Skip to main content

Castanets

In 2012 the YS programed Carmina Burana for their final concert. The one instrument the section needed was a professional pair of castanets. Until then the only thing we had was a castanet machine that I made in the 70's that worked OK if the sound was covered up by the rest of the orchestra. However, this was a solo part and should be played with a pair of hand mounted castanets. Because time and money was short I had the percussionist use my Epstein's for the rehearsals and concerts.

My embarrassing machine castanets
After the concert I had time to think about making a set. I found a pair of 2 5/8" ebony (they were not ebony) online, using my Epstein's as a reference, I made handles and mounted them.

I then started on a design to play them as a castanet machine.  The picture below is the set of castanets and machine that I made for the Canyon Winds Band last year.


The sound of these castanets are NOT the quality of the professional level brands. They do however, produce an outstanding sound with the flexibility to be played by hand or mounted. The total cost was $75 parts and time spent.





































Labels:

Comments

  1. Far Side of FiftyOctober 22, 2019 at 7:16 PM

    You are a genius!

    ReplyDelete
  2. RonaldOctober 23, 2019 at 9:51 AM

    Jerry, I see your "mallet flower garden" in the first picture. I's something you might consider as a backgroound in the future. When you were first discussing them with me, I don't remember the block looking like that - kind of rustic? Did I miss something. On another note, I may be finally getting off my writer's blog block. Hopefully, in a day or two.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Amadinda

  The Amadinda is an African xylophone originally made from slabs of wood or even large sticks, with or without gourds for resonators. There was no reason for this project other than to see if I could make a simple mallet instrument. The box was made from plywood (which also acted as the resonators) and the bars were made from maple.  Since this was to be a true xylophone, the bars were all of equal width. Tuning was done by cutting the bars to different lengths and removing material from the bottom. Using a router I created a sort of 'stepped pyramid' instead of the traditional arc cut found on marimba or xylophone bars.  Cutting the underside is not only for tuning but it focuses the pitch and creates the characteristic overtones of the instrument. Since I wanted to play this with other 'Western' instruments, I chose to use a pentatonic scale of 2 2/5 octaves (C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#,F#,G#,A#,C#,D#). Two people sit on either side of the instrument and strike the ends of ...
3 comments
Read more

La Caverna del oro

 One of our first backpacking trips in Colorado was in the Sangre de Christo Mountains. One mountain in particular drew our attention. Marble Mountain was the location of a famous story of a Spanish cave of gold. There are many places on the web that tell this story better than I could, suffice it to say that we wanted to locate it and see the iconic 'Maltese Cross' located at it's entrance.  In 1974 after I got out of the Army we invited some friends to join us on this trip. We parked our car at the trailhead in the Wet Mountain Valley and backpacked up Marble Mountain to 12,000 feet. In one of the culverts we found the entrance to the cave. Maltese Cross at the Caverna del oro It turned out to be a real thing. The large red cross was still visible after 400 yrs. According to legend the Spanish put it there in the 1600's. I did have the courage to crawl into it but only a few feet. After about 10 feet there is a vertical shaft that drops about 750 feet!  The Cross is v...
3 comments
Read more

Matte Black

 I just realized that this sounds like a 'James Bond' type spy thriller. Actually it involves my attempts to produce a non-reflective finish for so many of my aluminum projects. Powder coating and anodizing are the typical processes to produce this finish but they are expensive or require car battery chargers and caustic chemicals for the DIYers.  I've tried a flat black paint using etching preps etc. but they all resulted in the paint chipping off quickly when tossed around and hitting other things in an accessory case. Since I use a 2 part epoxy to connect the parts of the Nickster together with perfect results, I thought about using this as a bass coat for the paint (see my Nickster Commemorative post). This result had promise but the finish became glossy even though I used the matte black paint in the mixture.  I came up with this idea from an accident. After the epoxy/paint mixture experiment I left some of the mixture out and some of the paint had dripped on the mix...
2 comments
Read more