So being that it fits the holiday, I thought I would share a bit on myself. In my area there is a large camp out that happens on mothers day (I go with my mom), and then 6 months later. It attracts about 300-400 people, and it is a giant celebration of the drums. Mainly the typical drum circle type of crowd, but sometimes you get the random tie with a snare or tom-tom set, lots of bongos, and any other style you can think of. The crowd is a wonderful mixture of race, age, sex, beliefs, and just like here, everyone is an equal.
Now there are also a fair amount of didgeridoo players, and that is an instrument that I have always been fascinated by. While camping there are TON of classes through out the day. Anything from crafts, dancing, drumming, and you guessed it, digg playing.
I went to my first class after sharing a community breakfast with the surrounding tent, I had my gritty coffee, couldn't be to picky and I gotta have it.
I was able to produce the reverberation needed to make sounds in less than 10 minutes, but it only took me 2 minutes to fall in love. After the class I hung around and shot the shit with the instructor who had been playing for 15+ years. He shared some good advice with me on shifting my pitch, and ways to project different sounds, and let me play around on him personal digg. As you may imagine this only drove the newly acquired love in to a fast burning passion. His dig was made by his own hands and was a 7' elm tree. He said every second of work was solely done by him, including cutting down the tree. As someone in love with nature, and working with my hand, I had already made a new set of goals. I bought a homemade pvc digg of a guy that night for $5, and started just making noise all over the camp ground.
Over the course of the next 3 months, I studied all I could about them. I learned to appreciate them as more than just a "noise stick." I started looking at my surrounding area for trees I could use. Problem was I don't have the tool to take on that kind of project, and my budget didn't include buying a bunch of tools for the same price I could buy a nice digg for. So I had to keep looking... One day walking along a lake, I found a nice mature bamboo patch, and found my digg. I ended up harvesting about a dozen 20" sections to find the right sections, but when I found it, I knew it.
For the sake of time.. I will shorten this part... I basically started building them, and selling them. I didn't go crazy it was only about 8 of them that sold, but they where $40 regardless of time put in, and I tried to make each one personalized for that person. The average digg took me about 40 hours to harvest, bore, sand, burn, carve, and shape mouth pieces. I made them under the name of Whoom Sticks. I have always been told that while drumming in a circle, if you loose you beat just go back to the heart beat. All circles will be on beat with the heart, and it is believed to be from being in the mothers womb, listening to her heart. I have tested this idea many times, and it has came true every single time. So I did a play on the word womb (didn't think womb stick sounded right... cache dump incoming!) and went with Whoom, it is a sound the dig makes too so it was fitting.
My last trip to the camp out, i only brought my personal bamboo. The one that took me 240 feet to find 5 foot I liked. My very first hand made digg, THE first Whoom Stick. I wake up, have my community breakfast, and grab my gritty coffee. I have a class to go to. This time I played my digg form the back of the class. It is now my 4th or 5th time attending his class, and I no longer needed to have his full attention, however I had it anyways. After the class I stayed around again as I normally did. Except this time the teacher was playing my digg, my hard work, my passion. I was a bit intimidated having a master of his craft inspect my work, but was was ever so joyful to hear him play it. He did things on it I still to this day can not. It was enchanting to hear, and inspirations for future learning. To top it off he asked to use it for a performance that night, and had a short talk about it on stage. I got a HUGE round of applause, it was a wonderful feeling. Later that night I had a guy offer me $150 for it, and jumped to $175 when I declined. It's not the fanciest digg, or even that nice really but to me it's priceless. I kindly told him no amount of money could separate me from my digg. He just gave me a hug, and his business card. He was a marketing executive, and offered me a chance to make cash on my work, to which I also kindly declined. Having the guy who taught me to play use my piece for a performance was enough payment for all the work I had done.
I no longer make them, but did enjoy it, I do still play them however. Mo son loves to listen to it, and just laughs the entire time. So in the name of high and free spirits, under the great ball of fire in our sky, I leave you with a pagan and his digg. (theres a lot of fine carving, and burning that can't be seen
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