contact mics and springs

[Matthew Helt]

This is all a little OT, but i cant think of a better place to get
advice... In one of Neubauten's later albums, I think it's Tabula Rosa,
there are various pictures of e.n.'s various noise making stuff,
including rocks mic'd with piezo struck by hammers, pieces of metal play
with bass drum pedals... etc. 

I was in a noise band called Methanol that used large suspended coils
that had contact mics connected at the base. These were played with drum
stick and whoever played them would have a reverb, distortion and delay
stomp boxes to change the sounds... After deal with this i started
playing with the alltime favorite, the slinky... quite possibly the
coolest noise instrument around. Makes great spring reverbs and weird
oscilating noises.

This has all led up to my next project, which I'll need a little help
with. I've got a huge pile of metal pipe, about an inch in diameter. I
need a formula to figure out the length that i'll need to cut these
pipes to. Does anyone have a formula for this?

I would like to have between six and ten pipes, each a half step higher
then the previous. I've designed a frame to suspend these horizontally
above the bass drum in my kit... They'll be miced two unidirectional
mics and a piezo attached to the base of each one. I was considering
building a ring modulator to combine these audio sources. 

My main problem is a control/preamp circuit for this beast. It'll have
to amplify the signal to line level, which is really easy. I'd like to
be able to control attack and sustain if possible. I figure a simple
envelope generator chip will work, but I dont know where to start... any
suggestions?

I also am working with the idea of cutting the pipes all to the same
length, then imersing them in a tub of water to different depths to
produce different tones... (got the idea from watching stomp) it wouldnt
be hard to build a pulley rigging system so i could move the pipes with
pedals at the bottom... and different fluids might produce different
tones, so theres a lot to work with... 

 -matt helt


Max Lord and The Reprobates wrote:
> 
> Springs good!
> 
> I would site Einsturzende Neubauten as an example of the
> extraordinary results that can be achieved by thwacking
> extremely large springs. You can hear it on almost any one
> of their records.
> 
> They use a very heavy spring that's about three feet long
> and played with metal mallets.
> I assume it is contact mic'd in the fashion described here.
> They also tend to process the sound extensively
> and gate it. It makes a sort of a gut-turning  bassy crunch .
> Very nice sound.
> 
> I did some experiments at home with a garage door spring
> that was wired up into an MS-20. The spring was amazing when
> modulating the oscillators and processed through the filters.
> A great sound that was simutaneously very electronic and
> also very acoustic.
> 
> Incorporating feedback is also an exciting technique. You can
> do this electronically with a large spring, or acoustically with a
> small reverb spring. The quality of the feedback inside the spring
> is wonderful.
> 
> MAX
> 
> At 9:47 PM -0500 9/8/1999, harry bissell wrote:
> >Yes... airrifle pellet... very light (as pellets go) and has a flat nose so it
> >is easy to glue reliably...
> >
> >The piezo as a driver will probably not have enough "balls" to drive a spring,
> >esp at low frequencies... I'd use a iron spring (or iron rod... pipe etc)
> >ir for
> >a small spring, a ferrite bead... and drive with an electromagnet driven
> >from a
> >stereo amp... Get enough turns so you don't fry it...
> >
> >Slinkies make good springs... if you put a magnetic pickup on a few stretched
> >slinkies, and then KICK it it makes a wonderful explosion...  "Yes" (the band)
> >shared that idea during a soundcheck during the "Relayer" tour... used in "The
> >Gates of Delirium"... Its like kicking a spring reverb but much BIGGER !!!
> >

-- 
Matthew Helt (mhelt at truelink.com)
Development
http://www.truelink.com