Excellent! A must for any beginning music student. Please share.
Like an actor’s script, a sheet of music instructs a musician on what to play (the pitch) and when to play it (the rhythm). Sheet music may look complicated, but once you’ve gotten the hang of a few simple elements like notes, bars and clefs, you’re ready to rock. Tim Hansen hits the instrumental basics you need to read music.
Lesson by Tim Hansen, animation by Thomas Parrinello.
The end of the semester is almost here. If you are in school, remember to try and get some rest, eat right, exercise and don’t stress out too much. (I know, easier said than done). In between prepping for juries and concerts, here are some reading materials for the week. Enjoy. (more…)
Composed by Drew Worden & Carson Moody (TIGUE)
Performed by Drew Worden & Sam Um
Audio/Video Recording by Michael Sherman
Mixed by Drew Worden, Sam Um and Michael Sherman
Produced by Drew Worden
For more information about this piece or to purchase the score, visit Drew’s site.
I hope you had a great week. I have been busy preparing for the premiere performance of Passageways, a new piece by Baljinder Sekhon, for solo steel pan and percussion ensemble. I am premiering the piece in Chicago on Saturday, March 28 with the CYSO Percussion Ensemble (Ben Wahlund, director). Click here for more information. If you are in Chicago, come by and check it out. Below are some reading materials for the week. Enjoy. (more…)
Third Coast Percussion member Owen Clayton Condon writes music influenced by minimalism, electronica and taiko drumming. His newest piece, Fractalia, written for Third Coast Percussion in 2011, is a sonic celebration of fractals, geometric shapes whose parts are each a reduced-size copy of the whole (derived from the Latin fractus, meaning “broken”).
The kaleidoscopic fractured melodies within Fractalia are created by passing a repeated figure through four players in different registers of the marimba. Condon’s acoustic and electronic works, including Fractalia, have been featured as the soundtrack to video and light installations at Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwater” and Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate,” the famous sculpture (affectionately referred to as “The Bean”) in Chicago’s Millennium Park.
Hello again. I am back! Happy Daylights Savings (in the US). The past three months have been a whirlwind and things are finally starting to settle down. So, you may ask, where have I been? Well, I am preparing a long post about this transition on my website but the short story is that I have started working for Yamaha Corporation of America on December 15, 2014 in Buena Park, CA. I am the Percussion Product Manager and I am excited about the new opportunities and team I am working with. (more…)
December is here: Ho Ho Ho. The beginning of December also brings juries, final performances, term papers and final exams. Remember to plan ahead (don’t procrastinate), eat right, sleep, practice and exercise. The holidays are just around the corner and you will survive. Good luck on the end of the semester. (more…)
Auditions are just around the corner and I thought it would be a good idea to crowd source an audition advice post so that we can give some advice to incoming freshman and transfer students who will be auditioning soon. To start off the discussion, I thought I would present my observations and suggestions from past auditions and ask other teachers and percussionists to add their comments below. In a couple of weeks, I will compile all of the comments and create a master list of audition advice. (more…)
It is Thanksgiving week here in the US. I am always grateful when I can visit and spend time with my family. I also wanted to thank everyone who has supported Percussion Education over the past 5 months. This website has been something I have wanted to do for a long time and I appreciate when you take the time to watch the videos, make comments or send me emails. I look forward to continuing to build this community in the future. This week, I had two guest contributors who submitted their writing. If you haven’t had a chance to read their posts, please check out the links below. The end of the semester is near. For the university students who read this blog, please remember to get plenty of sleep, eat well and good luck on your upcoming juries. Happy Holidays! (more…)
Today’s post is by guest contributor Jeff Phipps. Jeff is the Educational Sales Manager at Steve Weiss Music. Did you know that Steve Weiss has a dedicated Percussion Educational website? The site features Frequent Percussion Questions, School Specials, Videos and more. It is definitely something I wish I would have known about earlier.
Ah yes, the percussion section, ever so important to the whole sound of the ensemble and ever so responsible for sounds you rarely want to hear. Talking too much, horsing around, not watching the conductor, not playing in time, etc. These are unfortunately traits of the average student percussionist. But why? We could say it’s just drummers, that’s how they are. But is it really? Are kids born thinking they are the greatest thing since sliced bread and then they become trumpet players? Or are they destined to be trumpet players from the start? But seriously, we usually accept that a student’s personality drives what instrument they choose and so drummers tend to all be the same type of kid. Maybe that’s true, but maybe we are contributing to the behavior in some way, or even feeding it in a direction we don’t want it to grow. (more…)
Skype Lessons with Dr. Gerhart