Wood Blocks in Commercial Music
Studio percussionist Emil Richards had a set of piccolo woodblocks in his instrument collection, which were chromatically tuned in two octaves, from C6-C8. He bought them from Professional Drum Shop in the 1970s, as the uniqueness of the instrument combined with the keyboard layout was appealing. This shared western tuning system enabled him to play the instrument along with other orchestral instruments. In the studio he often performed piccolo woodblocks on cartoon soundtracks such as Looney Tunes; composer Stephen James Taylor used the piccolo woodblocks a number of times in his Disney projects such as in the Timon & Pumbaa TV series. Due to the diminutive size of these woodblocks, Emil often used small, hard xylophone or glockenspiel mallets or even triangle beaters when playing them.
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