Pitch Bend

Okay, I know it's rediculously easy to pitch bend on a trombone, and I'm assuming other brass intstruments is almost as easy...
I've tried a pitch bend on vibes, and it works, but is there any way to amplify it (other than a microphone) so it can actually be heard?
(Pitch bending on vibraphone involves pressing one mallet gently on the 'node' and sliding the other mallet from one end of the bar to the center).

~Kal

Originally Posted by Keerakh Kal

Okay, I know it's rediculously easy to pitch bend on a trombone, and I'm assuming other brass intstruments is almost as easy...
I've tried a pitch bend on vibes, and it works, but is there any way to amplify it (other than a microphone) so it can actually be heard?
(Pitch bending on vibraphone involves pressing one mallet gently on the 'node' and sliding the other mallet from one end of the bar to the center).

I'd expect not, especially not with mallets. I suppose bowing may be louder...but I dunno.

...

hmmm good idea Robin... we surely can bow the note while pitch bending... but you obviously need two players. Or four to make two notes at the same time !

I didn't know that was possible. I'd wondered some time back about the possibility of pitch bending on a piano by having some variable tension strings, but that's just utterly impractical.

Originally Posted by autophage

I didn't know that was possible. I'd wondered some time back about the possibility of pitch bending on a piano by having some variable tension strings, but that's just utterly impractical.

That sounds suspiciously like the massive piano 'whammy' bar a friend and I designed one drunken evening.

Pitch bending on Piano? That would be....different. Maybe something the Blue Man Group would do...

~Kal

Might as well just use a keyboard with the capability on a piano patch.

Or you could just fuck up a perfectly good piano.

Originally Posted by spherenine

Or you could just fuck up a perfectly good piano.

That was pretty much our design. A massive pull-lever beside the keyboard, attached through some mechanical wizardry to the strings, allowing the performer to increase/decrease the tension. We wanted it to be as intrusive and dangerous-looking as possible.

Originally Posted by robinjessome

That was pretty much our design. A massive pull-lever beside the keyboard, attached through some mechanical wizardry to the strings, allowing the performer to increase/decrease the tension. We wanted it to be as intrusive and dangerous-looking as possible.

Sounds like my kinda device.

Careful, with all the stuff going on nowadays, people might think you were trying to build a bomb and sneak it into Carnegie Hall.
Experiences with S.W.A.T. generally don't end well (I've heard).

~Kal