DIY Instrument: Spring Thing Mk III

I've had this one in mind for a while, having collected various small springs and seen some interesting designs on the internet for similar devices. Mine is pretty low-tech, and the piezo pickup hums an awful lot, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

The housing, as you can see, is a Cadbury biscuit tin. Mounted on top are two small springs from bi-fold closet door hardware, the tension spring left over from building the Spring Thing Mk II, a spring from an engine block, and some cut-up pieces of old guitar strings (E and G). The latter are my favourite bits on this instrument. They have a pleasing twangy metallic tone.

The pickup is mounted beneath the lid and held in place by a 2" mending strip. It's wired directly to the 1/8" output jack that I threaded through a piece of plastic (from a compact disc jewel-case) before attaching it to the tin, to prevent it from shorting-out on the metal.

DIY Instrument: Spring Thing MkII

I employ the sound of springs a lot in my music, particularly for my soundtrack work. To that end I've collected field recordings of many different-sized springs found on industrial and farm equipment. A few years ago I salvaged two springs from the door of a broken dishwasher, mounted them on a board and named the resulting contraption the 'Spring Thing.'

In my travels around the internet I found details of an instrument with much longer springs, played with a violin bow. This inspired me to attempt something similar, although mine is a far simpler in design. For this project I bought a zinc 'storm door' spring, which is used to keep screen doors closed against the weather. It's a half-inch wide and about a foot long unextended. Armed with this, a length of 1x2 pine, and some hooks and hardware, I set about creating the Spring Thing Mk II.

The storm door spring has a smaller spring threaded inside it for adjusting tension. The first order of business was to remove this, and after much trial and error I cut it out (along with a half-inch or so of the larger spring) with a Dremel cutting blade. At one end of the board I mounted a 2" hook, and at the other a 1/2" eye-hook. One end of the spring was threaded over the hook, then the free end was threaded with an S-hook and stretched toward the eye-hook with pliers. The S-hook made attaching the free end a lot easier, as the coils are exceedingly tight and difficult to thread anything into, so doing so while it's under tension would be nigh impossible.

I was able to stretch the spring to roughly twice its original length: not as much as I'd hoped for, but decent considering the strength of the spring. The lower end contacts the board and imparts some vibration to the wood. Because the opposite end is raised, there's room to mount a contact mic beneath the spring. I had good results about three-quarters of the way along. I've also done some sessions with two condenser microphones, one placed at either end. The sound of this spring is much brighter than the Mk I.

 The 'striker' seen in the pic is a chromed rod salvaged from a faucet set. Its intended use is to open and close a built-in basin stopper. It has a nice weight to it, with a hammer-like metal disk at one end and a smooth surface for scraping along the spring. It almost seems designed for the job!

Tales Music: Turned To Stone

Another transition piece for Tales Episode 1, 'Turned To Stone' marks the demise of the Troll Tree Removers after they're petrified by the sun's rays. I wanted it to have a haunting quality. The first idea that came to mind was the sound of tingsha (Tibetan prayer cymbals). These are small cast bronze cymbals on a leather strap which produce a high-pitched ringing when struck together. They're more like bells in that respect. Each cymbal is supposed to sound identical, but possibly mine are slightly out of whack because they produce some harsh harmonics. This just adds to the character though, making them all the more suitable for this track.

I started by recording several takes into my CAD mic and selecting the best ones. If the cymbals wobble about too much you get a wobbly-sounding recording, so after some experimentation I got some clean takes. You can be sure I kept the wobbly ones too, though - you never know when they might come in handy!

I loaded the sample I was happy with direct into Sonar (my multi-track software) and repeated it every couple of bars. I applied reverb to soften the sound a little, but had to tweak it quite a lot. Certain frequencies were bouncing around and sounding horrible. This served as my guide for adding other instruments.

Next I added a plucked spring sound, sampled from my 'Spring Thing' which is nothing more than two dishwasher springs mounted on a board. But hooked up to a contact microphone it sounds fantastic. This already had a reverb all its own, but I added extra software reverb and it totally stole the show.


For the third element I turned to the K-Station synth, with the intention of adding a slow, bright, metallic arpeggio. My tweaking produced a detuned sound - not unlike bells that have been really messed up - more suited for melody, so a melody it was. In an attempt to fit melody to tempo, I threw in a bass-drum sample to play to. That lead to the mimicked sound of a slow hearbeat, which echoes the plight of the poor trolls and further enhances the track.

Oh yes, I almost forgot about the growls. I took a sound from my modified Yamaha PSS-140 FM keyboard and pitch-shifted it way low in shortcircuit. To me it sounds like the growl of an alien animal. No real reason for adding it except that it adds some spookiness.

By then the track was pretty much finished, to my mind. But there's always the temptation to add more, and later on I thought of some string parts and had to try them out. I called upon my trusty Crumar Performer analog string synthesizer for this. I dropped the bottom and mid-range out via the on-board EQ, and modulated the pitch. The latter is a trick I used on the Doctor Who: Mechalution soundtrack / Let's Build Mecha e.p. to give the strings a wailing, melancholy quality, not unlike tape-wobble.

The final element I added was a Chinese woodblock (also called a 'wooden fish'). This was again recorded using the CAD. It sounded too bright in my first version so I pitch-shifted it about an octave lower and EQ'd out some high-end.