Slit Drums in Film Music
Renowned studio percussionist Emil Richards used his chromatically tuned slit drums in numerous soundtracks and other recordings. His tuned slit drums spanned one octave, from C3-C4 (middle C). Richards'slit drums consist of a wooden soundboard placed onto a resonator box the length of which corresponds to the desired pitch. The soundboard is one piece, from which a bar is cut to a particular length, also corresponding to the chosen pitch. Emil got this set in the late 1970s from a craftsman in New York who brought them to show off at the Percussive Arts Society's International Convention, and added them to his giant instrument collection, the Emil Richards Collection. The fact that they were chromatic enabled melodies to be played on the set of slit drums, and the arrangement of them like a keyboard allowed immediate fluency of performance. During recording sessions, some composers would give Emil the license to add it to the music if he heard a good place for it. In general, composers such as Lalo Schifrin, James Horner, and James Newton Howard were interested and active in “marrying” instruments together to create new textures; slit drums were an interesting color available on the palette. Having a set available that was chromatic and in western tuning allowed them to be scored with other orchestral instruments.
Read more about this topic: Slit Drum
Famous quotes containing the words slit, drums, film and/or music:
“Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,—these eat up the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It was soldiers went marching over the rocks
And still the birds came, came in watery flocks,
Because it was spring and the birds had to come.
No doubt that soldiers had to be marching
And that drums had to be rolling, rolling, rolling.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Is America a land of God where saints abide for ever? Where golden fields spread fair and broad, where flows the crystal river? Certainly not flush with saints, and a good thing, too, for the saints sent buzzing into man’s ken now are but poor- mouthed ecclesiastical film stars and cliché-shouting publicity agents.
Their little knowledge bringing them nearer to their ignorance,
Ignorance bringing them nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“The harp that once through Tara’s halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls As if that soul were fled.”
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)