Druschetzky: Concerto for Oboe, Eight Timpani and Orchestra

Funny isn't it, the things you remember, and the things you forget. Somewhere back in secondary school music class, I took a test with the question: "Which percussion instrument zou eventueel gebruikt kunnen worden to play a melody?" The italic part roughly translates as might in some cases be usable. Puzzled by the phrasing, I answered "timpani". Surely, a tunable drum could in some cases be used for melodic purposes? As long as you had enough of them!

It got marked incorrect. The teacher, appropriately called Mr. Sedee, the Dutch pronunciation for CD, insisted that timpani weren't remotely usable for playing melodies; the only correct answer was a mallet instrument, and preferrably xylophone.

I can still remember how indignant I felt at the gross injustice of this. No matter how I tried to explain that a mallet instrument is always used for melodies, not eventueel, and that timpani had definite pitch, he wouldn't budge.

This memory resurfaced when I found this early 18th century timpani concerto by Georg Druschetzky.

Mr. Sedee, eat your heart out :-)

Kraft - Timpani concerto

Randy Max


Oscar Salazar


Daniel Kirkpatrick

Yearly 'Leerlingenconcert' - to hell with sheet music

Last night at the yearly pupil concert, I played Announcement, a piece for snare, tom, cymbal and timpani. The timpani part is such fun to play; it's the only part that sounds remotely melodic, and it really gives a great drive to the rest of the piece.

But somewhere in the middle, there's a muffle, a pitch change and a roll, within the space of one beat. Rather a bit of a challenge for a beginner like me. I've practised this point so much, that my sheet music was covered in red notes on how to fit everything in the right place. I guess that having to cram so many comments into one beat left me with the idea that I had no time at all: the more I wrote down, the less I managed to actually play the part :-)

But then, last night, something really great happened: a second before we started playing, realisation hit me that I didn't need any of this. The piece was already there somewhere; I just needed to step out of the way and let it get out. And that gave me all the time in the world, time to look around, time to listen, and best: time to really enjoy myself!

Carter, Stravinsky, Goehr

As heard in the Concertgebouw this night:
E. Carter - Asko Concerto
Stravinsky - Movements
E. Carter - In the Distances of Sleep
A. Goehr - Little Symphony
E. Carter - Dialogues

I don't know what it is with Carter: I love his timpani pieces, but when I listen to other stuff, it gets on my nerves. Not because I don't like it, but rather because I don't know how to approach it. It's not music that goes straight to my heart or my stomach, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't touch me. I left feeling disturbed, disconcerted and even indignant, like someone did something really upsetting to me.

I suspect he's doing this on purpose. Just look at the way he grinned at me from the program notes all night:

Prokoviev - Fifth symphony

As heard in Utrecht, played by Bellitoni, an amateur orchestra from the Hague.

David Hockings - percussionist or timpanist?

Part of the wonderful Soundjunction website, David Hockings takes us through a wonderfully illustrated explanation of the difference between timpanists and percussionists.

Here's another example from the website. Another cool feature is that it offers many different ways to access the information that's there; you can either browse the information like on any regular website, but in addition, Soundjunction offers various learning trails that provide a structured guide through over 60 different themes, like 'The classical orchestra', 'Ideas for composing' and 'Music and the brain'.

Educational, entertaining and informative: why aren't there more websites like these?

Steve Reich - Piano phase (excerpt)

Went to listen to the marimba version of this piece last night in the Concertgebouw. Players: Wim de Vos and Peppie Wiersma. Cool detail: Peppie Wiersma played 'Curves' by Ron Ford, a piece for theremin. Cypher is currently building one; great to hear it live!

The Well Tempered Timpani

The Well Tempered Timpani gives a technical, but really interesting overview of the acoustic properties of timpani.

Contrary to wind and string instruments (and the voice), resonating membranes do not have a harmonic overtone series. In addition, the fundamental is not very resonant or pleasant-sounding. This is caused by the acoustic properties of a membrane: rather than vibrating in just one direction, a membrane can vibrate in various modes simultaneously. Most of these modes are non-harmonic.

Still, it's possible to get pitch and near-harmonic overtones from a timpano. This is possible mainly due to air loading: columns of air above and below the air that make the membrane act almost as if it's a single vibrating system. This has been the subject of various studies, some of which are discussed in this article.

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.