Led Zeppelin's "Four Sticks" As Covered By Sones De Mexico: Sweet Donkey Jawbone Solo
We're back with Juan Dies and more coverage of their cover of Led Zeppelin's "Four Sticks." For the recorded version, Juan and his bandmates in Sones de Mexico employed a slew of traditional percussion instruments including most notably, a donkey jawbone with loose teeth.
They also used a number of wind instruments including an ocarina, employing stairwell recording techniques and delay adding to the microphone signal.
[SONES DE MEXICO ENSEMBLE PERFORMING “FOUR STICKS” BY LED ZEPPELLIN]
JUAN DIES: My name is Juan Dies. I’m a musician in the group Sones de Mexico Ensemble. We specialize in Mexican Traditional Music.
I want to show you something about different instruments that we use for recording a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Four Sticks”, an unlikely cover for a Mexican folk band.
[SONES DE MEXICO ENSEMBLE PERFORMING “FOUR STICKS” BY LED ZEPPELLIN]
Here’s a few percussion instruments that we used in the recording. This is a shaker similar to what the Tarahumara Indians use. These are flattened out bottlecaps, and they just shake from side to side.
[JUAN DIES DEMONSTRATING THE USE OF A TARAHUMARA SHAKER]
I think you can use it in the replacement of a hi-hat, you know, going up and down or the tambourine. Then I wanted to show this battery of shakers that we put together that has like a low, middle, and high together, and compare it to the sound of just a regular pair of maracas.
[JUAN DIES DEMONSTRATING THE USE OF A PAIR OF CONVENTIONAL MARACAS]
And this one gets a fuller sound.
[JUAN DIES DEMONSTRATING THE USE OF A BATTERY OF SHAKERS]
So we put this together for the recording just to create a bigger sound of maracas and improvising in the studio there.
This is a donkey jaw. This is the lower jawbone of a donkey, and it’s tried and the teeth have come loose as the gums dried and fall off but the teeth stay in place so this creates a vibrating sound.
[JUAN DIES PLAYING A RHYTHMIC PATTERN USING A DRIED DONKEY MANDIBLE WITH TEETH]
You can also scrape across the teeth.
[JUAN DIES PLAYING A RHYTHMIC PATTERN USING A DRIED DONKEY MANDIBLE WITH TEETH WITH SCRAPES AND HITS]
And that’s the donkey jaw that’s been. They tried to imitate it with a vibraslap but this is the original instrument from biblical times.
[SONES DE MEXICO ENSEMBLE PERFORMING “FOUR STICKS” BY LED ZEPPELLIN]
At the opening of the song, there is a conch shell. This is the empty shell of an animal that lives in the ocean, and when it dies this shell is left behind, and someone just cuts a section off of the end of it to create a mouthpiece, and then you can blow on it just like a trumpet.
[JUAN DIES PLAYING A CONCH SHELL]
And in the studio, we recorded this in a stairwell shaft, and we placed microphones on the stores above and below to create a natural reverberation sound that you can hear at the top of the song.
[SONES DE MEXICO ENSEMBLE PERFORMING “FOUR STICKS” BY LED ZEPPELLIN]
The part that Robert Plant does with his voice we replaced with an ocarina. This one in particular is a wooden one, a tiny little thing, and just for added effect, we put it through a microphone and a delay...
[JUAN DIES PLAYING AN OCARINA TO A MICROPHONE RUNNING THROUGH A DELAY]
So in the song it goes.
[JUAN DIES PLAYING ROBERT PLANT’S “FOUR STICKS VOCAL PART” WITH AN OCARINA TO A MICROPHONE RUNNING THROUGH A DELAY]
That’s the sound of the ocarina. And another item we’ve also used is this flute. This is a clay flute with three shafts, and each one you’re able to play three parts at the same time. We’ve also used this for the beginnings of some of these Aztec pieces.
[JUAN DIES PLAYING A THREE-SHAFTED CLAY FLUTE TO A MICROPHONE RUNNING THROUGH A DELAY]
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