Clap Trap
Description : Rythmic analog noise/handclap generator
Production period : Probably early 80´s.
Numbers made : ?
Used by : Rush ( feels kind of odd….I looked around the net and the only people who seems to have used this are Rush live and some danish techno bloke )
Sounds : There are two different sounds…one classic white noise thing and then the other sound which is kind of reminiscent of when you band two cocnuts together.
Description : This is a Hand Clap drummachine. Very easy to use. You can either press the button or use the external input to trigger the sounds. The two sounds are actually quite different and you mix them together. On the ordinary handclap sound you can adjust pitch and length….so you can go from a large footballarena to just one small person clapping very smoothly.
I have used this quite a lot to subustitue for cymbal crashes on choruses and stuff but also to do filter sweeps into choruses. It has got a really bright shrill sound that adds a lot of energy to a track and is actually very easy to fit in. You couldn´t blend it with let´s say Optigan sounds and it would be seamless but you get the Idea.
Another cool trick is to pull the Claptrap through a synced delay to the music and pull that through the seek wha. What happens is that you get a very random yet in time feeling whcih sounds actually pretty close to ” tribal/african ” ( terrible description, I know ) clapping.
When I got the Claptrap I thought it was gonna be some smooth 80´s handclap device or that it would have like a smooth Barry White-ness to it but it is actually a great little versatile noisemaker.
