Crafting with waste: making an instrument.
This is an enjoyable project. The idea is to craft a musical instrument using waste materials.
The first thought that came to me after glancing at the project was to find and duplicate an existing musical instrument. After some recall of childhood and school music class, the instrument that comes to mind is a rattle drum. Basically, how it works is a small round drum that is hand size or just a little bigger and has a handle on the curve side, there are also two strings, one side connecting the drum, and the other side is a solid ball, so once the musician spins it, the solid ball should hit the drumhead and make the sound. Here is a picture of it.
The first prototype is made with a plastic skewer as the handle and goes through a Coke can-made drum, and shoe laces count as the strings. The problem is that the skewer did not stick with the can and spins independently. The Coke can drum did not make a good sound because it did not have many places inside to create an echo, and the drumhead for the prototype is made of the bottom of a Coke can, is too solid to make a clear sound, the shoe laces are too rigid to bend enough to hit the drumhead.
It is easy to make the decision to give up the prototype. After rethinking, I restarted and used cardboard to make the drum and the handle. One of the decisions I made in the process was to give up the thought of making sound on the outside and turns to make sound inside, so I could have the sound of multiple components collide with each other, so this is what it looks like on the outside. Another one is to cover the drum with white paper so I can decorate it at the final stage of the project.
After a few hours of crafting, there are two functions that it is clever to do. One is the ribbon at the bottom of the rattle drum, allowing users to put it on a wall. Another function is an open lid for a user to change the materials that he or she wants to make sounds with. So it looks like this.
I put two nut shells into the drum, a metal bottle cap, and a plastic bottle cap to make a high and solid pitch.
this is only nut shell sound, you can hear it is deeper than other sounds
this is only metal bottle cap sound, you can hear a little metal sound but very similar to bottle cap sound
this is only plastic bottle cap sound
nutshell with metal bottle cap. you can hear the metal sound much clearly.
Here is a music score. I used different colors of markers to show the other materials in the drum. To explain more, two layers draw horizontally because they represent the metal and plastic bottle caps as they make a higher pitch sound, and the layer that goes outside of every other line represents a nutshell as it makes the unique sound. And the last is the middle orange part, which means the handle because a part of the handle is exposed in the drum. So, it should be the collision sound of cardboard, metal, and plastic bottle cap and nutshell.
Here is an introduction video. You can hear the differences between shaking the rattle drum and spinning the drum.
At the end of the project, my lecturer gave me great advice that the project should be on recycled waste. So after getting the white paper off the cardboard, some remaining white paper was still glued on the drumhead. I drew a little art of a sunset for no reason and took the advice of adding some element of a cardboard could have. I drew on the other side of the drumhead a "boxes on trolley" symbol and a "fragile sign" on the side of the drum.
after ripping off the white paper.
And this is the final look of the rattle drum. To recommand if you want to do the same project or if you also want to do a rattle drum, I will say to find a metal stick to be your handle, or anything that can also make a unique sound, examples like glasses, cards.
another idea is to make the sound goes one at a time, the idea is to glue your materials like metal plates, plastic cap or a piece of glass on the inside of the drum, and add a sound-making component, similar to throwing a ball in a room but on each wall having different materials. another advice is to reinforce the structure by adding more supportive product inside of the drum, whether is glue or tape.
Boxes on trolley
little sunset
Fragile sign.
