Junkyard Drum Guerilla Options

R

raab

New member
Anybody been able to experiment with household items and microphones to get cool drum sounds, i.e. recording drums without a drumset and just a bunch of stuff from the garage and kitchen?

I don't have a drumset or drum machine and watching Fat Albert's band has encouraged me to give this a try...
 
Yeh, I once recorded doors slamming and used drumagog to make this the kick drum sound.

Then i had fingers clicking as the snare. It was great fun.....i get bored very easily :(
 
I sub (on drums) with with a "cajun" group that uses washboards, washtub bass, etc.

The drumset is completely made of house hold items such as:

Bass drum - Plastic waste basket (Rubbermade brand)
Snare drum - Two metal drink serving trays (I believe vintage Pabst Blus Ribbon) connected open end to open end (with bolts and wing nuts) with BBs inside - played with brushes.
Floor Tom - Plastic milk crate (the orange things with the open "grids") with a ton of duck tape on the one side as the "batter head".
Cymbals - Hub caps

With the exception of the "cymbals" this kit mics up well and has a surprisingly good recorded tone (the band has to CD's it sells at shows - using this kit in the studio).
 
Any ideas on a high hat sound or contraption?

On that tub kick drum are you literally kicking it or do you have a kick pedal on it???
 
raab,

The waste basket is actually played with a kick drum pedal. The pedal and the wastebasket are both bolted to a sheet of plywood (there is no practical way to clamp the pedal onto the wastebasket).
 
hihat

For HiHats try a couple pieces of silveware - or put a bunch of change or even keys in your pocket and tap away.

A large cardboard box makes a great bass drum sample. What else you looking for?
 
I remember seeing Manhattan Transfer perform back in the mid 80's (when electronic drums were becoming the "next best thing").

During one part of the show the drummer brought out a "high tech drum module" it had big bold letters = BX1.

It was a cardboard box (BX1). They slapped a mic on it and he played brushes - absolutely kicked ass!
 
My band once was recording in my house over a weekend, and we found ourselves without drums or any percussion. Our drummer used a half-full can on Morton's Salt as a shaker, and we buried a mic inside a deep Tupperware container and turned the gain almost all the way down. For bass, he just stomped on the hard wood floor.

Wasn't great, but it was quite quirky for the time.
 
Cans

Toms: Paint Cans
Bass Drum & Snare Drum: Solid Plastic Laundry Baskets, Garbage Cans, Waste Baskets
Hats: Any metal... A square heater vent pipe about 8 feet long for example. Perhaps a pipe or a tin or something.

Goooood sounds....
 
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