A Percussionist's Notebook

 There are some issues I've always wanted to address when I played a certain accessory. Of course it happens when I'm playing and usually forgotten when the rehearsal is over. The mount for the ratchet was the longest running issue that I ever had. It was probably when I was a junior in high school that I first thought about it. That was about 1964 and I made the adapter in 2019. That was either the ultimate in procrastination or the lack of memory. And it was only after watching one of the percussionists in Canyon Winds struggling to switch from xylophone to ratchet during a quarter note rest that I decided to do something about it. The tambourine foot rest is a relatively new issue, it started when I was in college (1966). To play fast and articulate passages on a tambourine the player inverts the instrument resting on a knee and uses either both hands or alternating between one hand and the knee to play the passage. The problem arises when looking for something to rest the f...

A broken tambourine shell usually means that a new tambourine purchase is necessary. This can be exciting: I like getting new instruments, or sad: Any instrument that is damaged is a terrible thing. All tambourine shells can break, from my famous $14 variety to top of the line brands like Grover and Black Swamp. It's easy to replace a tambourine head but broken shells/missing pins and jingles usually means an early grave for the instrument. My early attempts at these repairs were stopgap measures until a new one was found. Wood or 'super' glue used on the shell turned out to be poor choices. It wasn't until last year that I really focused on shell repair. It happened during a Canyon Winds rehearsal when one of our tambourines exploded, pins and jingles were flying everywhere. Yep, it was the Resident Gorilla playing it. The shell had cracked between three sets of jingles near the head of the tambourine. We eventually replaced this with a Black Swamp tambourine but I s...

I have kept an old $14 tambourine around so that my students can see and hear the difference between this and a quality Grover or Black Swamp brand. Last month the head split which gave me the opportunity to experiment with some ideas that I've had for sometime. Modify the tambourine to install 'captive' jingle pins. Install a used head. When installing a replacement head you use a skin that is at least 2" larger than the diameter of the shell (12" skin for a 10" tambourine). Since I had an 11 1/8" skin that was removed from another 10" tambourine this gave me the chance to experiment. I removed the pins and stamped steel jingles. inverted the tambourine in a warm water bath to loosen the old glue and removed the split head. I then removed all of the residual glue from the shell with a stiff nylon brush and began soaking the replacement head.  Since the top of the shell was now softened from the soaking, it was an easy job of drilling ...

Mad Wax I've tried many ways to help with tambourine thumb/finger rolls.  Different brands of tambourine wax, waxes for different applications, sandpaper, etc. I've also ruined a number of tambourines with these experiments including one particular messy incident using cross country ski wax. By far the best commercial wax that I've found is made by Black Swamp. It doesn't build up in layers, doesn't produce globs, and is effective on both skin and synthetic heads. The only problem with this wax as with all waxes is they tend to get lost.  At nearly $10 a pop this drained my YS budget along with wing nuts, wing bolts, cymbal stand felts/sleeves, etc. I thought that if I could develop a recipe for my own wax and make it in bulk it would be less expensive. I chose to use bees wax as the basic ingredient. Then added glycerin, lanolin, white paper glue, lip balms, and fingertip moistener individually and in different combinations. All of these had drawbacks that ca...

This is a project that very few may find interesting. It's time intensive with a long learning curve, but it's fascinating how much I learned about jingles. When I started coaching for the Colorado Springs Youth Symphony there was only one tambourine. It was the $15 step up from a toy variety-a loose skin head with the tone quality of cardboard, thin stamped steel jingles that you could almost see through and had a sound like someone running with a pocket full of loose change. One of my first purchases was a Black Swamp and later a Grover was given to us by a generous donor. I kept the old tambourine in the inventory and eventually it received some of my first jingles. Materials: 1 5/8" or 1 3/4" discs (copper, brass, bronze, or German silver) 22 or 24ga. I drilled holes in the center of the discs. Using various sockets and a bench vise I  pressed the center raised portion. A second pressing using different sized sockets created the upward flange. Using a dri...