Decided it would be fun for my upcoming sets to add a little percussion into the mix at points where I’m not playing synths.
So, I brought in a few toys from home, including a vibraslap, my old tambourine, some shakers and other things. Forgot to bring in my cabasa but I’ll bring it tomorrow to see if it’ll work anywhere.
I was finding my old tambourine was too bright sounding for pretty much any Maqlu song, and particularly too bright for the ones I wanted to use it on live, so off I went to Long & McQuade to have a look for something a little darker, trashier, and less-tambourine-like. Which is kind of an oxymoron, but the sound I had in my head was a little bit like dark zills [but not nearly as loud as those can be] or like a China crash cymbal without requiring me to lug a cymbal stand and cymbals, plus a China crash is super-loud and would be basically unuseable in a solo set. Kinda like if you made a tambourine with random scraps of rusty metal.
Luckily I found this:
It may not be made from actual scrap metal but it has the dark dry sound I had in my head.
And hey, being black with shiny steel, it even kinda looks the part for a tambourine in an industrial act.
It’ll make its debut Thursday night during my live set on CiTR Radio’s Live From Thunderbird Radio Hell [10pm Pacific, 101.9FM in Vancouver or citr.ca to listen live, I’ll have podcast links after the show as well.]
