Rarely in the didgeridoo world I encounter such original, technically accomplished, humorous and all encompasing work of art as The Call of the Didgeridoo is.

It is made by a man I know for a few years, Fran6 Collie.  French didgeridoo player and maker, professional illustrator and a man with great imagination and curiosity. Deeply involved in didgeridoo matter,  investing huge amount of energy and time, Fran6 has made a piece of art in many levels.

Firstly I would emphasize the way didgeridoo itself is presented. It is a beautifully neutral point of view, presenting you a very wide scope of what didgeridoo is now. From playing, performing, traditional and practical aspects, life intertwined with art, intertwined with practicality. This work has it all. It can inspire you to create a song, it can motivate you to start practicing again and it can even help you how to make a mouthpiece if you are at the beginning.

What I would also have to compliment is the dynamic side of the comic which is never sleeping. Every picture, every motion is there for a reason in  a very alive and often humorous vision. So you can discover many levels in many scenes which can make you laugh or just make you feel beauty. The good spirit never leaves the comic and it is fun to read even if you no interest in the didgeridoo

My contribution to this work was to write a poem which was my deep feeling about didgeridoo for a long time. The poem is called The Pulse and I am quite sure you will recognize it when you see it. It was beyond my imagination what Mr Fran6co did to make this poem more accessible through the way of illustration.

There are many wonderful contributors! You can see an informative list here on Fran6co’s website.

If you know how rarely I give recommendations, you can sense that this might be something truly exceptional. I feel that it is a must have for all didgeridoo enthusiasts, for inspiration, for fun, or just widening your friendship with didgeridoo world.

Du

Tests and reviews of today’s world and what about didgeridoo?

Have you noticed how everything in this material world gets tested? It happens both in absolute and relative terms. Cars get tested for safety, but also against other cars for performance, comfort, efficiency… Household machines get tested, but also professional tools and equipment. All gets tested…
It seems these tests and reviews help people create some sort of knowledge or phantom experience in their next purchase. If it is a real and good test, this is probably true and valuable. Since many people care about where they put their money, and they are unable to check everything out for themselves, the interest in these tests and reviews is vast!

But I have never seen a didgeridoo test!
Have you?
It might be that the didgeridoo world is too young for it. Or too old. Or too didgeridoo! What would you compare in a didgeridoo test anyway? Would you like to see/hear a didgeridoo test at all?

My approach to tests and reviews…

Most of the time, I don’t believe in reviews/tests. Especially those I find on the internet. I am too well aware that anybody can write just about anything on the internet. Most of the tests I was interested in were about audio equipment. When I see only wonderful reviews at some site, I lose my interest. Also on forums, I have seen people write completely opposite experiences than what I have. I can’t say they are wrong, but I can’t connect to this, I can’t relate it in any way to my experience. So if possible I try to find A/B sound samples with documented way of recording. Nothing else. However, this is in fact extremely rare. So sometimes I take into account words from people that have some reputation and in whose lines I can sense some deeper understanding, often well beyond my reach.

Tests, tests of tests and tests of tests of tests…

But I do a LOT of tests. I have this strong desire for experience, a primordial knowledge from directness of the moment, rather than thought deduction and space reduction. Averagely I probably do a test of audio gear- microphones, preamps, compressors, eqs, mixers etc.- every week or so. It is very valuable because it teaches my mind to listen. Didgeridoos I test even more often. Usually it is just something small I want to hear, but sometimes it is a long lineup and one or two typical sound samples put on infinite loop.

Test of personal old didgeridoos

One of my recent didgeridoo tests was relatively unusual for me. I took my old didgeridoos to see what is hiding there. There were some didgeridoos from local wood I built some years ago and there were some of my old eucalyptus didgeridoos I bought some years ago… I put also some Duendes beside them just to see what happens, but I will not mention this part of test as I don’t have credibility to do tests of my own present didgeridoos with anything else. So I look to my old didgeridoos as one closed set of didgeridoos, that I can compare between themselves with no harm done.

(Not so) Surprising phenomenon!

I experienced one wonderful phenomenon! Each of the didgeridoos was “the best” for the song I used to play on it. It is a very narrow line of specialization, I know, but still I am amazed that I could find one sound/song/technique for each one of them where it excelled beyond others. Just to clear up, I see those didgeridoos as good quality instruments. All of them have some sense. So I was not comparing my first didgeridoo which I can still hardly play even now. I would add that all of the “home made” didgeridoos had easier playing and not so nice sound, whereas all the eucalyptus didgeridoos had generally nicer, more clear, more open sound, but their playability was not so great. This is especially related to toot technology.

Didgeridoo specialization and purpose

Among these didgeridoos some didgeridoos had very soft sound… this might make them ideal for quiet ambiental playing (I avoid word “healing” here deliberately), but really challenging to play “in front” of the band. Or when you just want your articulations to be heard. Some of these didgeridoos had a bit of “dirt” in the sound. This is in most cases of usage annoying. But! This “dirt” can also give you just the right character for what you want to express. So everything is relative. One great great great situation with your own didgeridoo is if you know how to use this particular instrument. One good example of that is my “Iglica” didgeridoo. Most other players don’t know what to do with it at all, but I earn my bread with it since this is my most played didgeridoo on stage these days. And of course, it could be exactly opposite with some other didgeridoo I don’t know how to use.

The sense of didgeridoo test?

So if I find every didgeridoo has its own advantage does it mean they are all the same for me? No. Not at all. Not at all-est! They are all my friends, but I do very much prefer to use some of them. I have a set of songs/sounds I need to play. So when I test a didgeridoo I see how well can it do this job. Can it do many of the songs, or just one but very well. Or it can maybe even do many songs very well… now this would be a true jewel…

If you would like to know more about how I test my didgeridoos, drop me a line here and tell me so! If you would like to share how you test your didgeridoos, drop us a line and tell us so! The lines are waiting empty just below this text!

Du

Summary
As I once again walk out of studio my didgeridoo world spins faster. As I step anew on stage I smile for I know my sound will not be a disaster. Sun and wind disperse heavy clouds of uncertainty into soft rain of revelation and horizon shows new ways of great possibilities as I enter the deeply mysterious ERA of Presence.

Int(r)o the presence

I am now again at the starting point of my closed didgeridoo circle. This happens always after spending lots of time in studio, and I definitely did when I was experimenting and recording didgeridoo for Dubokobud. Trying to make it speak clearly, articulately and undoubtly. So what do new experiences tell me? They ask of me presence , in every way,  but I will especially describe what it means in the didgeridoo construction and articulation sense.

Presence

We all know what presence is. We know it intuitively. It is too primordial idea to explain. Yet what does it mean in sound sense? In descriptive manner it is the quality of sound which puts sound more forward, more pronounced, more aggressive, more expressive. In frequency terms, in a narrow sense, it refers to a small band between 5 and 7kHz. However, in wider sense, also described so in book “Mastering audio – the art and the science“ by Bob Katz, it refers to a big range between 2 and 10kHz.

Presence in didgeridoo

As I start to speak for the zillionth time about sound of the didgeridoo, I seem funny to myself. So I will make it even more funny with some drawings. Didgeridoo is an instrument whose spectrum falls, sometimes drastically after the basic bass. Bassicaly it looks like this:

The bass of didgeridoo

Many didgeridoo players are attracted to didgeridoo because of its bass. So what is this presence story all about and where is bass in it? Let me draw you a story. Lets rotate the graph before a little bit to make it vertical. A bass of didgeridoo will become the base of our structure and the strong bass didgeridoo usually looks like this:

Once recorded this didgeridoo spectrum will become more flat due to equipment taking its presence toll and it will look like this. You can even see the presence fly away!

On the contrary, didgeridoo with less bass will have more of the other frequencies in relative terms, this means the initial picture will be more like:

Didgeridoo Presence in reality

I have recently had a great opportunity what presence means in reality. I was in the room when Dave played Oldhar very softly, and still this soft sounds with lots of presence went over the music that was playing relatively loudly in the bacground. If it was only bass, it would be only underneath it all, as a carpet. Then I realized again very strongly that bass is energy whereas presence and articulation is information!

Presence in the recording room and the sound of Fantastic Four

We now come to the real McCoy of didgeridoo presence. Sound examples from studio! These were done post Dubokobud, in a simple microphone setup. I had 4 instruments. Two that we could describe as combination of Iglica III and Moytze and something else. One that could be described as Moytze + CrystaLake, but more to Moytze side.  The fourth one was Oldhar.

In every sound sample I tried to include both Earth and Air code (old/new- closed/open).  Didgeridoos have somewhat different frequency response due to the code and certain technique of a code.

When observing the spectrum know that the upper line (orange) shows the maximum amplitudes some frequency has reached during the sound sample. The lower (yellow) shows the sound at certain moment when I was listening – not so important, although I tried to capture it in a relevant moment. Another very important fact to be aware of is that only relative relations are important. The absolute height of the sound is not. Only the relations between the peaks.

A didgeridoo

This is a new Duende didgeridoo that showed a remarkable spectrum and usefulness of sound.  At the moment we have nothing to compare it to. Just listen and try to connect it in your mind to the graph presented. The low line was not caught in a very strong moment…

G# didgeridoo

This is also a new Duende didgeridoo that is somewhat darker than the upper one. Know that the peak around 3,5kHz came out only once as a product of air code. Low line caught in the good moment of air code.

C didgeridoo – Zmayek

This is the King of Presence! The Shining Articulator! This is why I had to include such a long sound sample It is an ironbark didgeridoo, a variation of Moytze, more open up and down in spectrum. If by now you can read the graphs, you will know how extraordinary it is that the spectrum even climbs up to the  higher end.  Sub bass and 6kHz are almost on the same level!  Also we have a peak at 12kHz! On a more precise analyzer on this didgeridoo  you would see much more teeth in the graph.Know that during whole recording the lower line was close to the upper line, considerably more than in other didgeridoos. This is very important to know because it ties this picture to the totality of sound, whole expression, not just one point. The peaks between 125 and 500Hz come from the toots I played, not so very gently. But again, the basic experience and understanding you need to get from the sound sample itself, not by graph.

Oldhar didgeridoo

This is a special treat to reveal the spectrum of Great Oldhar. As you can see, it is very very strong in low mids. These are the singing frequencies, overtones in the range of human voice. This gives the feeling of multiple instruments, depth of sound. Presence compared to the bass is in very good relation. Sub bass and 3.7kHz are almost in same line, upper presence 3-4db lower. This is not so prominent in sound because of the strong low end, which puts yin-yang balance to the darker side. But as you can notice, the richness of this didgeridoo sound transcends even more the two dimensional graph. As listening reveals a great sustain and „shine“ on Oldhar’s sounds.

Reference!

So I choose to give you some reference point for these didgeridoos, as they are very uncommon. So I take as an example a didgeridoo I made few years ago, before the Duendes. It is a 205cm long pine, drilled and chiseled, so sound was taken care of. The difference is also greatly in the hardness of the wood.

Pine didgeridoo in A

It is up to you now to compare the sound and the graph to the upper 4, but the difference could/should be obvious.

This is not an example of a strong bass didgeridoo. I found no such recordings at home. You can find and make it yourself,  analyze it, and observe if the difference is even stronger. If you do this, feel free to send me the appendix for this article!

Observative observations!

As you know, I don’t like to make conclusions, only observations. I’ve presented you 5 different didgeridoos, their recordings and their spectrum. So if you take only 3rd didgeridoo (Zmayek) and the last one you have the following situation. In my world it is a comparison of a high end didgeridoo and a good mid range didgeridoo.  The price difference is about five times. Being around 2500€ for the first one, and around 500€ for the second one. Same difference is in the price of the recording equipment, being around 10000€ for the first one and around 2200 euro for the second one. There is also a significant difference in skill, power and knowledge of the players.

So all summed up, it is a cosmic soup in which you cannot be absolutely certain what ingredients give what flavours.

Dark side of presence

This is almost a contradiction in terms, as presence is brightness.  This falls partly into the category „too much of a good thing is still too much“.  The other aspect is that presence is a complex matter of no matter – so many colours, so many flavours. With flavours some are so rich even if they are not very salty. Some are salty and there is nothing else there. Very similary it is with our magical mix of frequencies. We need nice presence. It can be deep rich golden presence,  or glittering of emerald, or it can be shining yellowhite of the sun reflection on the see, it can be everywhere where it can shine so divine!

Stop for one more moment, please.

Before this article affects the way you perceive didgeridoos, get to know your didgeridoos. Before you pursue your new wishes, ideas, projects and goals in didgeridoo try to figure out where you are and what is around you. Try to figure out what you would benefit most from. Don’t take anything I write for granted. I might be wrong. Check it out yourself. And if you feel you found something, I would be honoured if you shared it with me. As always I am looking forward to your own dooings which enrich this tubical world we find Cosmos in. So let me know how and where you are…

Du

This chapter is about how to combine good use of modern technology  and timeless tube called didgeridoo to get the desired sound.  In our case, we will be shown how to get a good  „kick-didge“. Even more than that, this article will show you how to transform your well gamma radiated „ Dr Bruce Banner sound“ into „The Incredible Hulk sound“, which we will shortly call „THE PULSE“. (For those who are catching up – Didgeridoo Bass Generation Chapter 1 and Chapter 2)

How to uncover your Incredible Hulk didgeridoo power!!!

Global WARNING! Sounds presented here  are based on bass. You will not be able to experience the essence without good enough speakers  and sounds played sufficiently loud. If you don’t have good speakers, try listening on the headphones. If you can’t hear strong differences, try to find a good sound system for reproduction of these sounds.

Reminder is ‘sense finder’

So just to remind ourselves of our great accomplishments we made so far. First we presented the question of getting the different sounds of an orchestra/band in a didgeridoo. We focused on the kick drum. Among 4 quite different didgeridoos and 4 different sounds/techniques we chose the one which is most „bass impressive“. Then we compared two sounds to the real kick drum and found out we somehow miss relatively lots of kick drum quality.

So now what?

Now we can get good inspiration about what to do with the sound to make it closer to the kick drum. We can alter three things:
- Playing
- Way of recording
- Sound in post processing
One quality of the kick drum that comes quite in front is the „kick“ part of it. This part we can sense in strong quick transients, and 100 Hz bass sound.  So what we might be inspired to do is to make stronger tongue/diaphragm attack and make sound as short as possible. Still, there is a factor of time to generate sound/bass in didgeridoo – see next paragraph.
About recording,  I chose not to alter anything as I had a feeling it was already fine. But you can do it for yourself, if you feel there is a hidden catch there.
In post processing, we can do something to balance the frequencies and draw out the most desirable ones.

Something not to forget

We do not want to forget that kick drum is a drum wheras kick didge is a didge. Drum generates sound in a different way than tube and has different laws of physics that apply. Even without understanding physical background, imagine how different these sound  generations are.  Therefore one very important aspect of this research is to have a good overview and therefore not get stuck in the unimportant details. We do not wish to reproduce exactly the drum with the didge. What is underneath all this is finding a way to understand didgeridoo sound and didgeridoo playing possibilities better. So we need to extract the essence from the observed and use it to our best knowledge.

Getting flushed by the sound…

As mentioned, I have noticed two qualities I would like to incorporate into the „kick didge“. First is that I wanted lots of transients. Transients are one strong factor that reveals the instrument.  In this sense transients also give us the power and explosion of the kick sound. Another thing I tried to accomplish is to have my kick didge sound last as short as possible. So as soon as the bass would be generated- which lasts longer than in kick drum –the bass would be diminished, as fast as possible.

So this was the first part of the process, playing part. The post processing part consists of two stages:
- Compression
- Equalization
By compressing the  kick sound I want to get more transients out. By equalization I wanted to adjust especially first harmonic of didgeridoo to be stronger, to give the kick. Apart from that I wanted to draw out more presence, again to have more transients and produce more of „kshsss“ sound.

Flushed by the sound of didgeridoo

In a way it is like approaching this sound in two dimensions. One is glass breaking  of huge water tank which produces high penetrating sound and makes us close our eyes in anticipation of the force. Second is unleashing of this extreme amount of water which pushes us back instantly. So we want to be „flushed by the sound“.

Doing the kicks

My personal choice for kick drum sound was didgeridoo sound 3A. Because to my ears it was the closest to kick drum. But you can try with any of your favorite sounds.

First I tried to play the sound as kick-full as possible. Then I processed it with compressor and EQ. This is what I got:

Improved kick didge sound

Now let’s compare it to the kick drum:

Improved kick didge and kick drum comparison

To my ears it sounds much better than before. I hope we managed to satisfy your ears as well.
Still we did not use „the most bass impressive“ sound. Let us hear what is there for us.

Turning Dr Banner into The Incredible  Hulk

The most bass impressive sound was voted  to be didgeridoo sound 1B. I did not use it as my first choice of kick didge as it has too much of sub bass compared to kick drum. Still I followed the principle of explosive playing – meaning that I played it with very strong attack and as short as possible.

Now I have two versions of this sound. One with milder (but still strong) sub bass, and one with super-strong sub bass.  This is how it sounds:

1b goes almost Hulk sound

1b turns into the Incredible Hulk sound

Incredible Hulk meets kick drum

Weather you like the Incredible Hulk sound or not,  is a matter of your preference to green;-) This is just a demonstration of what can be achieved if you wish for bass invasion.

The bass invasion

The Didgeridoo Hulk sound has too much of sub bass to compare it properly to kick drum, so I chose another sound to compare it to. It is the sub bass of Minimoog (synthesizer). This is how they sound together:

Didgeridoo Hulk meets Minimoog

Again I am by not trying to get/find  „better“ sound. I only look to understand what qualities didgeridoo bass can have.  At this point I perceive it as a complete, primordial pulse which exists in its own space and no time.

The PULSE

So this is the last bass sound I will offer you.

The Pulse - Primordial Didgeridoo Sound...

The Pulse is similar to “The Hulk” didgeridoo sound, only it is played with no restriction. This means I gave enough time for the bass to generate fully and I played it more relaxed, with less attack. I admit, ThePulse is a didgeridoo sound I enjoy very much. It is simple, with underlying complexity and potential, direct, profound and clear. In a way it is a unit of primordial didgeridoo sound.

The Pulse

Spiraling in and spiraling out

There is nothing special I would conclude about this sound journey. Once we spiraled out it is time to spiral in again. Leaving open space around things we perceive might be crucial in perceiving them in the deepest possible way. Anyway, I hope you had fun reading this. I still have some articles in preparation about which refer both to more general and more specific sound,  with more or less resemblance to other instruments.  It takes lots of time and energy for me  to write articles like this, so know that you can motivate me with your always great comments and insights!

Spiraling out!

Welcome to the next chapter about didgeridoo bass generation, which reveals what were the action didgeridoo heroes from the previous chapter. It also gives us some detail about kick didge, how it is generated frequency-wise and timewise. We are shown how kick didge sounds in comparison to kick drum, and some new questions arise.

Point of view

I would like to stress one very important aspect of this research and that is that observation is prior to conclusion.  A high quality observation is done in mental space, with no noise of mind tendencies. High quality observation gives us facts,  where inductive concluding sometimes is nothing more than another assumption. This research starts with „do not assume anything“  point,  and tends to end there also. It is easy to fall into trap of early conclusion, and miss the real truth.  So let’s try to keep that in mind together with the beautiful cosmic traffic sign:

„Instead of looking for truth, stop cherishing your opinions.“

And we continue to move as light as light.

Results of the Kick-Didge test

On the date 30/10/10 without the original kick drum sound given for direct comparison, and without knowing which didgeridoo is which, the results for the biggest bass impression, comparing different techniques on same didgeridoos were as follows:

Interesting enough,  different techniques were  recognized as most bass impressive for different didgeridoos. B for didgeridoo 1, D for didgeridoo 2, A for didgeridoo 3, and B for didgeridoo 4. In sum of them all, B would be the bassiest sound  and, a bit surprisingly, A – which is in a very strong  first place for didgeridoo 3 – is found to be  the least bass impressive overall.
So it seems without much conclusion that the most bass impressive sound technique varies from didgeridoo to didgeridoo.

The contenders

Let us see now what our contending didgeridoos were and learn a bit more about them.

DIDGERIDOO #1
Our first didgeridoo is somewhat known  „Needle“ didgeridoo in this incarnation called „Iglica III“. A 232cm long F# made of bloodwood eucalyptus. One to be the least noticed in the acoustic playing, due to its low volume. However , it is the didgeridoo I use the most lately. I think that I’ve counted 7 songs that I play on this didgeridoo, which is more than any other didgeridoo that I own.  Here you can find out more about The Needle didgeridoo.

See it in action:

DIDGERIDOO #2
Our second test didgeridoo is probably the most famous of all my didgeridoos, father and mother to all didgeridoos that came after it, my white C didgeridoo, prototype of Moytze.  200cm long, relatively acoustically loud, with dark but full spectrum.

Here you can see the original didgeridoo. And see the evolution of Moytze didgeridoo.

See it in action in its days of glory;-):

DIDGERIDOO #3
The third didgeridoo is a new design called “Extreme Dream E”, shortly EDE. It is 190cm long bluegum eucalyptus didgeridoo in E. It is a new logic of didgeridoo that still needs a lot of exploration, but already it gives great results in detail, voice transparency and very interesting toot intervals and colours. Also it is quite loud compared to the C didgeridoo. Learn more about this didgeridoo.

And see it in action here:

DIDGERIDOO #4
Our fourth test didgeridoo is the newest beast of all. It is developed probably on the „superdidg“ technology, known to humankind even years before this article, but kept in relative secret. It is 187cm long Eb bloodwood eucalyptus didgeridoo. Does not have its own web page yet, but soon will. This didgeridoo is extremely loud and has very full bodied sound, coming from his upper bass range, also with lot of detail and very nice and easy toots.

See it in action a bit here:

Didgeridoo comparison results

So how do these tubes compare one to the other, we find out here:

These results are interesting as I witnessed approximately the opposite comments when I played these didgeridoos unamplified, live. Regarding volume they are put in order, 1 being the least loud, 4 being the loudest. In frequencies, they are almost in order, only 3 is a little bit higher in pitch than 4.  Maybe the sheer depth of didgeridoo causes a strong bass impression. But also, maybe there is even stronger reason found in the logic of techniques 1-3 which are  mostly made in the logic of didgeridoo #1, and also the miking technique is what suits didgeridoo #1 most. More about how to make your sound BIG particularly with this kind of didgeridoo, but generally with any kind of didgeridoo can be found in this Microphone Positioning article.

As announced,we will make no more conclusions, but only notice that generally acoustically least impressive didgeridoo was voted as convincingly most bass impressive didgeridoo when miked in a certain way.

Comparison to the „real thing“

Let’s hear now how our action heroes hold against the real kick drum!  This is (more or less) how the kick drum sounds. The ending sound is a bit cut off  hihat which is not important for our story, it reminds of breath sound, doesn’t it?

Now let’s compare it to the didgeridoo sound we found to be most bass impressive. It is 1B sound.

Hmmm… Not quite the same, is it?
It seems to be more than „bass impression“ in the kick drum. Compared to didgeridoo sound it’s somehow shorter and more explosive, sounds higher, has more transients … feel free to continue the sequence for yourself. Let’s try another sound, that has more of this properties, for example 3A.

Still not the same, is it?
Why? The kick drum still kicks harder. Let us examine a bit deeper to find out some new facts about these sounds.  Maybe it will open our ears, eyes and mind about what where and when makes these differences in sound generation.

Looking into the sound

This is what happens in exactly one half of the second.

The upper is didgeridoo sound 1B. The lower sound is the kick drum in the tail of which is a captured sound of hihat. That tail is not important to us, we focus only on the beginning and we see that it takes much less time before this kick drum reaches it’s peak and in a way it is more concrete/direct in the beginning. It also lasts much shorter.

If we take another zoom in we see that kick drum has more sinusoidal shape. This is due to the fact that didgeridoo has a lot of superponed waves (harmonics) on the main (fundamental) wave. We can read that from picture as medium sized shapes, peaks and valleys on big black shapes. If we put our nose closer to the monitor, we can see that both didgerido and  kick drum have small shapes (some higher frequencies), and that kick drum has more of those.

But this kind of observation is already frequency domain, so we can use frequency analyzer to see what’s happening.

This is the frequency analysis of a kick drum:

And this is the frequency analysis of the 1B didgeridoo sound in F#:

If we compare the two we can see that didgeridoo has a dominant sub bass,  around 40Hz, where kick drum has dominant bass around 100Hz and much less of sub bass around  40Hz. Now is a good moment, if it wasn’t already before, to notice that what we call bass actually has (at least) two frequencies. Something below 100Hz and something above 100Hz. Do we know how to recognize them? We’ll come back later here, now let’s see a bit more of the spectrum.

When we observe the peaks it is not important to see the absolute value, only the relative position between them is important. This is what describes sound. So we can see that didgeridoo has many frequencies that can compare in loundess to the fundamental one, many more compared to the kick drum case. Are these higher frequencies important for the kick-drum sound?  Generally they seem not to be, but there might be some special ones that could be important.

There is no need to describe now in more detail what is in the picture, you can see for yourself, and most probably we will come back to it again, anyway.

The nonconcluding conclusion

It is a subjective feeling,  but  with this direct comparison we might have noticed that our didgeridoo sounds did not bear a lot of kick drum quality. Also, kick-drum had much more of a kick quality. Is this the end of kick didg and of using didgeridoo as a drum? Should we go back to basic drone and play the didgeridoo how it is „supposed“  to play? Or play it traditionally? Maybe. Maybe not.
Maybe we find out more in the next chapter.
Maybe they are in the forest…

This is the introductory chapter of new didgeridoo generation of sounds, starting with didgeridoo bass generation of „kick-didge“. Didgeridoo players are very welcome to fill in the poll and leave the comment below about the tests presented here.

The Great Motivation…

After recording Kosmopterix many new questions about playing, making didgeridoos and recording didgeridoo arose. Even more so after recording Dronas as my knowledge has somewhat expanded. Now that I consider recording a new album these questions have become very crucial in my didgeridoo evolution.

The Story of Orchestra…

The story goes like this; Now all or most contemporary didgeridoo players that have certain experience in didgeridoo playing and sound will agree on the statement that „didgeridoo is a whole orchestra“. Especially if we apply the principles of parallel playing. But what does it mean? Is it just a fairytale and are we all children who need to grow up? What does it mean in practice? We are obviously speaking with certain dose of metaphor. We do not have to discuss if didgeridoo sounds exactly like string quartet or rock band. It does not. So again and again there is this crucial question „What does whole orchestra mean?“.  What does it mean sound-wise and music-wise?

Intro into the BASS-ics…

This  is a story difficult to unfold as it is difficult to find an anchor to start from. I chose to approach it firstly and primarily sound-wise, while having the playing & technique overview in the background. Since we have to start from the bass-ics, we will start from the famous didgeridoo bass sound.  I was in Kramasonik studio last week and did a few hours of tests about generation of didgeridoo bass,  with special emphasis on the search of the bass drum or kick drum in didgeridoo.  Called the „kick-didge“

About the test…

The concept of the test was to take four different didgeridoos and four different techniques that have bass drum feeling to some extent. Record and compare  these sixteen combinations. I did not put special effort into miking the didgeridoos. I used two microphones, Royer R122V and vintage AKG C12, both going through Forsell SMP-2 preamp and PrismSound converter. First three recordings were done at 4cm distance,the fourth at 8 cm distance as it made more sense. I would not elaborate about the didgeridoos and techniques, as I do not want you to make any mental conclusions, only listening.

About the result…

I will give my comparison observations and conclusions in next chapter, as again, I don’t want to influence you at this point. Now I only give you recordings and kindly ask to fill the holes in the polles below this. Different sounds within every recording are called A, B ,C, D and each sound is played twice.

Didgeridoo Bass drum test – Didgeridoo 1 – Sounds A B C D

Didgeridoo Bass drum test – Didgeridoo 2 – Sounds A B C D

Didgeridoo Bass drum test – Didgeridoo 3 – Sounds A B C D

Didgeridoo Bass drum test – Didgeridoo 4 – Sounds A B C D

Overall biggest bass didgeridoo

Please feel free to drop your comment about anything you have noticed in the recordings. I would especially appreciate if you elaborate a little bit on which sound you find most/least harmonious, most/least powerful, most/least interesting… or whatever comes to your mind.

You will find out which didgeridoo is which, which technique is which, and how they compare to the real kick drum in the next chapter. Soon. Only on the channel of… www.lapaine.com

This is a very didgeridooistic didgeridoo article, a technical construction,  that I believe only the bravest of the long didgeridoo seekers can go through However, if you do, you will gain yourself a brand new honour in the eyes of the deep didgeridoos.

I see it has become sort of a trend in didgeridoo world (at least in certain parts of world) to make longer and longer tube to play. It is a nice change, after the era of phobia of long didgeridoos that are “slow” and “low” and only for “meditative” playing. However it is maybe now good time to take a good look at it again, not to go far with a broken car..
I would like to reflect upon three different aspects of longest didgeridoo family. They come from three different periods. First one is from playing practice, second is from solo recording, third is from recording with a band – Druyd.

1. Days of solo practice. When I first started to play longer and longest didgeridoo instruments, I did that with normal didgeridoos, taped together. I joined everything that could be joined, and found only very few combinations that actually made sense. I used PVC tubes only to prolong further the long didgeridoos… I found that cylindrical extensions in the beginning worked quite well. Later, I have built only PVC didgeridoos so I can get a feeling how 10+ meter didges behave and sound like. Problem was that cylindrical structure of PVC, even if carefully assembled in progression of width, was too rough to feel the true nature of long didgeridoo. I believe it was for two reasons.

First is that consecutive cylindrical parts of half a meter or one meter are not working acoustically close enough, and in a way efficient enough – the way conical tubes do.
Second reason might be that thin PVC material cannot withstand the power and frequency of big long didgeridoo drone, and it gets dissipated through the instrument walls.
It resulted so that these didgeridoos never excelled in playability or tone quality… I could have probably found some interesting toot relations, but I wasn’t motivated at that time doing it like that…

I know it is difficult to find long didgeridoos, or ones that can be assembled, but it is really worth it if you look for the wonders of deep didgeridoo world.

2.I discovered problems the first time I wanted to put live sound to a higher level during my performance “This illusion”. It was one year after “Storytellingstories”. I got some nice preamps to use as outboard of mixing desk and I brought many nice condenser microphones. The only instrument giving me real questions was the longest didgeridoo, 7 meter with a horn. I had two really good sound engineers with me, on a sound check in a great theatre hall that lasted for half of the day. It seemed in the beginning that we had problem because of the end horn, the sound was muddy, and not punchy enough. But it turned out to be more of a transient problem.  It is partly concerning micing positions and number of microphones, and it is partly in the essence of every long didgeridoo. Sound waves have to bounce long way back and forth until they reach stable position of a standing wave, and that lasts longer than in normally sized instruments. Also the sustain of these instruments is really big.

In a way it is like driving a truck. If you have a good truck, with strong engine, it will go fast, but everything you do affects big mass. So it is more difficult to accelerate, more difficult to break, and when it gets carried away a bit, you have different ways of manouvering it, you have to use the momentum smartly to get it back on track. This is relatively ok when you are alone in the road, but what happens when there are other vehicles around you?

3. Now we come to the most recent story – from recording of Druyd‘s first album (soon to be out:-). There is one song “Daorson” which includes a 4,3 meter D didge. Lately I’ve been changing it with a B didge for convenience of rehearsals… B is the first toot of the long D didgeridoo, so it made sense. And so we practiced with shorter instrument for some time, so the song got new inside rules, and curves… On the recording, I recorded both didgeridoos. With B didgeridoo I had no problem. But when I recorded D didgeridoo, I noticed a very peculiar phenomena when I listened to the recording. Everything sounded as if played with latency/delay. It is due to the fact that it takes longer time for longer didgeridoo to generate sound, it creates a larger mass, and then the sustain keeps it alive for a long time – relatively speaking. In solo performance it can go unnoticed, but in tight rhythmic playing with other instruments, even higher didgeridoos, it is revealed.

What is the conclusion? One has to be aware of this. With practice it is possible to acquire enough skills to be able to play “forward” just right to compensate the latency of a long didgeridoo. It has a certain charm of its own, and one can not regard it as simply positive or negative issue. It also makes playing long tubes more challenging. Just when you thought you got it,

you understood

that deeper inside wood

you must reach,

and with invisible tentacles

feel and navigate

the massive vessel

of deepest sounds…

Enjoy your sound sea journey!

I would like to tell you a story of a didgeridoo creature a bit neglected by its surrounding, but with some qualities so amazing that it solely can reach some places of spaces.
It starts in the Earth environment, somewhere at the seaside where agaves grow. There was a stick so tiny and slick that it would surely be overlooked by a didgeridoo hunting man or woman who knows what she or he is doing. Fortunately, I did not know what I was doing, so I took it home. And as it is usually not the case it was on a surgery desk for making didgeridoo quite soon.
Now all the doctors in my head gathered, scratched their beard and murmured… What could this be… how to make a didgeridoo out of this? We played a lot of long sticks, but never so tiny as this…
And as presence and practice were the best teachers available, ever, at all times, there was a revealing and astonishing first blow. There was a very natural feeling of much greater resonance than one would expect from this little long stick. And the easy silky toots…
It is a 235cm long didgeridoo in F#. The first 8 toots of it are: A#, F#, C, E, G, A#, C#, E
It is nice to play acoustically, BUT where it really shines through are its amazing dances in front of a microphone. Yes, dances is a good word, this didge taught me a lot about various microphone usages and new possibilities of didgeridoo sound. It was first played on Korvo Eksaltiko, and it was really a revealing experience. I believe this didgeridoo, called The Needle didge because of its appearance, has strong place in didgeridoo spectrum.
In short, it has very very nice bass which is deep and can be articulated well. It has enormous crazibilites of toots. The timbre is special and nice, non obtrusive, but powerful. It has smaller dynamic range which suits close miking better. The instrument is dynamically inert in the best sense of it. It can go, but only when you press acceleration pedal hard. There is no way to hurt yourself, microphone, or somebody in the audience accidentally. And it is still in the size that can fit in most places.
I tried to make a copy of it for travelling, but I missed one toot a bit. You could say no big deal, but it puts me to minor scale instead of major, so it can be a big deal, or it can be not, depending on what you want. But I realized many things from and about this instrument, and it will be found in the stories to come…
The point of this little story lies in the fact that something completely new cannot be in something already well known. Things come in their forms unexpectedly, and they do ask for some attention to be discovered….
Well… you know… how it goes… I wish you good luck.

Many things are changing in the didgeridoo world. I notice more and more players enjoy the richness of the deep didgeridoo underworld. I have some new ideas, and works about it, so hopefully it will inspire you in some way that will surprise me later.
There are two aspects what I would like to talk about.
The Joint and The Model.
Since the beginning of my long didgeridoo journey, like everyone who has done it, I’ve had a question how to assemble didgeridoos together. Of course, this is solvable in many ways, and some are much better than the other.
Let’s see the list of things that must be respected.
1. The point is that we can release the joint and disassemble the didge
2. The joint must be airtight
3. It must be either firm enough not to break when force is applied on one end, or flexible
4. Visually acceptable for live performances. So no nude people holding your didgeridoo tight.
5. Doable in reasonable amount of time, otherwise you lose the will to practice or perform, and whether you wander off to visit FoxyBingo or attempt another instrument, the didgeridoo will not benefit.

So far I’ve done it in at least 4 different ways…
First. The tape joint. That is very simple to do, and it works. It is good that it is like that so anyone can try deep didges, not only (successful) rocket scientists.
Second. I made an epoxy/fiberglass joint. For a C didge i played in intro of Storytellingstories. Of course the joint wasn’t perfect enough and I still had to use tape. Only this time, only very little.
Third. The screws joint. It was done for the 10 meter didgeridoo for Storytellingstories. It had some rubber for sealing the joint. But it still needed some tape at some places. And the problem was that the joint was breaking under huge mass of 10 meter didgeridoo. So the whole didge had to be supported on many places during and after assembly.
Fourth. The inox joint. The new joint. It seems to work.

To do the model with some sense demanded a certain amount of didgeridoo experience.

But what does it take to make a deep instrument. Let’s do a little maths.
Let’s say (define) deep didgeridoo is the one which has a basic drone about an octave below “normal” didgeridoo and has at least one toot that sounds like a ‘normal’ didgeridoo. First point of deep instruments where I found it reaches some acoustical satisfaction is around 4 meters. The shape of it is around 20cm at the bell. If you look at that instrument, it has about 3 times the length, 2 times the width in both directions. 3x2x2 = 12 times bigger volume than “normal” didge. So you have to take off and dig out 12 times more wood…How does it sound? It sounds like you will not have many of those didges to try.
So what I did at some point, I took my collection of didgeridoos and made almost every possible joint that made even a bit sense. I found only three didges that made sense. But one made especially lots of sense. It is the combination of g/g# didgeridoo (long conical) I often play  in a duo with Marko Ritoša (Kongoh, Rescribi, Ljubičasto), and the fourth wooden part of 10 meter didgeridoo, a big resonator box. I will not go in details now why I like this sound so much, but I will give you an example;
Arhanđeo svega čudnog
Do you understand?

I have thought about it before, but the final impulse was the gig at JT festival, where I could not go by car, and I do not take my “original” didges to planes. The idea was to copy it, but intentionally not perfectly- otherwise I can’t learn enough from it. I had a bit more work that I thought it would be. For example, I decided to do a perfect joint without going to a metal turner. And it took me three days of work. I found out one thing; inox is sort of a HARDISH material. A bit resistant to any physical changes. So I first changed the his mentality, explaining him that he will be a very important “sound holder”- and this, off course,  is why this joint now works.

The sound. Well – it is what i hoped for. Very similar quality. Bit different sound properties. I still have some work to make it proper, and some ideas that I hope that will work that would make it more versatile. I will need a bit of Heaven’s help and it will be done in no-time.

I will present the sound when the tube comes from the workshop as I have no mean to record there properly.