Re: Doumbeks

[Corun MacAnndra <corun@access.digex.net>]

Poster: Corun MacAnndra <corun@access.digex.net>

Falcone wrote:
>
>
> outside of egypt until after period.  Frame drums were mostly used in
> Western Europe.  I used to have a source to site for that...alas.

If you can find that source I'd be interested in seeing it. Sounds cool.

> His Excellency is most correct about the fish-skin heads.  They sound
> real nice, but I would postulate they were used mainly because they made
> a different sound than goat, calf, horse, etc. as they all did.  The
> goat skin heads are the best, I think, because we wear them out with SCA
> use(humidity, heat, newbies, etc.) and a new one runs about thirteen
> bucks and an hour of time attaching.

Caveat on the goat skin heads. Yes, it's the most readily available natural
head you can get, but be sure you get one with very few if any tick bites.
You can tell these because they have scarred the skin and it weakens it at
this point. You risk having the head tear if you play the drum a lot or you
tighten it too much when attaching it. You can tell the tick bites by the
little black dots on the skin. Sometimes these are large (about a sixteenth
of an inch).

Also, natural skin heads (don't know if this is true with fish or not, but
I suspect so) will take on moisture and get very loose and unplayable. One
usually holds the head near a fire to heat it and thereby re-tighten the
head (I know Caitlin knows this, but many others out there may not and my
have found this discussion interesting). This is just the opposite of what
one does with the head of a bodhran, where it is better for it to be loose
rather than tight as a tight bodhran head rings entirely too much. I've
played in many a seisun and every bodhran player I know has two uses for
Guinness, drinking and pouring on the bodhran head to 'mellow' it. This is
probably why bodhran players are twice as mellow as other Irish musicians.

> The head stays on the ceramic ones with regular water soluble Elmer's
> Glue. Really.  The head and the drum go through some stress, though.  I
> attach natural heads to ceramic doumbeks(I did one on Monday for my drum
> class, but it fubarred and that happens now and again) but I don't
> gaurantee the drum case will survive.  If it is cracked at all, it can
> break on the stretching jigs I build.  I am working on getting better at
> lacing heads, the most period of the practices.  Although skin-glues
> will work as well as Elmer's, I haven't found docs for adhesives in this
> application.  Sir Daveed can lace heads, but he generally does it on
> bigger drums and uses a thick goat skin.

I'd love to see any documentation on using glues to attach heads to drums
(hmmmm, gluing heads to drums, now there's an evil thought, reminds me of
the time Lord Aelfgar glued his hand to the table.....but I digress).

Falcone, one of these days I'll have to show you the ceramic drum a friend
brought me from Israel. Bought it in the Bedouin market if I'm not mistaken.
I don't take it out much because it's a very porous and therefore delicate
ceramic.

In service,
Corun

=======================================================================
List Archives, FAQ, FTP:  http://sca.wayfarer.org/merryrose/
            Submissions:  atlantia@atlantia.sca.org
        Admin. requests:  majordomo@atlantia.sca.org