In yet another post I’ll expand upon this idea and stick the piezos inside my grand piano, lift the pedal… in order to create a really incredible, long, harmonic reverb.You can record almost anything with a piezoelectric (“piezo” for short) pickup.Ī piezo pickup works by generating a small electric current when it is moved or flexed. In another post I explain the construction of the preamp as well as provide schematics so the DIYers among you can build their own. Realize how resonant the cymbal sounds with certain notes and also how it adds a pretty hollow color to it. Probably a bigger cymbal would suit the instrument better.Īnyway, I hope I got you inspired. For a real mix, this would probably be too heavy a reverb. I’ve used just one cymbal, both piezos placed on the edges. One sound convolved on top of another while at the same time being a really dynamic sort of convolution.Īnother example, a recording of an upright bass, this time with the addition of regular microphones, piezo reverb being mixed in rather loudly to make it a good example. If you want, this is as close to analog convolution as you can get. That means I can change the signature of my reverb by changing the cymbal! At the same time, the reverb is not uniform: it accentuates certain frequencies way more than others, depending on the size, type and construction of the individual cymbals. This non-linearity causes a huge increase in dynamics and a really wonderful, musical response in the reverb.

Instead, the cymbal resonates more, is hit harder by the waves of sound, which in turn leads to it vibrating harder and thus creating more overtones (in general instruments produce more of the higher overtones, the harder they are played). As you play louder, the reverb doesn’t just get louder. What I find interesting about this sort of thing is the non-linearity. In some cases you can hear a saturation in resonance, which causes the cymbal to “overdrive” for a little period. Anyway, you can hear two very distinct reverbs, with a lot of resonance coming from the various resonant modes of the cymbals. There are no other mics involved except for the piezos, which I would definitely change if doing a real recording. There’s some compression on the whole track as well as some (unfortunate) audio cassette hiss. In the sound example below, I play a regular flute next to two different cymbals (18″ Meinly Byzance Crash on the right and 20″ Zildjian Constantinople Ride on the left) and at 2:00 I switch to the microtonal Bansuri flute (indian bamboo flute). Oh well, at least there’s a lot of gain 🙂 Otherwise it would pick up my neighbors footsteps. This equipment is by its nature very susceptible to vibrations, handling noises, footsteps, so make sure to isolate the cymbal stand from the ground surface, but also the piezo preamp and cables leading to and from it! I did it by putting a little piece of cloth beneath the preamp and a big pillow beneath the cymbal stand. These piezos are dirt cheap, mine were around 1€ a piece.

For now it’s enough to say that it changes the impedance of the piezos to be usable on a regular mixing desk and also provides a useful, adjustable hi-pass filter because you don’t want too much bass in your reverb.Īttached to it are little contact mics called piezos (from Piezoelectric sensor), they are basically disks that produce current when bent/pressed, so they need to be attached tightly to the surface that they are supposed to pick up. It’s an own design and build and I describe it in detail in a different post. This is the piezo preamp I’m using for the reverb. The ilski PB-1 (“PiezoBanana-1) preamp and two piezo disks attached. Those contact mics have to be attached to a special piezo preamp and then mixed together with the dry signal. Instead of exciting them with a loudspeaker, I choose to play the instruments in question directly next to them. Or piano strings, but that’s for another entry. The basic principle is the same like for plate reverb: attaching two piezo pickups to the cymbal edges and exciting them. Well, the same thing can be done with other vibrating, resonant object like for example… cymbals.

It’s not a real room that’s reverberating, it’s a sheet of metal. You could say physical simulation. The vibrations are picked up and amplified, delivering a super nice fake-reverb. In the case of a plate reverb, a metal sheet is hung on a frame, two or more contact microphones ( transducers) are attached to it and then the plate is brought into motion by a loudspeaker. Plate or spring reverbs are one example: letting phenomena of the physical world influence recordings and tracks. What I mean by that is something like physical production. Lately I’ve been craving for more natural or real-world production methods in my music.

Diy make your own piezo pickups