Rattlebrained

When folks move they often pile their old furniture and junk on the sidewalk out front. Here in Switzerland if you warn the city’s trash department they give you authorization for a certain date and come and pick it up, but from the looks of it many just pile it all out and leave. In any case as everyone knows, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure and although I do not fill my attic with junk that may be useful one day, I often do take a quick look.

Also Bill is always looking for certain items to make musical instruments with for La Sonorie and bed sprung slats are one of them. They can make great xylophones!

The last time I pick up a bunch I put one aside thinking that since they have a slight curve to them perhaps they would make nice rhythm bones and last Tuesday I gave it a try…

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A couple of weeks ago I decided to thin down the Ox Rib Bones I had made earlier this year. Not a hard thing to do but a difficult decision to make since there’s no going back. Needless to say I started with one pair and used them a few days before doing the others.

I took an 8th of an inch of of them so they are now 1 and 1/4 inches (3.3cm) wide which is a lot more comfortable for my hands and easier to control.

I’m really enjoying them now although, unfortunately…

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There I am trying to find information on the web for Washboard Doc, see my Doc, Flash, Lucky & Red – Pretty Woman post, and re-reading the Early Morning Blues record credits the following stands out: “His first recording was with bluesman Ralph Willis about 1950. About two years later he cut with Sonny Terry for a Folkways LP, playing washboards and spoons”. So I whip out my Sonny Terry’s Washboard Band CD== and once again go through the pdf file wondering if I missed anything…

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When Bone Dry Music received a whole new batch of whole sun-bleached ox rib bones== a couple of weeks ago I decided to completely ignored the fact that monetary resources are low and order a few, after all a choice of good rhythm bones will get you through hard times a lot better than uh, well, many other things I’m sure…

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I was trying to make sense of the Wood Rhythm Bones Home Made page, have somewhat edited it as well as finally figured out how to allow comments there too.

Then to make this post a bit more entertaining I checked to see if any new Rhythm Bone videos had been added over at YouTube and sure enough, along with some new videos presenting rhythm bones made with different materials and how they sound by “bonedrymusic” (check these out if you haven’t yet, and even so: it’s a growing collection), was this excerpt from a Bones Instructional Video by “bonesmanplunkett” which I’m happy to have bought last fall and recommend wholeheartedly.

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One of the main problems with blogging is that when you have lots of stuff to blog about it often means that you have a lot to do which means you don’t have much time to blog… And so it has been the last few days, so hopefully (do I really want that?) life will calm down enough to catch up (no).

A few weeks ago I finally joined the Rhythm Bones Society, something I had been wanting to do for a while, and with their greetings I received one of their newsletters of a few years back in which there was an article about Klepperle / Chefele “rhythm bones” from south eastern Germany and north eastern Switzerland. I found that kind of funny, all the more since I had never heard of them nor had anyone who saw me play around here said: hey, that’s like an instrument they play in certain parts of German speaking Switzerland”… OK, so it’s a fact that the linguistic parts of Switzerland are culturally further apart than mere distance measured, but still…

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Sooo…

It seemed after yesterday post that the only way to describe the sounds rhythm bone made of different materials made was to record them. Having decided to give it a go this morning I stuck myself in front of the webcam and gave it a try. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that well, mainly because the sound sounded like it was going through some sort of long hose. I then wanted to connect a better microphone to the computer only to find that I couldn’t find a wire I’m sure I have, it’s around here somewhere, that plugs a mic into a jack input….

Two hours later I ended up setting up an old digital 8 camcorder which doesn’t have the best mic either but. At least that way I had warmed up enough to dare post it: my first rhythm bone youtube video!

It seems to have gotten a bit distorted, probably when I converted it for the web, but the sound’s not too bad, I think the differences can be heard. Yes, No?