A buzzing effects unit

As mentioned before, it’s not always easy to record the buzzing of mbiras and calabashes in a way that doesn’t dominate the mic’s sound.

When recording Sekuru Chawasarira’s album, Samora spent considerable time and effort sound-designing the buzzing. For the Rushinga recordings however, time was very tight, and he decided simply to remove the buzzers from the mateze altogether.

Unfortunately, without buzzing, the mbira sounds rather “naked”. An essential component is missing. Therefore, I started to wonder whether one could add it after the fact.

My first idea was to try mounting a speaker inside a deze. I asked friends for components, and the fabulous Ecki Güther suggested using a transducer instead, went straight away down to his basement, and came back with everything I needed.

Here’s a video of my first attempts:

Obviously, the recorded result contains the dry signal again. In our case it had been recorded already in a gourd and carefully EQ-ed at this point in the mixing process.

To retain only the actually buzzing components, I removed the tonal elements in SpectraLayers, keeping only transients and noise:

After some additional dynamic EQing and expansion, the result sounds quite promising:

The response of the buzzers in a Deze is the result of many factors. The video shows how even tiny changes in position can emphasize different keys and frequencies. The same is true when an mbira is mounted in the Deze.

While the result might not be 100% “authentic”, it’s theoretically possible to use EQing to highlight specific notes in the input signal, ideally emphasizing the rhythmic signature of the emsemble’s various Hera parts. I’m excited to experiment further.