Artie Shaw

Artie Shaw, the clarinetist and band leader whose recording of Begin the Beguine epitomized the Big Band era, died Thursday, 30 December 2004, in his home at the age of 94. Farewell, Artie.

When Five Octaves Is Not Enough

A recent thread on the PAS message board mentioned that instrument manufacturers are considering the possibility of building a marimba larger than five (5) octaves and making it accessible for purchase. This is very interesting, and I have mixed feelings about the issue. Yamaha seems to have created a 5-and-one-half octave marimba which ranges from C2 through G7 -- a picture of this can be found here or here. Grover Pro Percussion has created a 5.5 octave marimba that ranges from F1 to C7; see it here. The Yamaha is intended to allow a percussionist to play many violin transcriptions. I'm interested to see what direction this goes and if percussionists feel there is a need for a 5+ octave marimba. Some problems that could arise are:

Transporting the instrument if there are extra notes on the low end. Those resonators are very large!

Moving the instrument through doors; a low-A marimba already has problems getting through many doors at schools.

Acclimating percussionists to the extra distance required to cover the entire instrument. A five-octave marimba is over nine (9) feet long, and adding more to the instrument may make it impossible for most players to cover the instrument from end-to-end with mallets in hand.

Getting new works written for the instrument and having composers write alternate passages; this is already problematic for literature written for five-octave instruments.

For bars lower than C2, it gets difficult to hear them in an ensemble without amplification. Likewise, it's tough to make C7 project, let alone notes higher than that.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea and I do believe that expansion of the instrument is a natural evolution of technology. Let's all hope that composers, percussionists and manufacturers understand the needs that come with larger instruments.

Fundamentals and Deagan

Here is something interesting regarding the missing fundamental effect commonly found on percussion instruments such as chimes (aka. tubular bells) and cymbals. One of the most famous instrument makers to address the tuning and design of tubular bells was J. C. Deagan. His name lives on in the wonderful instruments that are still in existence today. Amazingly enough, he persuaded the American Federation of Musicians to adopt A=440 as a standard universal pitch in 1910. Funny, tubular bells are mostly tuned at A=442.

If you are on the north side of Chicago, check out the old Deagan factory at 1770 West Berteau Avenue. The old Deagan Tower stands, and Century Mallet is now doing repair and maintenance of mallet instruments.

Marching Machine

I have to make a marching machine for an upcoming performance of the West Point Symphony by Morton Gould. Someone on a PAS discussion board referenced these instructions on how to build a marching machine. Since this falls under the "useful but obscure" category, I thought others may find this information useful.

Happy Birthday, Orchestra Hall!

Happy 100th birthday, Orchestra Hall. You've been a good home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and seen the likes of Frederick Stock, Fritz Reiner, Leonard Bernstein, Sir Georg Solti, and many other wonderful musicians!

Up Next: Satie and Kodaly

Today, while driving to a dress rehearsal, an interpretation of Eric Satie's Gymnopédies #3 was on WFMT The performance (which was the arrangement by Debussy) was delivered in very slow and deliberate manner. The performance turned out to be a live performance given by Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 25 March 1960. I've never heard a more moving rendition of the Satie, and there are many excellent performances of it in existence.

The broadcast of the Satie was then followed by the live performance of Galanta Dances Zoltán Kodály. It's obvious that Reiner was a master of any score he chose to perform, and both these recordings should squash any ideas that Reiner's interpretations were "cold." It's my personal opinion that the adage "There can be no expression without technique" is a very fitting description of the CSO during Reiner's tenure.

XXX Blooper

The movie XXX with Vin Diesel features an interesting blooper. Near the middle of the movie Diesel's character Xander Cage is kidnapped by his American operations director. There is a scene from inside an orchestra pit showing a timpanist rolling near the center of the timpani with marimba mallets. In reality, we use special timpani mallets (felt heads, not yard as used on a marimba) and play at the edge of the drum giving the instrument is sonorous quality.

The Tell-Tale Heart

I'm still working on getting all my analog recordings of performances online. Here's another: The Tell-Tale Heart, based on Edgar Allen Poe's poem of the same name, by Ilya Levinson. Levinson called for a saw blade in this piece. I picked up a large circular saw blade at Ace Hardware. The saw blade worked well mounted on a cymbal stand and was exactly what the composer intended to hear. However, I give one bit of advice: be very, very careful when you reach over to mute the sound. Ouch!

"1900, Backward and Forward"

The University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra, of which I am the timpanist of, just finished their winter quarter. My newest project is to start taking my minidisc's of each performance and put them online for anyone to listen to. You can listen to the latest concert entitled "1900, Backward and Forward." On this concert was...

• Rimsky-Korsakov: "Cortege" from Mlada
  
• Prokofiev: Autumnal Sketch, Op. 8
  
• Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-Flat Major, Op. 10
  
• Dvorak: Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70

Even if you're not a percussionist you still might notice that the last 2 minutes of the Prokofiev Piano Concerto has an amazingly cool (and difficult) glockenspiel passage which encompasses the entire range (and a bit more) of the instrument using scalar passages. Jamie Mezinah, our in-house mallet expert, did a wonderful job of covering the part excerpt.

Dust Repellent Vinyl -- 317X

I was just reading the liner notes of my Fritz Reiner/Chicago Symphony Orchestra recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G (JMCXR-0017, originally LSC2364). I've been taking many of my CD's and encoding them into MP3 format. This recording happened to be one of the XRCD's that JVC released in 2002. It has many of the original liner notes from the old RCA Victor recordings done throughout the 1950's and 1960's (by my estimation, the best recordings ever made). Anyway...I found this in the liner notes...

"MIRACLE SURFACE" this record contains the new revolutionary anti-static ingredient, 317X, which repels dust, helps prevent surface noise, and helps insure faithful sound reproduction."

Wouldn't it be nice to see that used on CD's if possible? I'd do anything to have less dust build-up on my discs. I'd even go so far as to say it'd be nice to see scratch-resistant discs developed!