I am having a blast posting on this site. The response has been great and I appreciate all of your continued support. One of the goals I wanted to achieve was to share videos of great performances and this video is the perfect example. This video features Robert Chappell’s Open Window for tenor pan (performed by Liam Teague) and marimba (performed by Robert Chappell). This piece was awarded 1st place in the 2006 Percussive Arts Society Composition Contest. Originally for tenor pan and marimba, this performance also features bass and percussion/cajon. [Unfortunately, I don’t know the name of the performers or I would add it]. It is a shame that this piece has only been viewed 1043 times since it was posted in 2009. Let’s do our part and share this piece and performance.
You can purchase the sheet music at Steve Weiss Music. Liam and Robert also have a CD featuring nine compositions for steelpan in solo, jazz, world, chamber, and steel band settings. It can also be purchased at Steve Weiss Music.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted the TED conference video by Anita Collins in a blog post called Why Do We Study Music? It received a lot of positive feedback and has been one of my top posts. The more I think about this topic, the more I am concerned with the education my children will be receiving when they begin school in a couple of years.
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein (more…)
Halloween is over and I hope you had a safe and fun celebration. As a parent of two boys (2 and 4), Halloween has become relevant again and we had a fun time celebrating and trick or treating with our two little cowboys. Today’s links includes some great podcasts that you should add to your podcast app. As always, have a great week and let me know if there are some articles I should be reading. (more…)
I often wish I could play castanets without mounting them on handles or in a castanet machine. If anyone else has thought the same, you have to watch today’s video featuring Lucero Tena (Castanets) on the Intermezzo from: Las Bodas de Luis Alonzo by Gerónimo Jimenez.
After watching this video, I think I will stick to my Black Swamp mounted castanets. (more…)
As a young percussionist, we all learn the rudiments. For us, the rudiments are our scales and it is how we learn about technique on a single surface (aka a snare drum). In the concert snare drum repertoire, the 4 stroke ruff doesn’t usually occur until somewhere in the Advanced Snare Drum Studies book by Mitchell Peters, Delécluse’s 12 Etudes or later in Anthony Cirone’s Portrait in Rhythm. It also shows up in the orchestral excerpts (Lieutenant Kijé). Because it is not officially part of the 40 Standard American Rudiments, it is not something we practice at a young age. (more…)
This past summer, I read Learning to Listen: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton: An Autobiography by Gary Burton as part of BookChattr on DrumChattr.com. It is a good book that I would highly recommend to any musician. This video features the standard, Armando’s Rhumba by Chick Corea. Gary and Chick have performed for the past 40 years as a piano/vibraphone duo and here they perform on one vibraphone.
Over the past couple of months, I have been introducing snare drum rudiments at PercussionEducation.com. For the percussionist, rudiments are like scales. You should be practicing them everyday just like a wind player practices scales. In this video, I would like to introduce my snare drum warm-up that I wrote a year ago. This 12 minute warm-up includes all of the basic strokes to give you a well rounded warm-up. Please download a copy of my snare drum warm-up, get out your practice pad, a metronome and go for it. (more…)
Normally, I share some links that I have read during the week. But in today’s post, I have decided to share some links and resources from a meeting I had with my former teacher and mentor Erik Forrester. Over the past couple of months, my career path has been in transition. I am thankful for the support of my family, friends and colleagues who have offered words of advice and guidance. I value the relationship I have had with my two mentors (Michael Carney and Erik Forrester) and no matter where your life takes you, find someone you can trust to be your mentor. (more…)
I am a strong believer that we can and should all try to compose music. Composing is a skill that can be learned. Over time you continue to develop this skill with regular practice. (Sound familiar?) There are a lot of great resources on the internet, including The Art of Composing which includes articles, blog posts and a podcast about composing.
So how can you get started? The first place I recommend is to start with the snare drum rudiments. I have used this process with my middle school students as well as my college students in my percussion methods course. Here’s a step-by-step process to help you compose a new piece for snare drum. (more…)
I have featured Christopher Deane before on PercussionEducation.com with his tambourine master classes. He is also a great composer and has written a lot of solo and ensemble music for percussion. Today’s video features Doug Perry performing Mourning Dove Sonnet. According to Mr. Deane, “Mourning Dove Sonnet was composed as a concert vibraphone solo in which the musical material was focused on an integration of traditional and non-traditional performance techniques. It is, in it’s essence, a wordless art song for vibraphone. This piece contains a literal transcription of a Mourning Dove song. Mourning Dove Sonnet was written in Greenville, NC and was first performed by the composer at the 1983 North Carolina Percussive Arts Society chapter Day of Percussion.” (more…)
