Translator: Catherine Dean Reviewer: Denise RQ
Hello everybody.
I'm here to talk about tin cans and their use
in the making of musical instruments.
When we think of tin cans and music,
we think of the poor man's instrument, of resourcefulness,
something we play for lack of a better one,
of a budding percussionist's first drums,
of street drummers who only have cans to play their music,
but, what else?
They are used in some musical traditions,
notably in the United States with the banjo can, the "canjo,"
used to play folk music,
jug music accompanied by the spoons,
the washboard, and the washtub bass.
They are used in Central Africa, where children start playing music
on an instrument they simply call a "guitar,"
which is a tin can with a bent branch
and a brake cable from a bike.
African instruments are quite interesting
because they mostly come from everyday objects.
When you live there, when you're in the village,
when you go outside, what do you find?
You find calabashes, goat skins, branches, fishing lines,
and if you put this all together, you get a kora.
Now, as more and more Africans live in urban zones,
when they go outside, what do they find?
They find a wire and a tin can, but the procedure is almost the same.
We can also talk about the Caribbean,
where they use a bigger version:
a 216-liter barrel.
They created, by stamping the lid and hammering it to tune it,
the steel drum, a very interesting instrument
because this one, unlike the others I have mentioned,
isn't an imitation of an existing musical instrument.
It's really an acoustic creation that depends completely on the object.
Before looking at all this, let's go through the types of instruments.
There are four:
the aerophones, the chordophones, the membranophones, and the idiophones.
The aerophones, easy: the sound of air.
It's an instrument in which air is the vibrating and sound matter.
You don't have that with tin cans.
I looked for it, I tried, I did some tests,
but it really wasn't any good, so I won't show it to you.
Let's move on to chordophones.
The chordophones - sound with strings: so, every instrument with strings.
Here are some, we're going to talk about them later on.
The membranophones, it's the drum family:
all those that have an elastic membrane
stretched over a resonator or a frame.
Here, we're not quite there with a tin can,
but not far either.
It means that the lid, as it's welded onto the body of the can,
can be imagined as a sort of metallic membrane
stretched over the resonator.
But not really.
And the idiophones.
So here, let's look at its etymology;
"idiophone": the prefix "idios" comes from Greek.
It means, and it's a bit upsetting, it means "one's own,"
and "phone" means "sound,"
so it's the sound of the object itself.
It's the biggest family,
because, basically, everything is an idiophone.
My tin can - it's an idiophone,
the table: an idiophone,
the floor: and idiophone, as well.
I'm also an idiophone.
(Body beat boxing)
I'm also an aerophone
(Whistling)
and a membranophone.
(Face beat boxing)
(Laughter)
The idiophone family,
is the one we first think of for the tin can.
How can we make a sound with a tin can?
Easy, we hit it.
I mentioned the steel drum that is tuned with a hammer.
We can tune a tin can in the same way.
These ones were hammered to be tuned.
It allows us to have different sounds.
(Making different tin can sounds)
(Applause)
Another way of tuning the cans is to inflate them.
How can you inflate a tin can?
A big box, a piece of pipe, and a hermetic taped seal.
And when I inflate it, it makes a lower note.
(Making a low sound)
When I deflate it, it's higher.
(Making a higher sound out of the tin can)
We can play with this.
(Music)
(Applause)
You might have heard the sound of the pipe,
which also makes a sound.
We can easily play it.
(Making sounds with the pipe)
You will notice that I discretely slipped
an aerophone and a membranophone into the conference.
That's good.
(Laughter)
I've respected the quotas.
We can cut it into little lamellae, like the African Sanza.
(Making sounds using the lamellae)
Quite a raw sound.
We can also fix it to a rod and hit it like a bell.
(Making sounds)
It's not very convincing like that.
But if I hold it the other way round
(Making a sound using the rod)
(Laughter)
it's a bit more interesting.
The rod is making the note.
It's the length of the rod that helps to tune it.
But the can is important for the resonance because if I suppress it,
(Making a sound using the rod)
it'll resonate a lot less than if I let it vibrate.
What is interesting is that, as the rod gives the pitch,
with the same type of can we can create many notes.
I managed five octaves, which means 61 notes.
I'll let you imagine the instrument, it was quite bulky.
Imagine the amount of canned fruit in syrup
I had to eat to create the instrument.
It was a difficult time for my family, a few painful months.
(Laughter)
I didn't bring the big version. I brought the portable one.
This instrument makes three different sounds.
There are the rods
(Making sounds using the rods)
the tin cans
(Making sounds using the cans)
and a sound in between, the edges of the cans
(Making sounds using the cans)
whose sound is between the two.
Let me play a little bit for you.
(Music)
(Applause)
With a tin can, once it's open,
we don't have just one object, but two.
We also have the lid; we have to find a use for it.
How do you make a sound with the lid of a tin can?
The real difficulty is to know how to hold it.
Depending on where we hold it, we change the vibrations.
The place where we hold it is the vibration node,
where it doesn't vibrate.
If I hold it in my whole hand, it goes
(Making a dull sound by knocking the lid)
(Laughter)
If I hold it like a cymbal, by putting my fingers in the middle,
the edges vibrate
- The risks of live conferences! -
(Making a sound)
and if we hold it like a gong, the center vibrates.
(Making the lid sound like a gong)
We can also use it by laying it down.
This way the sound is made by the can bouncing.
(Making sounds using the can)
Here there's some fabric so it's not obvious.
But I have the finished version
With small nails, to stop it from moving about.
(Making sounds using the lid)
I also have smaller versions.
(Laughter)
With all this, I've got the start of a drum set.
See, the cymbals.
(Making cymbal-like sounds)
(Applause)
I was talking about cymbals. Fixed, it sounds a bit like this.
So we tune it by cutting off more or less...
(Making cymbal-like sounds)
cutting off more or less from the edges of the lid, we tune the instrument,
so the drum set's becoming more complex.
(Making cymbal-like sounds)
And to finish the drum set, let's add a can of duck confit.
(Laughter)
This confit box will have two purposes.
The two purposes of it:
we put it on a hi-hat stand,
which will allow me to play the small lids at the bottom, with my foot
(Making drum-like sounds)
(Laughter)
and as it's a tin can, I can also hit it, obviously
(Making drum-like sounds)
and hitting it more or less, the note changes.
(Making drum-like sounds)
(Applause)
The next one is a little strange.
We can't really put a label on it.
I didn't know which family to put it in.
There's this spring from a roller blind winder,
a steel rope, and a tin can.
The rope is used to transfer the vibrations to the tin can
that is the resonator.
And this should...
(Making sounds using the spring)
It has a life of its own.
With this one, it's almost a string instrument,
which is good, as it's a good transition.
So, string instruments -
with tin cans, we are going to look at the harp family.
Why harps?
Acoustically, it's the most powerful.
The difference between a harp and a zither or a lyre
is the position of the strings in relation to the resonance chamber.
On a harp, the strings are perpendicular to the surface.
On a zither or a lyre, they're parallel.
This one resembles a harp,
but not quite
because, acoustically, it's six little single string harps
attached together on a stand.
I still call it a harp, don't worry.
I'm just nitpicking for the conference.
(Making harp-like sounds)
(Applause)
It's the same for the next instrument,
I call this one a cimbalom.
I drew inspiration from the Hungarian cimbalom
which is a kind of big, hammered string zither.
But acoustically, it's still six small harps on one stand.
(Making cimbalom-like sounds)
(Applause)
This one is the most harp-like of them all.
It's almost the same shape, with just one resonator this time
(Making harp-like sounds)
except that as it's a tin can;
we can try out effects that we can't get with wood.
I'm going to fill it with water,
and the water in the resonator will serve as a harmonic filter.
It's going to move around the bottom and create an aquatic sound.
(Making aquatic sounds using the tin harp)
(Laughter)
(Applause)
This one is also a harp because the strings are perpendicular;
and inspired by the slide guitar.
I play it with a piece of metal and slide it across the strings.
It's similar to a blues guitar.
(Making blues guitar-like sounds)
(Applause)
From here, let's move on to guitars.
(Laughter)
I brought one in, my size. This one is quite minimalist.
A neck, a string, and a tin of sardines, a microphone, so we can hear.
And so, when it's plugged in
(Making guitar-like sounds)
- a bit limited, maybe - but if we add some effects
(Making guitar-like sounds and sound effects)
a bit of rhythm
(Making guitar-like sounds and beat boxing)
we're getting there.
(Applause)
And finally,
the electric guitar, the big guns:
(Laughter)
a complete guitar neck, two tins of duck confit
(Laughter)
an electric guitar microphone, so we can hear,
to get the strings' vibrations.
And this should ...
(Making electric guitar-like sounds)
(Music)
(Audience clapping to the rhythm)
(Riffing)
(Applause)
(Cheers)
Thank you.
(Applause)