Didgeridoo BASS GENERATION Part 2- Some answers about „kick- didge“

Welcome to the next chapter about didgeridoo bass generation, which reveals what were the action didgeridoo heroes from the previous chapter. It also gives us some detail about kick didge, how it is generated frequency-wise and timewise. We are shown how kick didge sounds in comparison to kick drum, and some new questions arise.

Point of view

I would like to stress one very important aspect of this research and that is that observation is prior to conclusion.  A high quality observation is done in mental space, with no noise of mind tendencies. High quality observation gives us facts,  where inductive concluding sometimes is nothing more than another assumption. This research starts with „do not assume anything“  point,  and tends to end there also. It is easy to fall into trap of early conclusion, and miss the real truth.  So let’s try to keep that in mind together with the beautiful cosmic traffic sign:

„Instead of looking for truth, stop cherishing your opinions.“

And we continue to move as light as light.

Results of the Kick-Didge test

On the date 30/10/10 without the original kick drum sound given for direct comparison, and without knowing which didgeridoo is which, the results for the biggest bass impression, comparing different techniques on same didgeridoos were as follows:

Didgeridoo Bass Test results

Interesting enough,  different techniques were  recognized as most bass impressive for different didgeridoos. B for didgeridoo 1, D for didgeridoo 2, A for didgeridoo 3, and B for didgeridoo 4. In sum of them all, B would be the bassiest sound  and, a bit surprisingly, A – which is in a very strong  first place for didgeridoo 3 – is found to be  the least bass impressive overall.
So it seems without much conclusion that the most bass impressive sound technique varies from didgeridoo to didgeridoo.

The contenders

Let us see now what our contending didgeridoos were and learn a bit more about them.

DIDGERIDOO #1
Our first didgeridoo is somewhat known  „Needle“ didgeridoo in this incarnation called „Iglica III“. A 232cm long F# made of bloodwood eucalyptus. One to be the least noticed in the acoustic playing, due to its low volume. However , it is the didgeridoo I use the most lately. I think that I’ve counted 7 songs that I play on this didgeridoo, which is more than any other didgeridoo that I own.  Here you can find out more about The Needle didgeridoo.

See it in action:

DIDGERIDOO #2
Our second test didgeridoo is probably the most famous of all my didgeridoos, father and mother to all didgeridoos that came after it, my white C didgeridoo, prototype of Moytze.  200cm long, relatively acoustically loud, with dark but full spectrum.

Here you can see the original didgeridoo. And see the evolution of Moytze didgeridoo.

See it in action in its days of glory;-):

DIDGERIDOO #3
The third didgeridoo is a new design called “Extreme Dream E”, shortly EDE. It is 190cm long bluegum eucalyptus didgeridoo in E. It is a new logic of didgeridoo that still needs a lot of exploration, but already it gives great results in detail, voice transparency and very interesting toot intervals and colours. Also it is quite loud compared to the C didgeridoo. Learn more about this didgeridoo.

And see it in action here:

DIDGERIDOO #4
Our fourth test didgeridoo is the newest beast of all. It is developed probably on the „superdidg“ technology, known to humankind even years before this article, but kept in relative secret. It is 187cm long Eb bloodwood eucalyptus didgeridoo. Does not have its own web page yet, but soon will. This didgeridoo is extremely loud and has very full bodied sound, coming from his upper bass range, also with lot of detail and very nice and easy toots.

See it in action a bit here:

Didgeridoo comparison results

So how do these tubes compare one to the other, we find out here:

Didgeridoo comparison results

These results are interesting as I witnessed approximately the opposite comments when I played these didgeridoos unamplified, live. Regarding volume they are put in order, 1 being the least loud, 4 being the loudest. In frequencies, they are almost in order, only 3 is a little bit higher in pitch than 4.  Maybe the sheer depth of didgeridoo causes a strong bass impression. But also, maybe there is even stronger reason found in the logic of techniques 1-3 which are  mostly made in the logic of didgeridoo #1, and also the miking technique is what suits didgeridoo #1 most. More about how to make your sound BIG particularly with this kind of didgeridoo, but generally with any kind of didgeridoo can be found in this Microphone Positioning article.

As announced,we will make no more conclusions, but only notice that generally acoustically least impressive didgeridoo was voted as convincingly most bass impressive didgeridoo when miked in a certain way.

Comparison to the „real thing“

Let’s hear now how our action heroes hold against the real kick drum!  This is (more or less) how the kick drum sounds. The ending sound is a bit cut off  hihat which is not important for our story, it reminds of breath sound, doesn’t it?

Now let’s compare it to the didgeridoo sound we found to be most bass impressive. It is 1B sound.

Hmmm… Not quite the same, is it?
It seems to be more than „bass impression“ in the kick drum. Compared to didgeridoo sound it’s somehow shorter and more explosive, sounds higher, has more transients … feel free to continue the sequence for yourself. Let’s try another sound, that has more of this properties, for example 3A.

Still not the same, is it?
Why? The kick drum still kicks harder. Let us examine a bit deeper to find out some new facts about these sounds.  Maybe it will open our ears, eyes and mind about what where and when makes these differences in sound generation.

Looking into the sound

This is what happens in exactly one half of the second.

Didg and drum soundwaves

The upper is didgeridoo sound 1B. The lower sound is the kick drum in the tail of which is a captured sound of hihat. That tail is not important to us, we focus only on the beginning and we see that it takes much less time before this kick drum reaches it’s peak and in a way it is more concrete/direct in the beginning. It also lasts much shorter.

If we take another zoom in we see that kick drum has more sinusoidal shape. This is due to the fact that didgeridoo has a lot of superponed waves (harmonics) on the main (fundamental) wave. We can read that from picture as medium sized shapes, peaks and valleys on big black shapes. If we put our nose closer to the monitor, we can see that both didgerido and  kick drum have small shapes (some higher frequencies), and that kick drum has more of those.

Didgeridoo and drum soundwaves - zoom in

But this kind of observation is already frequency domain, so we can use frequency analyzer to see what’s happening.

This is the frequency analysis of a kick drum:

Kick drum frequencies

And this is the frequency analysis of the 1B didgeridoo sound in F#:

Kick Didgeridoo frequencies

If we compare the two we can see that didgeridoo has a dominant sub bass,  around 40Hz, where kick drum has dominant bass around 100Hz and much less of sub bass around  40Hz. Now is a good moment, if it wasn’t already before, to notice that what we call bass actually has (at least) two frequencies. Something below 100Hz and something above 100Hz. Do we know how to recognize them? We’ll come back later here, now let’s see a bit more of the spectrum.

When we observe the peaks it is not important to see the absolute value, only the relative position between them is important. This is what describes sound. So we can see that didgeridoo has many frequencies that can compare in loundess to the fundamental one, many more compared to the kick drum case. Are these higher frequencies important for the kick-drum sound?  Generally they seem not to be, but there might be some special ones that could be important.

There is no need to describe now in more detail what is in the picture, you can see for yourself, and most probably we will come back to it again, anyway.

The nonconcluding conclusion

It is a subjective feeling,  but  with this direct comparison we might have noticed that our didgeridoo sounds did not bear a lot of kick drum quality. Also, kick-drum had much more of a kick quality. Is this the end of kick didg and of using didgeridoo as a drum? Should we go back to basic drone and play the didgeridoo how it is „supposed“  to play? Or play it traditionally? Maybe. Maybe not.
Maybe we find out more in the next chapter.
Maybe they are in the forest…

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