PERCUSSION
WIND, WATER, & ACOUSTIC PERCUSSION | Mark Shelton
“ Mark, could you pick up the wind machine and bring it to rehearsal?”
OCEAN DRUM
On the orchestra’ s program was Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofé. The final movement,“ Cloudburst,” calls for a wind machine, and the rented instrument needed to be picked up from the percussion shop and delivered to the rehearsal. As a member of the percussion section( and owner of a van), the delivery request came to me. Not only did I deliver the instrument, I got to turn the crank and bring out the sound of strong gusts in the performance.
As percussionists, we are certainly musicians, but at times we are called on to provide services as sound designers or Foley artists. Although it’ s easy to trigger a sample or play a recording, in some cases the situation calls for old-school analog acoustic instruments to suggest a spring shower or a blast of wind.
RAIN STICK
The term, geophony, refers to natural sound produced by the physical forces of the Earth, including wind, rain, flowing water, thunder, and other environmental phenomena. Check out several percussion instruments capable of evoking geophony related to wind or water.
OCEAN DRUM Originally called a geophone, the ocean drum is a two-headed frame drum containing a large number of metal beads. The player holds the instrument with the heads roughly parallel to the floor and shifts the drum’ s position, so the beads roll around the bottom head. The resulting sounds simulate the splashing and crashing timbre of waves. Check out the video demo.
WIND WAND
RAIN STICK The gentle sound of a rain stick seems to transmit tranquility. There is something special about the sonority of hundreds of pebbles bouncing against dozens of crisscrossed cactus spines. There are two demo videos. 108 October 2026 Subscribe for Free...