A Percussionist's Notebook

Recently there was a news article concerning a protest march in New Mexico in which some of the marchers tried to topple a statue of Juan de Onate. He was a Conquistador who in 1599 ordered a massacre of the Acoma Pueblo killing hundreds of the residents and sentencing the remaining men and women to 20 yrs. of servitude. As an added act of inhumanity he ordered that each man would have a foot cut off. This caused much anger and hatred to the Native American population and eventually to the Spanish Crown. As I watched the scene on TV, I was reminded of another act of anger towards this man that happened as much as 200-400 years ago. While in New Mexico last year, my wife and I toured the Mesa Prieta petroglyph site. One particular petroglyph was an outline of a man with a cross on his shoulder and his right leg mutilated. The tour guide referenced the story of Juan de Onate and took us to this image.  This seems to be a more historically correct tribute to this man than the statue...

I started to fish when I came to Colorado. The piccolo player (and supply clerk) had a reputation of being an outstanding fisherman so I decided to ask him to teach me. The old saying " Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will draw the ire of his wife." Fortunately my wife supported my new hobby. Willy was a quiet man and pretty much a loner in the band, I was a little intimidated at first asking for help and the first 2 or 3 times fishing with him were quite reserved. Once he realized that I was committed to the sport his attitude changed. That was 1971 and we have been friends to this day.   Willy was an expert bait and spinner fisherman but knew a lot about fly-fishing and so I started to accumulate all of my tackle based on his knowledge. Rods, reels, line, lures, and a hat. After he retired and returned to Florida I drifted away from bait and lure fishing and concentrated on my fly-fishing. Fly rods, flies, and all of the other fly-f...

The practice pad has long been a staple for the drummer. After a pair of sticks it usually was the next thing purchased. Or in the case for my brother and I, a DIY project by our father. It could be as simple as a square of linoleum nailed on a board to the double sided models that produce various amounts of rebound.  There are many reasons for using a practice pad. I'll start with the obvious: Practical: Compared to a real drum, they are cheap. They are fairly quiet, you can play them without annoying a sleeping parent or a neighbor in an adjoining apartment. They are portable, they can be taken on a family vacation where space is at a premium. Musical: Usually they provide more rebound than a drum head, which helps in developing single strokes but especially rolls. Articulation: The sound of each stroke is cleaner giving the player important feedback on the precision of their playing. Developing positional accuracy: Drawing a circle the size of a quarter on the pad provides a ...

CMT or Culturally Modified Trees. I posted some pics of these trees from various places in Colorado in January. However, according to the Ute Tribal Nation (composed of many smaller bands) the only culturally modified trees are certain pine trees that have been stripped of portions of their bark. Sometimes for food, medicine or spiritual purposes.  I found this information on the Colorado Archaeology website which included a number of letters from some of the Nation's Tribal elders. If you do a search for CMTs you will find quite a few articles and even some videos about them. Since I have no expertise on the subject other than walking and photographing things, I will honor the statements from these Elders. So, what did I find? These trees showed some obvious manipulation but according to the BLM, NFS, and many archaeologists they may have been caused by natural occurrences. Although the Utes were the dominant tribe in this area, there were also Cheyenne and Arapaho.  Until I ...

A colloquialism common in Pittsburgheese which means tidying up. And that's what we have been doing for about 3 months now. My wife decided to get into some of her 'keepsake' boxes recently. Among the newspaper clippings, pictures and souvenirs she found a letter that Mr. Rogers sent to me in 1990. If you're from Pittsburgh it's in your blood to watch the Steelers and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. One of his episodes in the early 70's featured a group of people who introduced an African Talking Drum or Dundun (also Donno among others). They discussed how by changing the inflection of the pitch of the drum and using various rhythms one could have a conversation with others. Years later in 1989 I spent a month in San Francisco teaching Band and Percussion at an elementary school summer camp. I found a Dundun in the back of a cabinet while taking inventory and decided to use it for their final performance of the camp. I remembered that the word for 'hello' was...

When I first started playing percussion one could always easily find snare drum sticks and maybe a small assortment of keyboard mallets. But in my small town finding anything other than a Ludwig timpani mallet was next to impossible and they were only available by special order. At the time Ludwig mallets were made with a hard felt center core covered by soft felt, sort of a quasi general mallet. I used these mallets during my high school years. It wasn't until I got to college that I had access to professional timpani mallets and fortunately my instructor Stanley Leonard had us use Street mallets. William Street was his instructor at Eastman at that time. These were a set of three pairs of mallets: General (wood core with German felt), Recorder or staccato (same as the General with a thinner covering of German felt), and Scherzo (cork core with the same thickness of German felt as the Recorder). All of them had rattan handles. I later added Roll model (soft) mallets. When I beg...

It can be very easy to get into a gloom and doom attitude while being isolated and then watching the daily news. But there are always acts of kindness out there, some small and others large. When coaching for the Youth Symphony I was always looking for new equipment for the Percussion Section. Once again going back to their performance of Carmina Burana in 2012 (see my 'castanet post'). We also needed an anvil for this performance but rather than using the small 8 inch steel plate that I had donated a few years before, I wanted to get a real anvil sound. I went to a local steel fabrication company to see what I could find. When I went into the office I was confronted by the secretary at the front desk. She was a no nonsense middle aged lady with a rather gruff attitude. In other words, she was the one who was really in charge. I explained that I wanted to get a section of steel 'I-beam' for the performance. She asked for some more information about what I needed and af...

As inconvenient as it is to teach by Skype or any other platform during the Covid-19 isolation, I'm finding small threads of silver lining. In this instance I'm speaking of pencil and paper work. Two of my advanced students are entering high school this fall semester and they have been given  audition music for their seating. For snare drum they are to play a portion of Etude #6 from the Anthony Cerone book 'Portraits in Rhythm'. This book has become standard literature for concert snare drum since it was first published in 1966. Complicated rhythms, phrasing, metric modulation, dynamics, these are just a few of the musical issues that Mr. Cerone has advanced for snare drum education. Understanding subdivision is one aspect for Etude #6. Written in 5/4 this piece contains everything from Half notes down to 32nd notes which can be intimidating to the young student. For their assignment I had them write out the rhythm counting eighth notes as the beats (making 10 beats...

Sometimes the instructions on music are small (such as Rit. or cresc. ) or the conductor adds a sezura after a section that wasn't in the arrangement. These are just 2 of any number of things that a player wants to emphasize on his part during rehearsals and the performance. MARK YOUR PARTS! A comment that I always make to my students is: "One of the things that separates a professional from an amateur is a professional never trusts his memory but an amateur will."* If you were to watch a professional player during a rehearsal they are constantly marking their parts. It's a basic step in any performance. For years I had a mechanical pencil that held a 2mm lead in a grade of 6B, this is softer than a typical writing pencil (2B). I used this pencil for marking all of my parts. I would intentionally wear down the tip from a sharp point to a rounded end. This gave me a very dark and broad stroke so that I knew it would get my attention and could be easily...

Putting our time to some good use during this social distancing. My wife joined a group of home bound seamstresses who have been sewing masks for low income families. Eventually the group got a call to make masks for First Responders. At last count they had made 33,218 masks. 1 of 33,218 masks She has also continued with her painting. And my favorite. Keeping busy knitting and crocheting Christmas presents for her nieces and nephews.                                                                         Lion Llama I on the other hand did some rather pedestrian projects.  I used some old pavers to build a raised vegetable garden for her zucchini and pumpkin patch and then a paved walkway so she could get to it. And some mixed results carving tagua nuts. ...

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic that has affected everyone and more specific the private lessons, I have been using Skype in lieu of having my students come to my studio. I then tried a group meeting with everyone together. Re-heading a drum is a time intensive procedure and although I've done this a few times during a lesson, I don't like doing it because it takes at least 45 minutes to do it correctly not just the procedure but to answer all of the questions from the student. As I expected it took about an hour because of the many questions from the students. During our weekly Skype session my brother suggested that I include this on one of my posts for this blog. I initially dismissed the idea since there is a wealth of videos on You Tube about this subject. The idea stayed with me so I decided to watch those videos to assess their value. The result was that only one of the videos had good information and the rest had moderate to even misleading instructions. The result is...

After 4 weeks of Skype private lessons, I finally tried my first group Skype lesson. There are a number of topics that lend themselves to a group lesson and one of those is how to re-head a snare drum. I've done this during individual lessons in the past but it normally takes more than a half an hour to do it properly and I've always felt that it shouldn't be during an actual lesson. However, the times that I have done this, the student has brought his/her drum to the lesson with a broken head and it needed to be repaired before they could continue to practice. For this lesson I had scheduled it for a time well in advance so that everyone had it on their calendar. I sent an email to them with an attachment outlining the process with drawings and a step by step order. They had the sheet printed out and in front of them while I went through the actual procedure of re-heading one of my drums during the lesson. Twice during the procedure I stopped and asked for questions to ...

Families refer to the children as Big Brother/Sister or Little Brother/Sister. My mother passed away in 2004 when I was 57 and she still referred to me as 'My Baby".  Regardless of science's theories of time whether it's relative, linear, constant or whatever, families seem to be caught in a Time Warp. I'll always be the Little Brother. My Big Brother is celebrating his birthday in April so I made him a card. He started out as a Math Major in college and has continued to have a love of math. The Front The Inside

The Youth Symphony posted the audition music for their 2020-2021 season. One of the requirements for snare drum is to perform the Four stroke ruff. This is how I explain and teach it to my students: The traditional way of playing this figure is to play alternating grace notes starting with the Left hand and ending with the primary stroke on the Right. For many young students, the idea of playing a series of single strokes fast enough is difficult because they lack the ability to utilize 'finger' control on the stick. This ends up sounding stiff and too slow for the proper execution. For this reason I offer an alternative version to playing it. The concept is to think of it as starting with a Left ruff followed immediately by a Right tap. Another way of thinking about it is to think of it as an aborted 5 stroke roll. The regular 5 stroke roll is played (rrllR), an aborted 5 stroke roll would be (rrlR). Either way should produce the correct sound of the Four stroke...

THE VIDEO SAYS IT ALL Let's not lose our humor. Stay safe!

I received a mass email yesterday saying the Canyon Winds concert in May will be cancelled. As disappointing as that is, it's the proper decision. You can't put a concert together in one or two rehearsals and expect a decent performance. There will be no more rehearsals until August and tentatively a concert in October. The Skype lessons are continuing, I've given marimba and snare drum lessons, and even a drum set lesson. I say 'even' because I'm not a set player and I feel there are many more teachers in the area more qualified to teach set. The frustrating thing about Skype is the delay in the video from the audio. That means I can't play along with the student for either duets or the same piece. It's going to take some rethinking for that part. On the plus side it's great to see my students and work with them again. This only reinforces my decision to continue lessons even though I've backed out of performing from so many groups. I'm sur...

I've been waiting for 2 months to see if my armillary will register the Spring Equinox. March 21, 2020 It worked! Considering the lack of precision on my assembly it worked quite well. The inner 'globe' aligned vertically to the gnomon. Someday I'll try to construct another to get more accuracy, but now I'm happy with the result. I took this at 12:15PM

I've had 2 Skype lessons today, both a success. What a joy it is to see my students again. It certainly has some limitations: the sound comes before the visual, and the sound itself doesn't have a very good quality. That's still better than not having a lesson. I can still monitor their hand/body positions, listen to phrasing/dynamics/notes etc. So there......Covid-19, you can't stop us now!

The shelves are empty of  face masks and hand sanitizer. When all of this stops I wonder what they are going to do with all of the excess. Maybe...……………..             ……………………... Charmallets?

There was a news article recently about Italians serenading each other from their balconies. There were singers (a beautiful rendition of Nessun Dorma) and instrumentalists. Only the Italians would think of something like that, and then there people on the internet doing the same. I loved the idea and started to do the same for my neighbors. Unfortunately my marimba is too heavy to lug upstairs and into the driveway. The only thing I could carry would be my snare drum and I don't think it would be received in the manner in which it was intended.😢