A cymbal(a china cymbal or thin gong works best) that is suspended vertically by two rubber coated wires which meet at the top with a handle. Spinning the cymbal in one direction causes the wires to twist so that when you let go, it will spin in the other direction very rapidly. When you stike the cymbal before it is set spinning, it makes a nice rhythmic wooshing sound as it spins. I am trying to find a way to automate the spinning so you can set tempos.
I actually built a prototype of this the other night and it sounds quite nice.
*I will post an mp3 of the prototype in action once I get all the kinks worked out.-- blacksect, Aug 08 2002 Leslie http://theatreorgan...doodlin/leslie.htmlBrief Summary [thumbwax, Aug 08 2002] There is a very old toy similar to this with a large "button" with a looped string through the two holes. The ends are twisted so that by pulling and letting up on the ends, the disk spins and hums.-- FarmerJohn, Aug 08 2002 Spinning Croissant for you - what's the current prototype configuration?-- thumbwax, Aug 08 2002 Farmerjohn, the button toy is quite different. In the button toy, the disc spins at audio frequencies, rather than having an acoustically radiating object moving at relatively slow velocities to give phasing & doppler effects like the present proposal. Incidentally, try rotating a horizontally suspended struck metal tube. much more pronounced!-- pfperry, Aug 08 2002 well the current prototype is a 20 inch china cymbal that has speaker cable looped throught the hole and the handle of an old wood screwdriver to hold it with. It's about 2 feet long and is pretty fun to play because you can walk around with it as it unwinds. In this case the cymbal is suspended, and the wires sometimes choke the sound a bit, but in the automatic version I would like to have it upright, so the cymbal is above the spinning rotor. This way they could be mounted on ordinary double braced cymbal stands. for the upright version I think that it should be held by two rubber covered metal braces like the forks of a bicycle. Now all I need is a silent and dirt cheap motor that I can adjust the speed of.-- blacksect, Aug 08 2002 The motor on the Leslie speaker in my Hammond is by no means silent, so you needn't make that a criterion. Pastry for this. Percussionists should have more technology.-- angel, Aug 08 2002 hmmm I think it has to be silent or else very quiet, because the sustain of the cymbal decays fairly quickly. I think the sound of this thing is more for dramatic/quiet pieces than straight up rock so the motor whirr might get in the way.
I was thinking about using the motor for direct drive turntables, which are almost silent. But not sure if it would have enough torque and going by the price of high quality direct drives like the technics 1200...probably wouldn't be cheap either. Ideally I would want the thing to come in at like $150-200(sans cymbal) and I would market it as a motorized stand.
I would want the motor unit to be self contained in a highly polished chrome rotor(like on old school bmx bikes) that would easily snap on to a standard cymbal stand in the usual male tube-female tube-clamp fashion.
btw this site kicks ass!!-- blacksect, Aug 08 2002 Little known fact: Get the top Hi-hat cymbal, and hold it by it's adjuster.. Stike it gently and while holding it horizontally near your ear move it vertically up and down past your ear.... You can hear a number of dead spots, where I guess your ear is in an anti-node, or something.
Also,I'm sure I've seen something along these lines: A cymbal or disk which when struck rotates (i.e. like turning a plate on it's edge and spinning it)... I've no idea what they're called, but I think I remember seeing them (I dunno why, but I thought Zildjian made 'em)-- Dub, Aug 18 2005 You could have a wire sticking out of whatever is holding the cymbal that closes a circuit between a battery and some headphones every time it comes around. As you vary the speed of your motor the resultant rhythmic "click track" in the headphones could be played along with. Every time you hit the cymbal it would obviously be to the beat since you'd be playing to the cymbal's rhythm, not the other way around.
If you're just doing it for recording, just use "time stretch" than any good digital recording program should have a plugin for. Then one loop could be fit in anything you wanted.
However you do it, cool idea.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 18 2005 random, halfbakery