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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Famous quotes containing the words wood, blocks, commercial and/or music:
“It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they made their bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it.”
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and overrules the oncoming roar
of tragic life that fills alleys and avenues;
it blocks the way of pedicabs, police, convoys.”
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“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)