Willie G. Moseley Posted July 16, 2014 Posted July 16, 2014 "Caution--Alligator (Do Not Stop On Tracks)": Grateful Dead"Sweet Emotion": Aerosmith"Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys": TrafficOthers?
tomteriffic Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 It's a neat instrument, but needs to be used sparingly. Most Esteemed Redhead's rule is three times per song, max. We do a stripped down, field-holler-ified, swampified take on John Fogerty's "110 in the Shade" The vibraslap shows up exactly three times. Don't know if it was there in the original but the vibraslap was a natch the way we do it.Almost piped up with the Traffic tune...
tomteriffic Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 Jimi - All Along the WatchtowerYup, forgot that one.
killerteddybear Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 Buried deep in the intro to Bon Jovi's 'Wanted Dead or Alive'
Thundernotes Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 Is it just me, or does "Vibra-Slap" sound like some kind of kinky sex toy?
aknapp Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 I'd always wondered what they called that thing. I searched for vibraslap on Youtube last night. One of the first links is < 2 minutes, lists a number of songs that have it, and the origin.According to the video, vibraslap is a replacement for a "horse jaw" or "donkey jaw".Horse jaw or donkey jaw is exactly that - the lower jaw bone of either animal with the teeth still attached. As it dries, the jaw bone shrinks away from the teeth just enough to cause them to rattle. There's a Youtube video for that, too.I'm at work, which does allow access to Youtube except for work-related stuff, or I'd embed the videos.
JohnnyB Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 I'd always wondered what they called that thing. The Vibra-Slap was the first patented instrument from Latin Percussion, in 1967. Real donkey jaws (quijadas) are fragile and have a sort of short sustain. The Vibra-Slap is much more durable (the original reason for its invention), is louder, and rattles longer. The music world wasted no time incorporating it, as some of recordings mentioned in the thread (e.g., Watchtower) came out within a year of the Vibra-Slap's introduction. I still remember when these first showed up in the percussion catalogs when I was finishing jr. high school. I remember playing one in jr. hi or high school band for a Latin number. On behalf of aknapp, here's (probably) the YouTube video he mentioned but couldn't embed:
Willie G. Moseley Posted July 17, 2014 Author Posted July 17, 2014 I'm 87.4% sure about this one: "Transmitter, Part 2", from the side-long disco version of Battlestar Galactica music, by Giorgio Moroder; i.e. he did the same thing in 1978 with that original TV series that Meco did with Star Wars earlier. There's a percussion break right after "It's Love, Love, Love", the only vocal on the side, and I seem to recall a vibra-slap in there... Gawd only knows how you could suss that one out...the album cover was PG-13, BTW.
JohnnyB Posted July 17, 2014 Posted July 17, 2014 Bobby Rosengarden is a drummer you've never heard of, but have most certainly heard. He preceded Ed Shaughnessy on the Tonight Show band and left to be the bandleader on the Dick Cavett show for its entire run 1968-74. He also did session work for a lot of top 40 hits on the one hand, and played classical percussion under Arturo Toscanini for the NBC Orchestra on the other.So why am I telling you this? Because one day, Martin Cohen, founder of Latin Percussion (which later became part of the Kaman Music Group), was talking with Bobby Rosengarden in 1967. Tthe Wiki entry about the Vibra-Slap says:"Cohen was told by percussionist Bob Rosengarden, "If you want to make some money, make a jawbone that doesn’t break." About the inventing process Cohen remembers, "I had never seen a jawbone before, but I had heard one on a Cal Tjader album. I found out that it was an animal skull that you would strike, and the sound would come from the teeth rattling in the loose sockets. So I took that concept and invented the Vibraslap, which was my first patent."Rosengarden would have known all about these obscure hand percussion instruments, and had no doubt encountered the fragile nature of the jawbone. If you're ready to perform or in the middle of a song and the jawbone breaks, it's not like you can run right out and get a replacement. The introduction of the Vibra-Slap made the sound more accessible and more reliable, and definitely started showing up in more songs. Before it was pretty much a Latin thing.So you never know what a casual suggestion may result in.
Hamerhack Posted July 18, 2014 Posted July 18, 2014 You learn something every day!Once again, The HFC is the ultimate source of music info!
MCChris Posted July 18, 2014 Posted July 18, 2014 Once again, JohnnyB is the ultimate source of info about everything in the history of human creation, and almost everything prior to that!FIFY
specialk Posted July 20, 2014 Posted July 20, 2014 It's a neat instrument, but needs to be used sparingly. I don't know if it's the best use, but it is used (sparingly) on Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding.
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