Metal (the material not the genre)

[benjamin]

Hello Some,

I'm a long-time lurker and was an occasional poster before the forum crashed a while back.

I'd like to start a thread organized around a discussion of sound generated by metals and solicit recommendations of recordings and artists who manipulate this material in a compelling manner.

As a non-adept percussionist, I've always been more obsessed with cymbals than drums, especially ones which are hand-hammered, the so-called "dark" and "complex" kind. If we can get past these terms as marketing names by cymbal companies, I think there's something very peculiar and fascinating about these instruments. After accidentally making contact between my cymbal and a headphone cord, I've been completely taken by the sound of cymbals during and particularly after the attack transient.

I recall reading an article on Spectralist approaches to sound and composition that mentioned metal as the most complicated and rich source of timbre. It mentioned how something like a cymbal effects so many kinds of frequencies that it is essentially without (or too much within) pitch. It would seem, then, that metal serves as a very dense and open source for sound.

At any rate, I'm sure others have a ton to say about this subject, and I would very much appreciate reading your responses and checking out your recommendations. Cymbals, of course, are merely one type of object made of metal that makes sound. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about other kinds.

I can start off with Michael Pisaro's "hearing metal 1," which is a lovely work on tam-tam. Thanks to Jon for that recommendation. I also really love the vibraphone in Malfatti's düsseldorf vielfaches. I'd be especially interested in directions towards recordings that use the vibraphone, an instrument that exploits metal's vast timbral spectrum, yet tries to limit it at the same time by tuning its bars to a fundamental and keeping overtones in check.

[sepulveda disaster]

Z'EV has always been for me the stop and start for metal percussion; he's been at it since the 70s and has trained with a lot of different percussion types. check for him on youtube to get a loose sense of where he's at.

as for his recordings, opus 3 ~may~ be his strongest, but there are a lot of close ones for that slot.

--sep/dis

(more to come, I'm administering a final exam in my lit. class)...

[some guy]

You know about the Baschet sound sculptures, don't you? That's some pretty gorgeous stuff, to look as well as to listen to.

Stockhausen's Mikrophonie I is quite nice. (Also for one tam tam.) I've seen it live, and live is definitely best.

I recently got Eddie Prevost's Entelechy, which so soon as I read about it, I had to get it. (Go read about it; you'll see. )

Even more recently, I got Andy Hosch's Alloy, which you can get directly from Andy. (I couldn't find any other way in a quick web search. http://www.timbuktunes.com/cd/cd-list.php?text=alloy This is a bunch of metal things recorded, modified, made into improvisations via keyboard, then made into several short pieces, which were "routed through a series of sound processors..., arranged sequentially and molded into the final composition.")

I feel the way you do about metal. I'll be following this thread with interest. (Plus, there's one thing I was going to mention and now I can't remember it. So I hope someone else just knows it and says what it is. I may have a terrible memory, but I'll recognize it when I see it!)

[mudd]

is it fair to mention nmperign, specifically their use of vibrating sheets of metal as sound sources and modes of modifying breath? might not be exactly what you have in mind.

and maybe harry bertoia?

m

edit: i could re-attach previous posts if you can figure out what your user number was on the previous account. or tell me the username and i'll have a look.

[faster]

Sean Meehan's dowel/cymbal/snare technique (now widely used by improvising percussion people) is really about vibrating metal. He's very, very good at it.

[yonhosago]

La Monte Young- Study for the bowed disc (or Studies in the bowed disc).

[faster]

Before he started doing Doravideo (his Max/MSP Jitter project), Ichiraku Yoshimitsu used to do a thing with a bowed crotale (I think? Maybe it was some odd splash cymbal?) and a looper (Line 6? The green one?) that was pretty great. Not sure there's a record, but he definitely does it on the I.S.O. records with Otomo & Sachiko M.

[free math]

I couldn't really see, but I think Burkhard Beins was bowing crotales when I saw him a year or two ago. Those things will ring forever if you get them going, right?

[anasara]

incidentally, the solo work of nate young (of wolf eyes) often uses metal sheets/metallic objects to generate sound sources, which are typically then manipulated through various delay/distortion pedals to varying effects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaNpY2-6hJs

you can see it pretty clearly at about 5:00.

[Yii]

Jeph Jerman - Metal Drift (Fissür, 2007)
http://www.discogs.com/Jeph-Jerman-Meta ... se/1166027

[fluxmonkey]

robert rutman's steel cello ensemble

[corey_larkin]

taku sugimoto :: music for cymbal

!!

[kp*]

Feldman's Bass Clarinet and Percussion, for bass clarinet, cymbals and gongs (1981)

Xenakis: Pleiades

-kp--


That guy from The Books has a whole piece based on a large piece of resonant metal. (sorry, cant recall his name at the moment).

[jkudler]

http://www.myspace.com/bowedmetalmusic

[faster]

Gamelan music can rule.

[J.F.]

I'm basically a rather traditional free jazz drummer, so mostly not particularly focussed on patiently working with single sounds and nuances. But I worked out a lot of playing techniques on my few cymbals, since I have a small set, and work a lot with sound manipulations, rather than dozens of instruments, to create variety in nuance/texture.

I have one large ride cymbal which I hand-hammered myself a bit. It now has a few not so neat bumps, but sounds darker and more complex (it was more of a "plingy" rock cymbal in the first place). And playing that thing alone really is such a complex and varied field... with the countless ways to activate the thing into vibrating, dampening it in a way so only certain parts of the cymbal vibrate, not to mention small preparations... or giving it an altered resonance by putting it onto various drums/surfaces (which works better for smaller cymbals though)... that technical stuff certainly is no news to IHM-people... but I just totally get the fascination about this topic.

In university I once had to prepare a little lecture about the characteristics of bells. As I understand, they have a quite unique vibrating-behaviour & overtone-mixture, and so I began to try out various techniques to damp the edge of the bell. Depending on the instrument, it's possible that way to clearly get various pitches (overtones) out of one bell (when hit, not even bowed).

I occasionally have a mild obsession for trying out various combinations of cymbals put on top of each other. That takes away many possibilities to manipulate the sound nuances, but opens up new ways to make a lot of aggressive noise (something I'm quite interested in).

Another thing I'm thinking about, but never really tried is to manipulate/change the given surface. Well, I occasionally put colophony on my ride cymbal, to have a more active response when scratching it with something.
Sometimes I put structured surfaces on my drums, like ribbed gaffa-tape (again, to scratch it with various things). Never tried that our with cymbals... might bring out some nice pitched overtones, depending on how fast you scratch it (I have a "naturally" concentrically ribbed hihat cymbal... love that for this particular playing-option).

Great topic.

[Miguel Prado]

in another way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fer-KmCtdgQ

[box229]

Interesting topic!

Except for traditional gamelan - a great introduction is still "Bali: Gamelan Music from Sebatu" with the orchestra Gong Kebyar (it was originally on the German Archiv Produktion but I think it is re-released on CD) - I would highly recommend the British Bow Gamelan Ensemble (Paul Burwell, Anne Bean) and their only album "Great Noises that Fill the Air" from 1988. There are a lot of fire crackers and bike horns, but essentially this is metal works.

Another great album is also Frank Perry's "Deep Peace" from 1981, released on David Toops' Quartz Publications. If you throw away the new age book attached to it, you have a real masterpiece in bowls, gongs and overtones. Absolutely beautiful. Eric Carlsson's "Let's Fall in Love", released last year on Bomxa Bombax, is also an interesting contribution I think.

//JR

[patois]

I can second the above recommendation for Sean Meehan, his sustained tones are pretty much perfect to my ears.

Duct tape on cymbals is something I explored for a couple years straight in early 2000's - I loved the dry, clipped sound at the time that allowed lots of tiny strikes to be articulated without washing out. Usually coated varying areas of the underside leaving the tops free, but really, anything goes. If you don't leave the tape too long in one place and carefully and often reuse the same pieces you won't mar the metal with glue-residue.

This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rQqJZylqhY is one of many great Chaladni Plate demonstrations - often bowed in physics labs, the more contemporary technique is to get it resonating with a tone generator. Musical? Maybe, but certainly visually poetic.

Another percussionist I like that spends a good chunk of time bowing is Tatsuya Nakatani, who also makes quite striking and beautiful hand-crafted bows for the purpose it looks like now. I've not been so fortunate to witness him live, but I understand he has some rather massive-diameter cymbals he is working most recently.

But anyways - agreed that metal is music in itself, archetypal... will read with interest and jump in if I think of anything else to contribute...

[Matt Wuethrich]

Eli Keszler also utilizes crotales extensively (sometimes nothing but). He gets them to sound pretty alien and electronic at times. My dog hates it when I put his stuff on.

http://www.relrecords.com

Interesting topic. Should there be threads for all materials (wood, glass, water, fire) or are any of these as diverse as metal as a sound-making source?