Unless you have a) learned all the music there is to learn in this world, or b) chosen that you don't want to learn any more music in your lifetime, then learning new music is in your future! As an active performer, I'm constantly learning new music, whether for a duo concert, solo recital, jazz combo gig, orchestra concert, or a number of other possible musical engagements. And as a teacher, I'm constantly guiding students through the process of learning new music. It may be obvious that in order to effectively understand and perform the music we are learning, we must do more than just read notes from a page or screen. But how do we know what more to...
Professional percussionists often mark the "sweet spot" on instruments. This "targeting" helps percussionists to consistently sound their best. I have always placed light pencil marks on accessories such as cymbals, woodblocks and even triangles!
Click the image to watch a short video demonstration...
It now seems like a tradition; every time “Barber” gets on the music stand, a discussion arises about what sistro, sistri and sistrum mean and what instruments correspond to that nomenclature. I´ll try to clarify this issue, and I´ll begin with a little bit of History. The Ottoman Empire started as one of the many Turk states in Asia Minor (Anatolia) and ended up as a military, commercial, cultural, political and territorial power spread over three continents: Asia (Anatolia, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, part of the Arabian Peninsula…), Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Soudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea…) and Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Moldavia, Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia…). It extended in time...
When playing triangle, tambourine and cymbal parts of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries - the exact duration of a note can often be unclear. While composers of those periods were good at notating when to start a note, more often than not, they ignored indicating exactly how long to let a note resonate. While there is no “rule of thumb”, a good way to approach this dilemma is to listen and match what is going on around you. Percussion parts often function to accentuate, or color the sound of other orchestral instruments. Use what you hear as a guide determining how long, or short, a note should be. If nothing else you will appear to be a musically...
