Hare brained racket tactics

[crochambeau]

Okay, so a little backstory. I play in a very on again off again three piece. Initial formation was based around myself and another slinging low tuned, fuzzed out guitars propped up with large, relatively high power tube amplifiers while the third punished a drum kit.

It was fun.

Years pass, life pushes us all around and each time we regroup it's a little different. The other guitarist and myself both have solo noise projects, so while the three piece is inoperative (as it normally is at this point) we're still happy pushing a variety of sounds.

The drummer, however, has grown bored with drums and now plays synth. I miss the drums. It has been pointed out that we can easily deploy a drum machine, but honestly, I don't think the pre-planned framework that comes with programming a beat will mesh well with the loose, play the room sonic fingerprint that is our comfort zone.

So my plan is to play the fucking drums myself. But, since I'm a bit tetched in the head I'm only planning to trot this out once I've properly prepared my drum kit. The current plan is:

1) Install tactile transducers to the resonant heads, and if not cymbals themselves then at least some sheet metal of appropriate proportions. This will allow me to "pipe in" additional signals so I can steer the kit into more of drone machine when needs dictate.

2) I'm designing a small, terribly low fidelity amplifier suited to the task, so I can stuff a dozen or so of them into an enclosure mounted to the floor tom.

3) I figure, while I'm at it, I may as well set about grabbing some cheap microphone elements that I can mount INSIDE the shells, in order to induce oscillation. I haven't settled on anything yet, but will probably wind up with a motley collection of junk from aliexpress or similar. The goal is not to send rockets to the moon, but asses into the couch.

4) since the notion of wildly out of control & ringing drums does not please me, I need to incorporate some sophisticated switching so I can command stuff ON and OFF. I have some matrix switching stuff already roughed out, but this will demand an added layer of programming some firmware for a microcontroller, which is not my comfort zone.

5) I should probably include some piezo triggers on the batter head for interrupts and state changes.

So that's my harebrained scheme for 2025. I've sort of glossed over some things because this post is long enough already, but I'd love to read about other plausibly experimental shit or weather derision or stabs at inducing scope creep.

[Chankgeez]

Not sure how applicable to your current situation, but here's a channel I'm sure you'll dig:

https://www.youtube.com/@momtnz/videos

[crochambeau]

Not sure how applicable to your current situation, but here's a channel I'm sure you'll dig:

https://www.youtube.com/@momtnz/videos

Oh wow, there are a ton of machines I've never even heard of on that channel. Many thanks!

[Chankgeez]

[coldbrightsunlight]

Sounds like a great idea!

A few years ago at one of the ILF EU meetups Knut from Pladask did a great sewing machine noise set using contact mics feeding transducers that were fixed to the machine and to other things to induce feedback and oscillations. It was really cool and we tried out putting one on all sorts of stuff to make makeshift speakers & oscillators. I imagine fixing some of those to drums would work great! I bought a few off aliexpress right after I got home then somehow never got round to wiring them up...

Just like these ones: https://thepihut.com/products/large-sur ... ohm-5-watt with a cheap power amp board.

Must actually do something with it soon.

[crochambeau]

Just like these ones: https://thepihut.com/products/large-sur ... ohm-5-watt with a cheap power amp board.

Oh nice, those look really well put together.

I expect to need a variety of sizes for the drumset project, since I don't want to dampen the snare drum too much that will have to be rather light. I've been looking over the selection at Parts-Express https://www.parts-express.com/speaker-c ... ransducers which provides quite a wild range.

I'm considering simply mounting a speaker driver on the resonant head of the bass drum, perhaps it can double as a low grade dynamic microphone when not powered. Or maybe a headphones driver, sort of a poor person's Beyerdynamic M380.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Mounting it on the kick sounds great, definitely agree it probably would weight down a snare too much... Yeah loads of options on that site!! wow