Talking Drums

Talking Drums

Before setting up an “orchestra” consisting of several different instruments, I wanted to explore some possibilities one instrument at a time. This series of improvised studies explore the sounds produced by mounting exciter speakers onto drums and cymbals, playing back synthesized sounds derived from real time analyses of speech recordings.

I especially like the contrast between the almost legible speech sounds played through cymbals or drums, to that of the very abstract synthesized clicks and pops, all coming from the same source.
I also wanted to try recreating the sounds of drums as they normally played with sticks, at the same time smoothing out a bit the tempo changes so characteristic of speech to get a more drum-like expression, but this is perhaps what works least.