Volcano music

Holiday on Tenerife made me wonder what a volcano sounds like. It's different from a mountain- it's not green, no yodeling going on, no hunters sounding their horns. Hardly anything lives there, hardly anything sounds there. It's rock in every imaginable colour: from deep black to red, yellow and even soapy green. The clouds roll over the crater rim in an eerie silence. Yet, there's an immense sense of energy hidden just below the surface, waiting to happen.

Music-wise, I wondered whether anyone had ever written anything specifically on volcanoes. A Google-search pointed me to Alan Hovhaness, an American composer who composed a symphony on the eruption of Mount St Helens.

And what do you know: volcanoes themselves make music too. At least, according to Italian researchers who plotted seismic activity of Mt. Etna and Tungurahua (Equador) to music bars.

Yamaha timpani manual

Yamaha timpani manual with cute warnings like

Disregarding these warnings or misuse may result in death or personal injury and

Do not use the mallet for anything besides playing the instrument. Do not allow children strike others with the mallet.

(Glad I'm not a child anymore, apparently adults can do with the mallet whatever they like :-)

Paukenclinics 2008 - Adams Muziekcentrale

Yay! Adams organises Paukenclinics 2008: a tour around their factory, a short workshop on how to change timpani heads, and a workshop by Werner Otten, timpani tutor at the Maastricht Conservatory of Music. I gave them a call to enquire whether complete newbies like me could attend, and received a hearty reply to please do so.


So, May 17th, I'm waking up in the middle of the night to make my way south to Ittervoort!

Matthew Bassett

Personal website of Matthew Bassett with a nice practice guide and a promise to include articles and essays.

Mini booklet with timpani basics

Taken from A Fresh Approach Video Lessons with Mark Wessels: a mini booklet with timpani basics.

Jonathan Haas on timpani tuning

From the Remo website: some advice on how to tune timpani by Jonathan Haas.

Le sacre du sacre

PDQ Stravinsky in the making? :-)

Language, music, syntax and the brain

In Language, music, syntax and the brain, Patel argues that, from a syntactical point of view, language and music share a specific point of convergence when it comes to neural processing. Seen from the Dependency Locality Theory (linguistics) and Tonal Pitch Space Theory (music), both language and music share certain concepts in processing (proximity and activation) that apply to domain specific syntactic representations.

Timpani solos by Marc Zoutendijk

Available from his website. Which doesn't show too well in Internet Explorer.

Dwight Thomas - Timpani F.A.Q.

This FAQ provides information on basic and advanced repertoire and timpani score editing and revision.

Philip Glass - Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra, part 1

Seen on October 27th in Groningen, with Mark Voermans and Raymond Curfs on timpani.

Philip Glass - Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra, part 2

Philip Glass - Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra, part 3

Stuart Marrs plays Carter's March

Definitely on my wishlist: Stuart Marrs not only performing, but also analysing Carter's '8 Pieces for timpani'. While I understand that worldwide interest in drumming and world percussion justifies the huge amounts of information widely available on these subjects, I'm still quite disappointed by the almost complete absence of any pedagogic or analytical information on timpani. This DVD is a welcome exception!

First concert!

Played my first timpani part ever, at the Premierefestival, and thoroughly enjoyed it. No major mistakes, and no nerves. Great added bonus: instead of our own, rather battered Ludwigs, I got a chance to play on a set of four Adams Professionals that looked brand new. Cool!

Cloyd Duff - Timpanist, musician or technician?

In Timpanist, musician or technician?, Cloyd Duff made a case for playing timpani with an emphasis on tonal quality, rather than just focussing on the rhymthmical part of timpani playing.

Monty Python - classic

Prosodic processes in language and music

Prosodic processes in language and music is the dissertation of Maartje Schreuder. Her abstract:

This dissertation makes a comparison of language and music. As composer Lerdahl and linguist Jackendoff show in their ‘Generative Theory of Tonal Music’, these two cognitive behaviors share aspects, such as hierarchical structure, in which prominent elements are separated from non-prominent elements by means of preference rules and rhythmic and phrasing phenomena. Recent constraint-based approaches to phonology, such as Optimality Theory, show that the similarities are even more striking for phonological and musical analyses.

This dissertation shows that music theory may help to solve linguistic issues with which linguistic theory alone finds it hard to deal. Three such issues are investigated experimentally. The first issue is whether speech is just shortened and compressed when people speak faster, with the same rhythmic structure, or whether the speech rhythm changes. The second issue is the question whether recursion can be found in phonology. Are phrasing phenomena such as early accent placement applied repeatedly in embedded phonological phrases? The third issue is major and minor modality in intonation contours of cheerful and sad speech.

One of the main findings is that listeners appear sometimes to base their perception on auditory illusions, not always on the sound signal as it is. Listeners hear what they expect to hear. As in music, rhythm is perceived as more regular than it is in reality. The results of this research confirm the assumption that speech and music share many features. Both are ‘made of’ sound, and both kinds of sound signal are structured by the listener in a similar way.

The Grammar of Carnatic Music

The Grammar of Carnatic Music -

This book argues that Carnatic music as it is practiced today can be traced to the musical practices of early/mid eighteenth century. Earlier varieties or 'incarnations' of Indian music elaborately described in many musical treatises are only of historical relevance today as the music described is quite different from current practices. It is argued that earlier varieties may not have survived because they failed to meet the three crucial requirements for a language-like organism to survive i.e., a robust community of practitioners/listeners which the author calls the Carnatic Music Fraternity, a sizeable body of musical texts and a felt communicative need. In fact, the central thesis of the book is that Carnatic music, like language, survived and evolved from early/mid eighteenth century when these three requirements were met for the first time in the history of Indian music.

The volume includes a foreword by Paul Kiparsky.

Jonathan Haas

Website of Jonathan Haas, with some info about himself, and some excerpts.

Nick Woud

Website of Nick Woud, principal timpanist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, with a wealth of information about the Amsterdam school of timpani, timpani history, mallets, and loads of pictures of rare timpani.

John Tafoya

Website of John Tafoya, former principal timpanist of the National Symphony Orchestra, with loads of information, online lessons, audio and video excerpts.

Messiaen - Louange a l'Immortalité de Jésus

Heard this piece at the Raadhuisconcert as well. Incredibly beautiful, out of this world.

Ligeti - Poeme symphonique

Heard this one in the Hilversum Raadhuis. Interesting piece, even more interesting reaction from the audience!