Sent to: Yahoo! Groups: Djembe-L: Message ____
Date: FRI FEB 13, 2K9 _
Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/Dunun-Beater
Dunun Beater By Reverend R Clark
Greetings Folks!
Sticks are esoterically important to me, for Dunun and other percussive play. Each size, weight and hardness will change the "attack" sound and subtly alter how the tone and sustain react. There are two major categories we need to be concerned with here, sticks and mallets. Sometimes I need the sharp, crisp cracking sound of wood on hard skin others I want the more mellow thud sound of the wooly puff covered soft felt or the in between of plain hard felt mallets. Other categories of percussive strikers would include marimba, gong & cymbal mallets (Zildjian); brushes; other specialty items like multi-sticks or even ones with jingles or bells on. Really thin sticks can employ a rim shot whipping the stick onto the head very analogous to a Djembe slap.Of the wood sticks there is quite a range in my bulging stick bag. There are the regular kit drumsticks which most Dunun players I've seen use, when in play are turned end for end so the business end is now the handle. There are the slightly longer lathe turned beautys made from exotic hardwood that have a slightly thicker knob on the business end akin to the ones that Tom Harris sells. There are some really short ones, that are easy to play with, at about a foot long and hefty diameter that I got from an Asian grocery. They are called a "Surikogi" and are used as a pestle for a mortar-like ceramic bowl with a textured interior called a "Suribachi" in Japanese cooking they are used for grinding and mixing Gomashio and other foods. The ones I have are cylindrical and are similar in shape to the "Bachi" used for Taiko drumming. Which is a little confusing when you consider a Suribachi is a mortar and a Bachi is a pestle-like Taiko drumming stick! There are some others in the stick bag that were originally intended to be tool handles. There are still others that I made from dowels and glued round balls on the end in various sizes, from a 3/4" ball with a 5/16" stick to a pair that have inch and a half sized balls with 3/4"sticks that are two feet or more long for playing to the center of a really large drum. In my opinion it is important to note that whatever stick is used the corner of the end that contacts the head needs to be at least rounded over so that it doesn't damage the head so much. On the other end I frequently wrap a handle onto the stick, using bicycle handle bar tape or tennis racket tape or, ahem, drumstick tape. What else we got in here? A pair of miniture baseball bats and a well padded tool for darning socks! In a side pouch on my stick bag there is also an assortment of bell strikers some of which range from wooden dowels & tree/bush branches with the bark removed and plastic straight or knobby ended mallets to screwdrivers and similar tools and bolts with plastic tubing for handles.
The mallets I have are the ones found in ordinary music stores for playing in marching band and timpani. You may check the following manufacturers for a representative sample.
Vic Firth
Discontinued Items (get 'em while you can)
Timpani and Concert Mallets
Corpsmaster
WorldMalletech Bass Drum Mallets
Vater Bass Drum Mallets
Regal Tip
Concert Mallets
Set MalletsPro-Mark
I hope this Helps!
Marching Mallets • Bass
Marching Mallets • Indoor/Outdoor Timpani
Performer Series • Bamboo Handle Timpani Mallets
Performer Series • Concert Bass Drum
School Mallets • Concert Bass Drum
Performer Series • Jonathan Haas Timpani
Performer Series • Tom FreerThanks for Everything!
One Love, RRelated: Sticky Wicket: Breaking Sticks
++++++
“The beating heart of the universe is holy joy.”
- Martin Buber, "Simplicity: The Art of Living" by Richard Rohr
++++++
Literary and Graphical Freeware: Not for Commercial Use.
Copyright (c) 1998-2011 R. Clark - clark@acceleration.net .
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this publication (www.acceleration.net/clark and all children) provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
