The story of my PATENT for tuning drums by the use of AIR PRESSURE:

I had a dream one night that I was playing on balloons. As I played them, I could blow into them and make them change their tones upward, reasoning that, ( as they stretched, the skin got tighter and they went up in pitch), or as I let the air leak out of the balloons, the heads became looser which lowered their pitch. We were performing at a club in Oneanta, N.Y., and the band had rooms included and was staying upstairs.

Here is the PATENT I was awarded

At 5 A.M.. the next morning I was down on the bandstand, had the small tom off the kit, and was blowing into it through the small air-hole in the drum. It really went up in pitch as the head stretched over an octave, and that did it. As fate would have it, there was a guy there sweeping the floor, and he asked me what I was doing, so I told him about my discovery. After a few moments of conversation, he said, "I can build that for you". I was shocked, I said you're kidding. What are you doing here sweeping up? He said, I'm only working here for the summer while I'm off from school. I said school? He had long hair, a full beard, and looked funny to me, kind of like Rip Van Winkle or something. But you know, this jazz, "drummer dude", half bombed, down on his hands and knees in his bathrobe and slippers, blowing into a drum at 5 o'clock in the morning, must also have been a sight to behold.

. . . . . . As it would come to pass, we were a matched pair. The next thing he said blew my mind. I've got my MASTERS degree in pneumatics and engineering, and I'm sure we can have something on the bandstand by tonight, what is it you really want to do"? BINGO - The magic question.

. . . . . Well I told him I wanted to control the pitch of all of the TOMS so I could get them to go up or down, in unison, as I wanted. He said you'll need some kind of a manifold to send air to the drums evenly, and some kind of control for the gradual release of pressure (I hadn't thought about this). Then I thought PRESSURE, PRESSURE, hell I COULD BLOW this whole set of drums up. OH NO! With my luck I'd probably do it in front of a packed house.

. . . . . I was on the road at the time with "RUBIN MITCHELL", an up and coming piano star for CAPITAL RECORDS., with his trio. We were playing some great rooms throughout the East Coast, in front of standing room only crowds. This was all going through my mind, as mentally I prepared for what was to come. All of a sudden, we had a lot of planning to do, because by now, on a hand shake, I had made Scott Barnes my equal partner in this venture.

. . . . . It was decided that for that night I'd blow through hoses with a homemade mouthpiece that we made, into a copper manifold, and through some rubber tubing into the drums. So there I was up on the stage with this rig, and when it came time to solo, everybody else got off the stage and left me, and my hoses, and a very red face up there, huffing and puffing, and doing my thing. Tomorrow night though would prove to be a VERY different story.

. . . . . The next day we took apart an old refrigerator which we found on someone's curb, (for its oil encased compressor), and found a round tank used for freon about 2 ft. around, in which to put the air under pressure. I took all the paint off the ball, and polished it to a shiny silver metallic color, it looked like something from outer space. Then we built a cabinet out of unfinished wood to house the compressor, and insulated it, to keep it quiet.

. . . . . Then Scott said "we need a special valve to adjust the amount of air pressure, so the BALL DOESN'T BLOW UP"! Now that gave me a whole different outlook toward my invention. It wasn't just a drum device, it had the potential of being a" DAMN BOMB". Scott said, "don't worry." I have learned from being "in the streets" for over 30 years, that when people say "don't worry" to you -- it's time to really WORRY!

. . . Nobody ever did get hurt, - luckily, by any of the explosions, or any other mishaps those two allowed to happen while playing all those unneccessary and stupid games. As it worked out, the money man and the engineer went completely mad. The money man brought the engineer to Oneanta NY, from Buffallo NY, and set him up with a shop, and a business, to service the resteraunts and hotels he owned while working on the invention. As part of my original aggreement with the money man, I recieved a brand new double set of purple Gretch "Art Blakey model" set of drums. On the bandstand I also had the only device of its kind in the world for tuning drums by ther use of air pressure. I was the only one who really ended up with anything.

They dreamed up another 30 ways to do what I originally concieved. They wasted 5 yrs, building all these crazy prototypes, none of which were of any musical value---- all the time I kept saying "its the original unit, - that is what all the other drummers will want because of its musical ability - and the way the heads felt while playing - it was what I had dreamed about". They wouldn't listen, at all.

Finally the money man died from a heart attack, and the engineer went back to Buffallo NY, where he was from. For all intent purposes it was over. What I didn't realize was the when I got involved with Electronic percussion and live performance with hand held controllers, the first idea that came into my head was that I would now have the ability to do what my invention was allowing me to do with air (change the pitch of drums sounds as I played them, both up, or down), and a lot more, - the new door was now open for endless electronic possibilities. God works in strange ways. This story could have been hours longer, but in essence thats what happened.

Thanks for all your interest. Sincerely Dick Gail.

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