Delicious Morsel #2 – Dresser Drawers

This post in the Delicious Morsel series, celebrates playing untraditional instruments such as natural and inanimate objects like an everyday piece of furniture – a clothes dresser. Enjoy the story, and feel free to share your creative musical endeavors!

Delicious Morsel #2
Dresser Drawers
December 12, 2016

I have always loved creating music with untraditional instruments, natural objects, and so on. I remember doing this on several occasions when I was supposed to be getting dressed for grade school. Our clothes dresser, shared by three of us, had hanging handles on the drawers. So, I would sit on the floor in front of the dresser, flip a handle and let it rhythmically bounce a few beats before flipping another handle. The results, in my opinion, were some cool rhythms with naturally occurring delay and reverb effects.  I basked in these satisfying sounds….    “Bop, pa, pa..… Bop, pa..… Bop..… Bop….. Bop, pa, pa..… Bop, pa… Bop… Bop…“

Actually, I would get lost in these sounds until I heard my mom yell from the kitchen, “Knock it off and get dressed!”  Then, I was brought back to the reality that I was supposed to be getting ready for school.  =]

To honor this creative spirit and to make space for the unique and unusual, we have incorporated many nontraditional instruments in the songs on the Set Me Free CD.  To commemorate this experience specifically, I play dresser drawers on a song called, “Abundance”, which sings about being “… rich in experience.”  It has a reggae beat, a beautiful blend of harmonies, percussion and unusual instruments.  When I listen to it, I want it to play on forever.

Cheers!

Janie

*The Delicious Morsel series were posts shared with those who supported the Set Me Free CD recording project by pre-ordering music, requesting custom songs, and making donations towards my fundraising campaign on Indigogo. I am so appreciative of this group of stellar beings.

This dresser is exactly like the one I grew up with and created cool percussive rhythms on before heading off to grade school.