Cover Song: The Tick Tock Man

This year mark's the 30th Anniversary of Gary Numan's classic Warriors album. To celebrate, Numanme has put together the Warriors Tribute project, featuring fan covers of songs from the album. For my contribution I decided to cover a song called The Tick Tock Man. It's not my favourite from the album (that would be This Prison Moon), but it's a well-crafted and oft-overlooked tune I thought could do with some exposure.

For those of you not familiar with it, here's Gary Numan's 1983 original, courtesy of YouTube:


And here's my re-interpretation:


The bassline and a lot of the melodies were made with the Novation K-Station. Chords and pads are Roland HS60. There are some 'big 80s drums' courtesy of the Boss DR-550, some Speak & Spell percussion samples, and the rest of the percussion was synthesized from scratch. The Spring Thing Mks. II & III can be heard on the intro and outro, and the Crumar Performer provides some strings. I should also mention an Alesis SamplePad was used to record the tom-toms. I've not had a chance to write a post about that piece of equipment yet.

My good friend Jimmy Aaron sang the backing vocals, doing a good job of the parts originally sung by Tracey Ackerman. The rest of the vocals and the vocoder fell to me. This song isn't really in my key but I think I did a reasonable job.

Word is that the Warriors Tribute will be a professionally printed 2CD set limited to fifty copies. The contributing artists each get a copy and the remainder will go on ebay to cover the cost of manufacture. If you miss the opportunity to get hold of it, you can download my version of The Tick Tock Man from my SoundCloud page (for free, of course).

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!