That sound straightaway indicates dark. Unlike Hollowsun's Novachord, which maintains the thrill factor throughout the song. That makes Waterphone a little cheesy to me. But I'm not saying its bad. Its a very good instrument I'll say. But that ridiculously high price is unattractive for where not a single valve or any circuitry is involved, and moreover its limited to a set of sounds that doesnt allow anything beyond some on-the-face dark sounds. Even if it comes to half of its price I'll think twice before buying it. But who knows, sometimes we need a little cheesy sounds too in the song. And sometimes I am not this phobic to stupid price tags.

Quote Martin Walker:

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as with all artistic decisions an element of good taste comes into it
Martin

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Exactly. I find it pricey because my artistic decisions will be limited. Its just a foley effect in the end.

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SoundCloud

AS, i think you should write a nice email to Boris Blank of Yello, he used to do a lot of foley effects in his early days with a reel-2-reel machine before having a Fairlight CMI. Boris is a master of sampling, that guy could turn any natural sound he recorded into something new and most of those sounds ended up on Yello's releases.

O yeah! Chic-a-chick-ahhhhhhh



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SoundCloud

Quote AuralSerenity:

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But that ridiculously high price is unattractive for where not a single valve or any circuitry is involved, and moreover its limited to a set of sounds that doesnt allow anything beyond some on-the-face dark sounds. Even if it comes to half of its price I'll think twice before buying it.

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You have to realise that these instruments are only available from their original creator(who has a patent on the design), are individually hand-built and tuned, and involve a lot of metalwork.

There's a lot more work involved in building one of these than there is assembling a circuit board with some valves in it


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Kwaidan where are you? You jacked this thread with waterphone.



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I do realize that Martin. I respect the effort. Its not altogether about price. As I already said price could be avoided easily if its sounds were not the way they sound. I dont think it will be a cherished dream of mine to have it one day when I have that kind of dough.

Martin I've heard your tracks on YewTreeMagic and they are great because the celtic fetish of ancient cornwall is so subtle that they easily stick to the celtic landscapes. They have that thrill factor, even though I couldnt locate anything to put a finger on and say - 'hey that's spooky'. I want to do something like this that listeners cant exactly figure out whats spooky in the whole composition. Its something like the way I find 'Moonlit Sonata' spooky. Many people find it romantic or under the moon and on the shore of the lake kind of calm serenity. But to me its very very scary. And if someone may ask me what scares me in it, then it will be beyond any explanation for me.

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SoundCloud

Hi AS!

Thanks for the compliments about my music - glad you enjoyed it

The vibe I create is largely inspired by the strangeness and charm of Ancient Cornwall, and so the compositions have that slightly unearthly feel about them as well. I think it’s all about carefully choosing the sound combinations, the chords and key changes, and staying true to the mood and feel.

Instruments like the Waterphone can easily be incorporated into such music in a subtle way, rather than an ‘in your face’ ‘fingernails down the blackboard’ approach.

Oh, and by the way, I’ve already discovered a cheaper alternative to the Waterphone - it may not be totally authentic, or by the original designer, but Aquasonic starts at $325:

www.abasses.com/stickdrums/aquasonic.html

www.gallery93.com/gallery93webpage/products/aquasonic/aqua.html


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Thanx for digging this out Martin, As usual you do the hard work. I would love to have these but this evening I fell in love with steel tongue drums again, and strongly feel that I can make one of those zen sounding steel drums detuned to sound as scarier as Kairo (the Jap one). Problem is I dont know how. I saw this guy in Goa who made one of these steel tongue drums out of some scrap thing that came out of his ex car, and he said that its not as tough making these as it seems. I wish if I could ask him for the blueprints but alas, he was already gone. I know I can easily buy them from ebay, but the fun is when you can make them and remake them untill you get exactly what is meant for you.

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SoundCloud


Edited by AuralSerenity (15/09/10 08:59 PM)

Hi AS!

I've just re-posted a link to Dennis Havlena's site about DIY tongue drums in reply to your other post (he's the inventor of the Hank drum, inspired by the original and rather more expensive Hang drum).

However, in the two minutes since then I've discovered another video tutorial on the same subject. So enjoy this one as well!

www.metacafe.com/watch/1330706/how_to_build_a_hank_drum


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Thanx again for the hard work.

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SoundCloud

Well I'm sure we're all hoping you'll now build a Hank Drum, so we'll expect some photographs in due course


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Well that still depends!

Any suggestion on substitute for propane tank?

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SoundCloud

Quote AuralSerenity:

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Any suggestion on substitute for propane tank?

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Butane? And you might find some oxygen cylinders behind the local hospital

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

Quote zenguitar:

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Quote AuralSerenity:

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Any suggestion on substitute for propane tank?

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Butane? And you might find some oxygen cylinders behind the local hospital

Andy

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No, I mean anything beyond gas tanks or cylinders, like this thing is definitely not a tank, though I dont know what exactly is that. Its not as thick skinned as a tank thus designing, cutting and retuning isnt that tough. I know many things are there that may carry such hollow shape and may be handy but cant exactly find anything. Even if I have to look into a scrap yard it will be still easy than any gas cylinder.

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SoundCloud


Edited by AuralSerenity (17/09/10 02:08 AM)

You missed my wink

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

Yeah, I did. Actually I'm all game to make this thing up.

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SoundCloud

Good luck, and bear in mind when bemoaning that Milltone drums aren’t easy to duplicate that the guy that makes them has been evolving his design over years, and has recently hand-crafted his 500th unit.

You can’t expect to create perfection in the first step, but that step remains a very important one


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Quote Martin Walker:

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Good luck, and bear in mind when bemoaning that Milltone drums aren’t easy to duplicate that the guy that makes them has been evolving his design over years, and has recently hand-crafted his 500th unit.

You can’t expect to create perfection in the first step, but that step remains a very important one


Martin

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Thanx Martin. By not emulating him I think that I'll find myself on level one, which I already skipped by not considering the wink few posts back. I know that Its not easy to figure anything out that will hold any selling value, but I do not intend to pursue that anyway. I want to build something that may at least be used by me as I'm projecting it to be used. As of now that is still an utopia, I'm not even having a single tool with me.

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SoundCloud

Hi AS,

Remember, you don’t have to limit yourself you what others have done - I’ve created sampled percussion instruments out of all sorts of things including sheets of slate, twigs snapping, an offcut from a metal rack-shelf...

What you get with the more refined instruments tends to be a greater purity, as its distinctive sounds get enhanced with each evolution of the design.

Each time a dimension, material, or constructional process is altered it will either improve the sound, leave it unchanged, or make it worse, so with a sensible designer the desirable changes accumulate with each build generation.


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

What's an offcut from a metal rack-shelf...?

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SoundCloud

Sometimes going against picture can be remarkably effective - ie, you're presented with a seriously horrific scene, but the soundtrack (baseball bat hitting skull or whatever) is removed completely, and a simple (usually the best) music track is played instead. Works superbly well on that recent Swedish feature that's about right now (Girl with the dragon tattoo or something) I've got away with it before with just a basic throbbing fx that just fills out all the sound space. It can sometimes be a difficult one to present to the director but if you get it right it can be much more scary than any amount of 'obvious' choices all layered up and banging away.

Scary can sometimes be in the really subtle stuff ...

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http://anotherfineday.bandcamp.com/ http://anotherfineday.co.uk http://apollomusic.co.uk

Quote AuralSerenity:

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What's an offcut from a metal rack-shelf...?

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I bought one of these to house my new Audient Mico preamp and Emu 1820M front end, and it was far deeper than I needed, such that you couldn't get your fingers anywhere near the rear panels of the preamps to plug anything in



It was 2mm steel, so sawing off the back half took some doing (and produced a lot of sparks!), but left me with a chunk of metal bent into a 'U' shape. I of course hung it up and started tapping it with my range of beaters, and because of the rough edges got some great buzzing clangs like a cheap gong


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

The Sound Of Music (a version of Bas Den Boer). Found it while looking for inspiration for horror FX.

And Mary Poppins as well.

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SoundCloud


Edited by AuralSerenity (23/09/10 08:01 PM)

Nice genre mutilation!


Martin

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YewTreeMagic