Plato is reported to have said “Necessity is the mother of
invention” about 2,400 years ago. As far as we know, he did
not have the advantage of being a percussionist.
Drummers invent things all of the
time simply because playing their instruments
or moving quickly from one instrument
to another demands it. Sometimes
these inventions are commercially-available
products; more often than not, one must
build a device based on one’s own idea, or
on a concept borrowed from a fellow percussionist.
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| castanet base |
Percussionist Dan Diamond, who has
been with the Concord Band since 1970,
learned while in high school that percussionists
are required to be inventive. The
first stand he ever saw that allowed a player
to quickly pick up and put down a pair of
crash cymbals was made by Warren Myers,
then principal percussionist of the Springfield
Symphony Orchestra (formerly with
the Boston Pops) and director of Dan’s high
school band. Dan still uses a pair of castanets
mounted for him by Myers on a plastic
base more than 50 years ago.
 |
| wind machine |
The first device that Dan was called upon
to construct was in his earliest days as a
member of both the Band and the Concord
Orchestra, which he joined at the same
time: a “wind machine”. It was called for by
Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle, being performed
by the Orchestra. Amazingly, it was
needed by the Band in the very next season
for Robert Russell Bennett’s Down to the
Sea in Ships. A percussion wind machine
produces not wind but the sound of wind.
The Internet not yet having been invented,
there was no way to determine easily how
existing wind machines had been constructed,
so Dan contacted Everett Beale, a
neighbor and one
of Boston’s leading
free-lance
professional percussionists,
who
described to Dan
on the phone how
the Boston Symphony’s
wind machine
was constructed.
When Neil Tischler,
a consulting
mechanical engineer, joined the Band
percussion section in
1972, he and Dan discussed
the need for a
crash cymbal stand. Neil
designed and built the
stand that the Band still
uses (photo, right). In the
opinions of many percussionists,
Neil’s design is
more functional than the
commercial products that
finally became available
20 or so years ago. The
principal drawback of the
latter is that while several
different players, located
yards apart on the stage,
may have to play the
crash cymbals in the same piece of music,
these stands do not have wheels. When the
Band found it
useful to acquire
a commercial
stand a
few years ago
so that one
could remain at
Fruitlands during
the summer
and one be kept
at 51 Walden
for rehearsals, Buck Grace, a Band percussionist
since 1995, built a rolling base for
the commercial stand.
While still on the subject of cymbals, but
this time those referred to as “suspended,”
we have two more Concord Band inventions.
Neil Tischler, who plays drum set in
the Band whenever it is called for, realized
many years ago that it would be convenient
to be able to
stack two cymbals
several inches apart
on one stand (as long
as the upper cymbal
is much smaller in
diameter than the
lower, always the
case when it is a
“splash” cymbal).
Being an accomplished
machinist,
about 20 years ago Neil fabricated an extension
to the upper arm of a suspended
cymbal stand by threading both ends of a
steel rod: one end internally and one externally:
The cymbal post extension was born.
Dan Diamond prefers to hang a suspended
cymbal from a “crook” rather than
to put it on the post of a suspended cymbal
stand. This requires that a leather cymbal
strap—similar to the kind used for crash
cymbals—be attached to the cymbal. The
problem with this is that
it takes a few minutes to
untie and retie the special
knot that holds a cymbal
strap to a cymbal, meaning
that it becomes inconvenient
to quickly switch
a suspended cymbal from
“crook” use to “stand post” use. So Diamond
invented a quick-change strap that
goes on and comes off in seconds.
Dan Diamond is the senior member of the Concord Band, having joined the ensemble in January, 1970. He is a percussionist who began his lifelong love affair with the snare drum 63 years ago. His is also the founder/ editor of our newsletter, Notes from the Concord Band.
