Metronome Strategies for Improving Your Timing
By Dr. Dave Gerhart
By now, I am sure you know the importance of practicing with a metronome. As drummers/percussionists, we are supposed to have good time, but do you just practice with your metronome or do you interact with your metronome during your practice session? It is my belief that most people use their metronome as a listening devise, and I want to advocate the use of a metronome as an accompaniment partner. In this article, I will describe the two ways we use a metronome and offer exercises to help improve your timing while using a metronome.
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Reading on Keyboard Percussion: Establishing Strong Fundamentals
By: John Willmarth
Percussionists have the unique challenge of trying to develop facility in a variety of
instruments very early in their development. Splitting time between snare drum and
keyboard percussion often causes percussionists to lag behind the rest of the band in
reading skills. Because most band methods feature short excerpts, elongated rhythms,
and familiar melodies, it is common for students to rely on memorization. Students often
become disillusioned as the band method and repertoire progress because memorization
becomes too difficult. Unfortunately, once poor habits become ingrained, they can
plague a musician for years to come. These problems can be avoided if proper sight
reading fundamentals are formed from the beginning.
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Four-Stroke Ruffs: The Magic Recipe
By: John W. Parks
Many players are intimidated by the ubiquitous four-stroke ruff, especially by soft ones
(Kije, Festive Overture). Of course, loud four-stroke ruffs can be a challenge as well
(third movement of Shostakovich 10)! Where do you place them? How do you place
them when the conductor is making a huge expressive gesture with a downbeat the
ensemble seems to “slide” into (last four bars of Scheherazade III, for example)?
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The Multi-Part Technique Program For the High School Front Ensemble
By: Dave England
Every summer you look forward to the fresh
start that begins with your high school front
ensemble. There are new faces, new hopes, new
enthusiasm, and new abilities. You sit down to
develop a technique program and find yourself
asking the question, “How do I write exercises
that will warm them up, maintenance their
technique, advance their skills and meet all of
their individual ability levels?” It’s difficult to
come up with a series of exercises that will
address all of those things at once.
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The Importance of Proper Warm-up: Daily Warm-ups and Technical Exercises for Marimba
By: Andy Harnsberger
If you are anything like the average person, you are constantly faced with time constraints. Because of
this, our practice sessions often turn into “note cramming sessions”, where we try to learn as many notes
as possible in a short amount of time, or play through our recital pieces up to tempo several times within
that short period. Not only is this detrimental to the hands, but it can also be harmful to the overall
performance in recital situations.
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Brazilian Percussion
By: Dr. Robert LedBetter
Samba is the most characteristic and most popular form of native Brazilian music. Origins of
Samba can be traced by to the 17th century in the state of Bahia, where slaves captured in the African
regions of Angola and Congo landed. Tribes from these areas brought with them their semba gatherings
(also known as umbigada or belly bumping) and the music spread with the slave trade throughout the
country (much like the beginnings of Blues, etc, in the US)
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Marimba: An Interpretation
By: Mark Ford
Developing your interpretation
of the music you play is one of
the most important and
satisfying aspects of music
making. Your interpretation
reflects your ideas and feelings
about the music.
Unfortunately, younger
musicians usually concentrate
only on understanding the
notes and rhythms of a
marimba solo. Obviously, this
is important, but it’s only fifty percent of the job.
Communicating your emotional connection with the
music through your interpretation is essential to the
“magic” of music. Think about how a certain
performance or piece of music has touched you in the
past. When you perform you want to connect with an
audience in the same way that music connected with
you.
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Patience is a Virtue
By: Ben Toth
Honing one’s percussion
skills (and ultimately one’s
musicianship) is an
endeavor worthy of a
lifetime’s pursuit. Much of
the percussion repertoire,
both solo and ensemble,
can take months to learn,
involving countless hours
in the practice room. In
fact, the road towards
playing a large-scale master-work for percussion
really begins long before the piece has even been
selected and requires years of technical and musical
development. This technical and musical
development serves as the foundation on which to
build one’s musicianship.
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Steps to Learning a Musical Composition
By: Tracy Wiggins
Tell me if this sounds familiar:
You are rolling along in your
lesson, and everything is going
fine. You get to the end, and
your teacher says, “Okay, now I
want you to learn this for next
week.” At this point he or she
hands you a new piece of
music and sends you away.
You look down at the piece of
music in your hands and think to yourself, “Now
what?” I hope this article will help answer that very
question. I will present the system I utilize for
learning a piece of music, be it a solo, ensemble,
orchestral or conductor’s score. This is my
approach to doing it and every musician has his or
her way. This is by no means Gospel, but it works
for me.
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Developing Your Technical Skills
By: Michael Kingan
I constantly find myself giving
advice about how to practice
basic technical skills. Sometimes
it’s high school students who are
trying to develop and reinforce
good habits. Other times it’s
college freshman who,
throughout high school, relied
primarily on natural ability but in
college suddenly need several
hours of practice a day just to
keep up. From beginners, who need to be walked
through their practice routine, to advanced players, who
are trying to take themselves to their own next level,
they all seem to crave direction on how to continue
developing their technique.
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