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.

"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.

XM Radio

From the slightly-off-topic department today: XM Radio really bothers me. I live in Chicago, a fairly large city by most estimations, and technologically progressive one might add. Lately I've been seeing alot of XM radio antennae on most of those overly-large SUV's. So I started doing some thinking while sitting in traffic yesterday (see how bad traffic currently is here) and realized that over the course of a year, you would spend approximately $127 USD a year on the hardware (estimated between $50 USD and $200 USD currently) and subscription rates (approximately $8 USD per month). That cost is assuming the subscription rates stay static and hardware upgrades are required every three years. The wonder of this technology is that it is commercial free. No commercials. Nothing. Thankfully!

Now, does anyone remember how long it was before cable television started having commercials? I figure it was about 10 years before the money-makers realized they could make more money by selling advertising slots. If we figure that to be the case here (and it's a big assumption; no one knows if the XM satellites will even be in orbit in 10 years!) it comes down to approximately $1280 USD being spent per subscriber in a ten year period for commercial-free radio.

Now, compare this to buying a computer for $600 USD ("dude, you're getting a Dell!"), buying an Apple iPod for $200 USD, and paying $0.99 USD per downloaded song. That allows you to download more than 444 songs that you will own (i.e. you can put them on CD, keep them for as long as the CD lasts, etc). Maybe that's better for some folks.

Of course it doesn't mean that you can just go and find anything already offered by Apple, there may be songs that you don't end up finding. But then again, how many songs that you're hearing on XM radio are actually what you want to hear? I'm curious -- so if anyone has comments, please post them. And by the way I have a conspiracy-theory that XM radio is backed by groups such as the RIAA to limit the rights of artists and listeners to obtain good music, free. But that's for another topic...

The Anvils of Das Rheingold

Recently I had the opportunity to play Richard Wagner'sDas Rheingold. Das Rheingoldis intended to be a prologue to Wagner's epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, also known as the the "Ring" cycle. Most listeners, and percussionists, find the Descent into Nibelheim before Scene III of this opera to be very unique in it's instrumentation. Wagner calls for a total of eighteen (yes, 18!) tuned anvils to be played simultaneously by various members of the orchestra. This is a representation of the mining of gold in Alberich's dark cavernous domain, forging the Ring. Read more about the Ring Cycle -- it's a very interesting story. Our concert arrangement reduced the number of anvils down to a mere three. To make this come across well in concert, we used four brake drums (as I managed to drop out the timpani low-F roll early and join in to add volume during the crescendo). Another local percussionist, Tina Laughlin-Keitel, brought a pair of railroad spikes to use as beaters on her brake drum. I must say that this idea is superior to plastic mallets which easily will break (yes, even Malletech mallets!). Also, the top-heavy weight of the railroad spike works well for metal-on-metal playing. I'm now looking for my own pair of railroad spikes for future use for playing loud, abrasive metalophones.

My one bit of advice to anyone playing this is to use ear plugs! You may not think the volume will sustain long enough to cause any problems, but often concert performances are much louder than rehearsals due to the excitement, and I had quite a ring in my ears for numerous days after the performance. You can hear a sample of the anvils performed by the University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1.2MB download).