I’m a new owner of a BeatBuddy. But drums are not that much what I’m looking for most. I prefer percussion or cajon sounds.
And I am very much looking for a Dixie “drum” set - not a washboard sound alone:
Does anyone know Tuba Skinny - a Dixie band from New Orleans, I think, with a little fan club on Youtube. Their percussion consists of a big drum played by the female singer (2-handed) and a washboard player who has a can and a little crash cymbal mounted on his washboard. I like that sound a lot.
Would the beatbuddy team be interested in putting something like that together or does someone on the forum see a way to get those 5 or 6 sounds into a set? I’m even not sure which different sounds would be mandatory. Could be interesting, I think! Even if it’s very old school.
You might have a look here: "Oh Red" - Tuba Skinny - YouTube (+ washboard solo at 3:20 - but it’s the background sounds I would want to have).
There isn’t already a BB Dixie drum or beat set, right?
Thanks! I’ll have a look into this. The label ‘STAX’ already got my attention here in the forum. Never heard it before - I’m not that familiar with the surrounding history of the music I like (poppy jazz). I found out it was a lable for Memphis based soul music. Sounds interesting.
I didn’t grow up with that sort of music.
It was actually a play on words. I started doing 4 parts kits, where I had bass, drums, a keyboard, and, at first, horns. It reminded me of STAX sound, but it was also 4 sounds stacked together in the 128 note midi space. So, thereafter, I called all of my 4 part kits STAX kits.
washboard ‘rubbing’ (slow, rather soft, maybe back and forth)
washboard tip (soft + strong)
washboard wooden frame/space
small splash cymbal (for accents)
tin can (soft + strong)
bass drum with mallet (direct + sloped punch)
I don’t know if it’d sound good together with a piano or a guitar, as it ‘classically’ would be meant to accompany clarinet, trumpet and trombone along with a banjo.
I found sampled files on the net, but they are for sale - for about 5 $ for each sample. That’ more than I would want to pay (~ 20 $ for the full set).
But of course, for the moment I’m fine with the cajons.
The issue with samples on this type of instrument is that they will be at a preset tempo. Since washboard is a percussion instrument, you really want to be able to vary the tempo per song. If you got a good set of samples, I suppose you could use Ableton’s Warp feature to get them at a correct tempo and then export the resulting file at your desired tempo, bu that will be a song by song process. Of course, single hits will work fine. It’s more the scrubbing/rubbing sounds that would need to be customized to sound accurate.
This one is interesting. Click on the Washboard video about halfway through the page. It’s a two minute demo of their Misfit Washboard Kontakt instrument. If those are the sounds you’re looking for, I might pick this up and try to build up some kind of kit. I thought about getting a washboard to make samples a couple months ago. But, this seems to go quite a bit deeper than what I had in mind. I had only ever seen the washboard played with the thimbles in Cajon bands. But, I can see were the spoons and bells add an interesting dimension to it.
Thanks for yet another link. It’s nice to have you got interested! The sound in the video is not exactly what I was looking for, but it’s quite funny - for sure! Nice thing. With quite a number of more sounds I wasn’t thinking of (mini bells, mini cowbells, spoons)!
Maybe it would be enough to get a LoFi filter over it - to get what I was after.
Apart from the example I was giving in my first post, I found this what is close to what I wanted to achieve: Washboard Loops by Phil Evans .
I’ll have a deeper look into this - maybe after Christmas, though.
Try this one… a very simple washboard kit, with a can and a bicycle bell…
(simple works for me all the time at a gig)
I’ve made a simple rhythm with 2 breaks, and 1 transition
The kick is an old cardboard box and the accent is a small splash Washboard_Kit.drm (969.7 KB) Washboard.pbf (109.9 KB)