An Irish-speaking Shruti Box?

[Terry McGee]

Oh dear, my mind's wandering again.....

I wonder if the world would benefit from an Irish speaking Shruti box. You know the kind of thing - used by Indian musicians to set the rhythm and provide a harmonic framework. I imagine beginners and those who live too far from other players could find such a thing helpful, making practice a little more rigorous.

I can see a software version that would run on PC and those other computers. The drone would emulate the Irish pipes' drones, and be readily switchable to other keys. Perhaps an enhancement would enable other combinations of drones to be used, eg to emulate NSP, BP, GHPs etc, or even to set up one's own drone mix. (A later version might detect the note you are playing and calculate and play the most likely chord, but a drone might be a much safer starting point!) A further option would be to have "free reed" tones available for the drones.

The drone notes would be separately generated and not phase-locked, so they would sound like drones, and not harmonics of a lower note. There might even be a "drone breadth" control to determine how tame or wild their tuning is (marked Piano Accordion at one end and concertina at the other?).

The rhythm side would sound like a bodhran, and be readily switchable to all the usual dance tune rhythms (jigs, reels, polkas, etc), plus perhaps a custom setting to allow for rhythms from Transylvania etc.

Usual sort of speed control, perhaps marked with a cautionary redline as you approach Ceiliband speed.

But the rhythm would not be simply metronomic - it would be culturally sensitive. You could select between "standard" degrees of "push" such as Donegal, Dublin, East Clare, Sligo*, with perhaps a slide control to enable players to get a feel for the notion of push.

(*We may need to establish regional committees of Comhaltas to reach agreement on their standard setting! Presumably you could use a Digital Audio Editor to deconstruct good examples of regional playing into ratios of push.)

I can see later we'll need hardware versions of the system for stage and busking use, with footpedal control of sequencing.

Any other features needed? Any bored programmers out there?

Terry

[Jack Bradshaw]

Yes.........been keeping my eyes (ears?) open for a "sidepaddy" for some time. Unfortunatley, my programming time has been anything but boring.........

Even a simple drones plus rhythm would be a great thing.....

[talasiga]

I don't quite know what sort of "shruti box" you mean Terry.
I have not seen any that combine rhythm and drone to the extent you suggest.

What is out there are
* various makes of electronic drone boxes.
I have a very good one, one of the latest, which provides drone based on any note from the A below middle C to the B above middle C. One can choose a one note drone or the trad. tonic + perfect 5th drone or the tonic + 4th drone or the bizarre tonic + leading note drone.
* electronic rhythm boxes
which provide a range of rhythms including 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 beat cycle rhythms in different tempos
(some of these have a drone but I don't recall that you can customise the drone)
* electronic nagma boxes
which provide traditional melodic loops. A kind of melodic metronome employed by persussionists and dancers as they display their virtuosic skills on drums or in footwork. "nagma" is a word of Persian origin meaning melody. Another term for the same thing is "lehra" (and var.) which is Sanskritic word meaning waves or ripples.

I have been thinking of writing to KORG
and suggesting that they develop a combined drone and rhythm box.

For ITM, it would be great if you could have
thirty songs (for eg) and you could program them to be whatever key is convenient for your flute (you may be using an Eb flute rather than a D)
and you could speed up or slow it down as required for your practise.
For flute practise I feel a fiddle digitised would be good.

[djm]

Why not an electronic flute box so that pipers and bodhrán players could practise with them. The flute sounds would be pre-programmed to be in tune and in time, and always play with that ITM "edge".

djm

[Chiffed]

Let's get a little box that does melody, rhythm, and melody, and we can all just sit and drink beer. I'm tired of my beer going flat while I'm too distracted making music with other human beings. Sucks, really.

[AaronMalcomb]

I could use one for some of my bagpipe students. I could program the rhythm of the tunes and they could go home and play along to that, turning up the tempo as they improve. I think it would vastly expedite their progress.

[Jack Bradshaw]

Let's get a little box that does melody, rhythm, and melody, and we can all just sit and drink beer. I'm tired of my beer going flat while I'm too distracted making music with other human beings. Sucks, really.

That's funny...I'm tired of my flute going flat while I'm busy drinking beer....

[Jumbuk]

There are a few sample CDs available that are stacked with bodhran loops. Examples include AMG's Complete Celt vol 1 and 2 and Zero G's Celtic. All you need is the free download of Acid Express 5.0 and you can create your own bodhran backing track at whatever tempo you want. About the only issue is that many of these sample CDs are put together by rock-based musicians, so there is little concept of classifying loops by rhythm (jig, reel etc). Even so, you will be able to pick the ones you want quite easily.

Add a sample CD of drones (there are many) and you have the ingredients to create a whole CD of minimalist backing tracks. Someone has already done that for Shakuhachi (Nalijor Creations "Shakuhachi Soundscapes for Creative Improvisation") and Native American Flute ("Rhythms to Accompany the Native Flute").

For Indian music, Swarshala is a software tabla with a sequencer designed around the tal concept rather than western notation. It includes pretty realistic tambura drones as well.

[pixyy]

Yeah, would be great to have exactly the thing Terry desribes!
I have recently downloaded the demo version of the Tampura Generator and am experimenting playing over drones.

It seems to work quite well and I can't imagine it can't be done with pipe drones, DADGAD strumming drones and god-forbid, a Bodran metronome...
Question is how many musicians playing Irish Trad are doing so near a computer (apart from us C&F nerds )

The tampura and shruti drones are very nice to play over. Desi Wilkinson used the Shruti box on his Shady Woods CD...

looking forward to the release of the 'Uillean Drone Clone v1.0'

Jeroen

[GaryKelly]

Or! How about some sort of device that would say, play some kind of audio disk, which had a whole band playing on it! That would let you drink ad nauseam without worrying about having to play! Pubs could install them, and people might actually pay to select tunes of their choice! They could be called "Pay-o-Tunes" or something like that, and even be coin-operated!

Extending the idea, you could have a smaller, personal device which does the same sort of thing, you put a disk of pre-prepared audio into it, recorded by, say, really *good* musicians, and you could play along with them in the comfort of your own home!! You wouldn't even need a computer!

Gasp! How about if the band recorded the music, slowly at first, and then on the next track a bit faster, and then finally with full accompaniment, but with the leading melody player dropping out, leaving *you* to play along at full speed with the rest of the band...

ah. Crap, it's already been done... My ideas are always too late. Back to designing my metal fl.... cripes, nearly let the cat out of the bag!

[bensdad]

Noirin ni Rian often sings with a sruti box. The locals in Cappamore call it "the wailing handbag."
Norin is wont to gesticulate quite a bit while singing too, which led one wag to describe her singing as "sean-nos for the deaf."

[Father Emmet]

I'm tired of my beer going flat while I'm too distracted making music with other human beings. Sucks, really.

That's funny...I'm tired of my flute going flat while I'm busy drinking beer....