I get lots of emails asking for information about junk percussion; how to make instruments on a budget, how to make them sound good, and how to use them in a practical setting that’s different and exciting. Often it’s difficult to find pieces of percussion music written for junk percussion, so my solution is to make your own instruments, and use junk instruments in conventional percussion ensemble tunes!

I like to divide untuned percussion music into 5 elements: the low, bassy tom tom or timpani sound; the back beat or cutting snare drum sound; shakers and hi hat sounds filling in the gaps; crash and bell sounds, like cymbals and cowbells; and finally woody and scrapy sounds, like clave and guiros. With this basic understanding, we can go about making our own instruments.

Element 1: The low tom tom or bass drum sound
Every single tune that I have written to date contains this sound. It is drives the band from the bottom, and can be very intense. Plastic or metal trash cans make for fantastic tom-tom substitutes; just turn them upside down and you’re ready to go. Oh, and if the metal trash cans are too tinny sounding for your liking, cover the top with a sheet or something similar to make it more ‘thuddy’. I recommend finding some of the fattest drum sticks you can track down, and hold them backwards so that the drum is being hit with the thick end of the stick. Also, I’m a big fan of the 19 litre (approx) blue spring water containers that go upside down in dispensers. You can play these with sticks, but also sound great when played with hands. See how many sounds you can get out of them!

Element 2: The cracking snare drum sound
Snares play a very important role in all types of western music, from marches, to pop music, to jazz, and latin. When trying to find junk to replace a snare, you just need to find something that ‘cuts through’, so that even when lots of people are beating out on their plastic containers, you can still hear it riding over the top. My vote: place a metal oven tray on a table. Depending which way up it goes, and what surface it’s sitting on, the oven tray can have lots of different sounds, all of which are crisp and easy to control.

Element 3: The shaker
The shaker fills in all the spaces between the first 2 elements, and is fundamental to the groove. Making shakers are easy, you can put nuts and bolts in a Tupperware container, or sand in a glass bottle, or small metal washers in a margarine box. Choose your materials according to how loud you require your shaker to be, and what blends best with the other instruments you have made.

Element 4: Bells and crashes
There are 2 types of bells and crashes; the ones that are really loud and have lots of wash (like a cymbal), and the smaller instruments that have a short, coarse sound (like a cowbell). The possibilities for scrap metal are endless! For your cymbal replacement, the most important thing is that it can resonate, so take a sheet of metal, drill some holes in it, loop some string or wire through, and let it hang from a stand (or just hold the string yourself). As for the shorter sound bell, metal trash can lids make great sounds! As do hitting old scrap appliances, such as microwaves. I’ve even tried using uprooted fence posts. Experiment!

Element 5: Scrapy and woody sounds
These are the quieter instruments that make the overall sound complete. Try scraping a stick along a piece of corrugated iron for scraper, or beating an old school desk instead of a wood block. The world of junk is at your fingertips!

Adaptation:
Of course, these are just ideas, and are useless on their own without some music to play. So, let’s make this practical. My piece Conga and a Samba is written for agogos, cowbell, maracas, congas, 2 snares, 3 toms, a triangle and a woodblock.

But using my junk percussion tips, this piece could just as easily work for:

2 metal trash can lids of different sizes (agogos)
Old beaten up microwave (cowbell)
Tupperware container full of nuts and bolts (maracas)
A spring water container, played with the hand (congas)
An upside down oven tray (snare 1)
An oven tray, right way up (snare 2)
3 large solid trash cans (tom toms 1, 2 and 3)
1 old metal fence post (triangle)
Old school desk (woodblock)

But this is just my idea. You can use ANYTHING! Anything at all! You are only limited by your imagination. Have fun, and all the best.

Zac Courtney

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 9:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.