Time to Re-Gear

I have started on the long, painful task of searching for a replacement minidisc recorder. I use minidisc recorders to capture live concerts. It's the easiest way to record concerts, but the format appears to be dying, slowly, as it has been since the late 1990s. Both of my recorders have served me well for the past 7 years, but now require replacement (one plays, one records). Check back here for a quick review in a couple weeks to see what I will have chosen; most likely, I'll go with the Sony MZ-R1 or MZ-M200.

Mozart, Liberated!

The Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum is now offering the Neue Mozart-Ausgrabe (Digital Mozart Edition). This is a digital collection of the whole of Mozart's works. This is awesome, and hopefully it leads to more research of his music.

The Well Tempered Timpani

Today I was doing remedial searches for images of various percussion instruments when I stumbled across an excellent document titled The Well Tempered Timpani written by Richard K. Jones. I believe I've seen this document before, but I haven't written about it. There is excellent information in this document that any timpanist, percussionist, or physicist should be aware of. I highly recommend this reading and will report back if it yields any noticeable results.

The Golden Section in Bartok's Music

During rehearsal last night for Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra conductor Barbara Schubert gave a brief explanation of Bartok's use of golden section in the third movement, Elegia. I found this article describing the mathematical theory behind the concept a bit better. Basically, the peak of a work is nearly at 2/3 of the length of the piece; more specfically, 61.803% of the way through the work. It's an interesting theory that I've heard applied to classical period composers as well, and it adds a bit of mysticism and science to composition and music, in general.

Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta also uses the concept of the golden section. Look at the score and mark measures 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, and 89. What do you see?

Classical Music on an iPod

I've been avoiding the iPod craze now, successfully, for a few years. The 40GB version was nice, and the 60GB version seems nicer, but I'm looking for a 200GB model. Lately it's been getting tougher to wait since I want my music in one place; all of it. However, I do use iTunes to listen to music. It's a nice front-end to music encoded in formats such as AAC, MP3, etc. I found this article which has some interesting thoughts on using iTunes or an iPod to listen to classical music. It's worth a read, and there's some interesting points you might find useful.

Percussion Requirements

Here is an interesting list of percussion section requirements and assignments crafted by Mell D. Csicsila. This is very useful! Thanks Mell!

Article on Shostakovich

The Chicago Sun Times ran an article titled A fitting tribute to Shostakovich on 28 Jan 2006 that discussed the upcoming 100th birthday of Dmitri Shostakovich. It looks like we should all start planning on a bit of a celebration for 25 Sep 2006!

Follow-up to Study in Differences of Opinion

As a follow-up to my posting titled A Study in Differences of Opinion from a few weeks ago, I was contacted by Barbara Brabec, widow of the late Harry Brabec. Mrs. Brabec tells me that the solo at the beginning of the Bartok is definitely Harry Brabec playing. So that's good to know for those of us who like to keep track of those things! Thanks to Mrs. Brabec for verifying this information.

Fife and Drum

I came across Fife & Drum Online which contains some excellent references to pre/post Civil War fife/drum music. Take a look.

Bodhran Lesson

Here is a quick bodhran lesson.

A Note to Conductors on Line of Sight

A quick note to conductors: it is very important that you listen to your musicians when they tell you they cannot see you. Help the situation, don't hurt it, by resetting the stage if all musicians cannot see you. Line of sights are critical in our efforts to make you a successful conductor!

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.

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!

We're Not Just Musicians

I stumbled across an interesting description of percussion instruments made available from NPR. It's pretty decent for a quick overview as to some basic instruments and I feel it's very correct in stating that percussionists must understand choreographing movements in addition to just playing music.

What's a zischen?

The word zischen, for purposes of this percussion related website, is taken from Antonín Dvořák's Symphony #9 in e minor, also know as "From the New World". In the final movement of this masterpiece, Dvořák calls for a pair of cymbals to be gently scraped together; in fact, this is the only note that the percussionist plays in this movement.

I started looking around for a translation of the word zischen, or a German to English translation, and came across this link which translates zischen to hiss, fizz, fizzling, sibilance or sizzle. Not quite what I had intended to find, but interesting. Since I have the Internet here at my fingertips, I kept searching and came across this cymbal glossary (copy) published by the Sabian cymbal company. It defines zischen for the percussionist as...

zischen: To create a "zing" sound, scrape the inside of one cymbal with the edge of another.

This is definitely more appropriate in regards to executing the technique desired by composers. Thank you, Sabian, for clarifying that for the Internet as a whole.

Another interesting cymbal technique (since we're on the subject of interesting cymbal techniques) is the frottée, used by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók in several of his works including his Dance Suite and Concerto for Orchestra. A frottée involves two cymbals, much like the zischen; only they are rubbed together to produce a metal-on-metal effect. It's tough to do this and not achieve an air pocket (which eventually leads to the cymbals sticking together), but is fun to do after the fact! The cymbal player needs to be more of an artist at times to achieve these effects without distracting the audience from the overall sound and expression of the entire ensemble. The next time you see someone playing cymbals, be sure to observe them and the techniques they use!