Wood Blocks in Commercial Music
Studio percussionist Emil Richards had a set of piccolo woodblocks in his instrument collection, which were chromatically tuned in two octaves, from C6-C8. He bought them from Professional Drum Shop in the 1970s, as the uniqueness of the instrument combined with the keyboard layout was appealing. This shared western tuning system enabled him to play the instrument along with other orchestral instruments. In the studio he often performed piccolo woodblocks on cartoon soundtracks such as Looney Tunes; composer Stephen James Taylor used the piccolo woodblocks a number of times in his Disney projects such as in the Timon & Pumbaa TV series. Due to the diminutive size of these woodblocks, Emil often used small, hard xylophone or glockenspiel mallets or even triangle beaters when playing them.
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Famous quotes containing the words wood, blocks, commercial and/or music:
“And they be these: the wood, the weed, the wag.
The wood is that which makes the gallow tree;
The weed is that which strings the hangmans bag;”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?1618)
“Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?”
—J. Ellen Foster (18401910)
“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)