My son’s youth orchestra will be playing the 1812. Does anyone know where to find a cannon playing musician?
I’ve seen it done with shotguns into tin rubbish bins - blanks of course. Not brilliant but better than nothing.
I know there are hobbyist cannon enthusiasts (Cannoniers?) Perhaps they can help
I’ve been to concerts where the National Guard fired blanks from artillery pieces. Since I suspect part of the appeal from their perspective is outreach for recruiting purposes, they might be happy to work a youth event.
Check out Pyrocreations for their selection of thundermugs/salute cannons. I have one with a 1.25" bore and it’s pretty damn loud with 3 Tbs of black powder top with rammed newspaper.
I’ve played it at July 4th concerts and the cannon effects were provided by the same pyrotechnics company that handled the fireworks display. You didn’t say whether this is an outdoor concert, but if it is, maybe a fireworks company could provide the booms.
You might try contacting a local Civil War Reenactment Group. I have no idea how many there are in any one area, but the first one I hit on in your area (Chicago, right) was this one and they appear to have a working cannon. Considering that this thing probably spends 350 days a year in someone’s garage, you might be able to coax it out if you wave a few bucks around. $100 might be a good starting point. IMO, anything under $150 or so isn’t too much to pay to be able to say you have ‘a cannon guy’ and your kid’ll be a hero for the next few days at school…especially if you can get the guy to let him light the fuse once.
And they are performing it outside? 
If they take the wheels off, I’m sure they can get it in the classroom. Just make sure they cover up the smoke detector and crack a window.
If you fire even a small blank charge in a full size canon while inside a classroom, you don’t have to worry about cracking the windows. It’s going to crack the windows for you.
(perhaps not the same definition of “crack” though)
It’s not going to be kind to anyone’s eardrums either.
And look good in orange.
Back in my hangin’-with-the-Army days they sorta did that, but outdoors.
I forget the occasion; probably Armed Forces Day celebrations. The band played the Overture and they had a battery of 6 towed 105s for the cannon. All set up outdoors nice and pretty on the parade ground. Which was surrounded by 3 story barracks and office buildings with lots and lots of large windows.
With the first volley all the windows flexed a bunch. I was watching them and it was surprising how far they all bent inwards without breaking.
As the band played on each volley did the same thing. Until the finale.
It took weeks before the last plywood was down and the last new window was up.
But it *was *spectacular. :D:eek::smack:
The problem with using actual cannon for the 1812 Overture is that at performance tempo, you need five shots in the span of about ten seconds at one point towards the end, and then another dozen shots in a period of less than a minute at the very end. Live performances with actual cannon like this one use multiple cannons, and given the amount of time required to reload 19th-century cannon, you’d probably need more than just the four that are shown in the video. Moreover, you probably can’t time the shots of period cannon precisely enough to sync up with the music as Tchaikovsky wrote it, though that’s perhaps a worthwhile compromise if you want to have real live cannons.
Honestly, amateur orchestras (and even professional ones) will just pipe pre-recorded cannon shots into the sound system at the appropriate moments. If you have a PA system in the hall where you’re playing, just crank up the volume and it’ll still startle/thrill people but good.
As MikeS says, you have a significant issue with the timing and rate of shot. Famous recordings like the Telarc, used electrical control of the firing in order to sync the shots. (Being a direct to disk recording there was no mixing in of shots after the event.)
For a youth orchestra performance you would probably do best by giving the percussionist a laptop with an appropriate percussion performance program and a sample of cannon shot. Thus the cannon is actually played by an orchestra member, and they will be able to keep the timing exactly correct. As described above, there is zero chance of using real ordnance.
With a suitably beefy PA system, and bit of care in the crafting of the frequency response and maybe some echo, you could get a very nice and realistic sound of nearby cannon. Mixing it with the orchestra may been a bit of care. Easy to overwhelm the proceedings.
Dreamkiller.
All I wanted to do was let the kids shoot a cannon in the classroom and you’re making this really difficult. Next, your probably gonna tell me it’s gonna hurt their ears or something.
Ack, small correction, Telarc was one of the progenitor digital recordings, not a direct to disk. Been a long time. Telarc sell an effects disk with cannon shot on it. Or you could look at sounddogs.com, and buy a cannon shot for about $1.42. The advantage of the Telarc is that they provide a number of shots, and they are provided in stereo panned to 5 different positions, so you can assemble a nice sequence that doesn’t just sound like the same shot 10 times.
You can buy cannons at Dixie Gun Works. A bit of an investment for one show, but you can have fun with it all year.
Lawsuits. Don’t forget the lawsuits. And medical bills, too. On a better note, the number of students learning sign language will probably increase in the coming years.
Are you also scheduling churchbells for the performance?