Client: Self
Year: 2010
Role: Sound Design, Instrument Design
Red Bull Music Academy London 2010 was a dream. I also performed with Talvin Singh on a different project. Watching him play tabla, how connected he was to the instrument, how sensitive every touch was. That made me want to build a sensitive instrument for electronic music.
The controllers that existed weren’t it. M-Audio Trigger Finger, Korg NanoPad, Roland SPD20, Handsonic. Rubber pads you had to hit. I wanted finger sensitivity, not drum strikes.
Bumdrum takes cues from the Hang Drum and Aqua Drum, but it’s modular. Four pads or twelve, depending on the performance. Portable, durable, rebuildable. The pads attach to any object.
It controls more than virtual instruments. Samples, effects, arrangements. A software layer handles scale arrangement and MIDI mappings so you set it up once and forget about the technical side.
I used Bumdrum in all my Onor Bumbum performances. Tufan Demir and I played Sonar 2010 with it.