone stares at it in embarrassment for the rest of the session.
E-Bow is Latin for "soup sandwich." You never, ever need an E-Bow part. Ever. Thus, you don't need an E-Bow. QED.
-CR
Oh.
Playing guitar with a vibrator is cool though? Huh?
analogcre8or - As a guitarist who's owned an Ebow for 25+ years, what he said. Although if you have a guitar handy you should definitely play with it before you sell it, as an Ebow is a very fun physics lesson for the first five minutes.
The Moog guitar is the first thing that has brought the basic concept to useful fruition. Not that I can afford one, but hats off to them for actually taking the idea to where it needed to go.
Yeah, the Moog Guitar (and the Fernandes Sustainer and its ilk) are actual usable implementations of that sort of thing. The E-Bow's design makes it virtually impossible to come up with anything useful in something approaching a reasonable amount of time. (I'm not saying it _can't_ be done. I'm saying it hardly ever _is_.)
The E-Bow is one of the best examples in this industry of a solution in search of a problem, and it doesn't even solve that problem it managed to find. Yet we're now able to use the term "generations of guitarists" that have forked over a c-note each to discover that it is nearly unusable, both in practice and execution.
Protip: if you own a commercial studio, put an E-Bow in that box you keep all the percussion in. Effectively double your billable hours. (Musicians that think they can play percussion almost never can, so trying to lay a tambo or bongo part in to a song is always good for an hour or two of billing.)
-CR
I think that a more flexible bridge will help with sound, but a resonating body will help as well. The old 'hold the music box on the table' principal.
If you're going to do a new bridge, and with all this bowing talk, consider doing a curved bridge (or maybe it is, but it looks flat from the photo)... that is if you have any desire to just bow a single string.
@CR: Negative. You're a damn talented dude, I expected more. That line woulda killed in a Rodney Dangerfield-for-e-musicians gig though.
WTB: eBow
God I love this blog.
i literally quit the aforementioned band between my last comment and this one, and as a result i likely won't touch an ebow again for a while (as i didnt own the one i was using).
i am not stressed about this either way.
Been pondering my own little DIY project. Similar to this... well, with similar elements
Was thinking of getting an old upright piano, removing the soundboard and sticking a couple Barcus Berry pickups on it. For bowing, plucking and generally messing about. Also, since I live in an apartment, the decreased volume would help with the neighbours.
Is that at all possible? The bridge would have to be mounted directly to the frame, instead of the soundboard.
Wouldn't it basically be a DIY Yamaha CP70? Am I missing something?
No, that sounds correct to me. Certainly worth a shot. I'd get a spinet, though, not an upright grand. There's like 2 truckloads full of wood and metal in an upright. A spinet is like half the shit, and for what you plan, the same net effect. You could just take the harp out entire, strings and all, and lean it against the wall, and toss all the wood stuff. It'd even look cool.
But that said, the way the Planar pickup works, you can stick it anywhere. They're very sensitive. Different placements will return different tonal results.
-CR
Thanks for the advice... Loads of 'free to pickup' spinets in my area.
The Planar seems incredibly useful for unusual foley, and I've been wanting to get some proper piezo pickups for a while now. Radioshack buzzers are getting a bit old.
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