An Ode to the Vibraslap
August 18th, 2008 by jillysptags: amusing
This morning I was walking to work from the subway, minding my own business when “Lucky 13″ entered the rotation on my iPod in shuffle mode. After the jungle drums entered and the second guitar riff subsided, I thought my ears deceived me, so I immediately hit the back button to have a second listen.
Sure enough, I warped straight back to memories of high school band: that distinctive “bzzzzwahhhh” so cheekily colors the song’s intro.
After trying to hunt down what the heck that instrument is called (don’t even try to get me to repeat the sounds I made to my coworkers), Wikipedia informs me that it is called a “vibraslap.” It consists “of a piece of stiff wire (bent in a handle-like shape) connecting a wood ball to a block of wood with metal ‘teeth’ inside.”
I remember laughing every time anyone played that stupid vibraslap in high school, so naturally I just couldn’t believe my ears that the Smashing Pumpkins included it on their studio work and I’d missed it all these years.
Thanks for the laugh, Jimmy.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Here’s how to Play a Vibraslap :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJpT2Kn-jfc
August 18th, 2008 at 10:13 am
LOL! Thanks Jerome — too funny. Never thought I’d be watching YouTube vids of how to play random percussion instruments this morning. This promises to be a good week. :)
August 18th, 2008 at 10:40 am
not sure how you missed that for so long, jilly. tsk, tsk.
i reccommend relistening to the entire catalog with headphones to see what else you discover. this has been standard practice for me since the days of jangling bracelets and passing buses. ;-)
August 18th, 2008 at 10:43 am
What’s up, Dr. Spoilsport? Don’t give me a hard time on a Monday morning. :)
It’s not even headphones that do the trick — it’s these blasted noise-isolating inner-ear headphones that really help bring out the teensy tiny nuances of some of the instruments they use.
I’d imagine Jimmy’s jazz background means he has a lot of hilariously random percussion instruments in his magic bag of tricks.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:57 am
haha…just trying to make your monday morning more whimsical, actually… :-P
srsly though, you’re right, i got a pair of those “noise-isolating inner-ear headphones” as well, last year. they work great for electronica! for sub-par quality live recordings or live-recordings with lots of crowd chatter, not so much…
August 18th, 2008 at 11:09 am
I’d say that the vibraslap is pretty whimsical, yes. My coworkers were like, “Ratchet? No… Juice Harp? No…” and then my friend Rob I guess did a random search on some high school music supply company and found the dumb thing. So great.
I agree on the headphones — and btw, the Paul Van Dyk show was good, but I think I’ve seen him too much the past year. The setlist wasn’t different enough that I was that into it — plus, seeing ANYTHING on a pier is a bad idea. Long and narrow concert venue is super duper lame. We couldn’t even GET to a beer tent because it was so jam-packed.
Plus, so many people were on hard drugs (and doing them around us instead of dancing) that it wasn’t very comfortable. No, thanks, dude, I don’t want to watch you lick coke off your fingers and chest-bump with your meathead buddies. STFU.
August 18th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Hey, where’s the DOOM explosion in Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness?
;)
August 18th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
“Ratchet? No… Juice Harp? No…”
You mean Jew’s Harp?
August 19th, 2008 at 10:21 am
While it is also sometimes called a Jew’s trump or juice harp, among other names, it has no particular connection with Judaism.
So says Wikipedia. I also knew it as an Ozark harp growing up since I dun growed up in Missurrrah, y’all.