I once had to play the cymbal in an orchestra, for a Shostakovich piece, but there was no sheet music for it. The piece only had like four or five crashes but they were like ten years apart. The conductor told me that he would just cue me for each crash. I didn't miss a single one! He was so impressed that he had me demonstrate that for his college students.

Visual loudness is actually a thing in auxiliary percussion. It just adds to the performance when you can see the small percussion parts being played. And is it just me or is the percussion section the most visually interesting section of an orchestra to watch?

Don't forget about mallet changes! When the composer gives you 1 beat to throw down your mallets and pick up different ones, or when the expect you to somehow play a bunch of different instruments all at the same time that each require different sticks/mallets. We only have two hands!

Similar to how you can't make a marimba loud, you can't make a xylophone quiet. You could use yarn mallets and then not be able to hear it unless you're literally playing by yourself, or you play at its one-and-only volume: fortisimo.

Lol I’m no olympic gymnast, but I can confirm you can tune Timpani 1 and Timpani 4 at the same time(both balanced action and clutch), all though it can be very challenging - highly recommend getting a Roc-N-Soc Bicycle throne for this as your legs have the best mobility for this type of throne.

Recently we were reading through an arrangement for West Side Story for our wind ensemble. The percussion part was all the percussion in a score, so we would have to page turn while playing. They also wrote the drum set part separated, so individual bass drum staff, individual snare drum staff, individual ride cymbal staff, etc. Needless to say we’re rewriting the parts.

199!!!!! So close to 200k!!!!!

as a brass player whos looking to get into composition in the future, this was really helpful as I have no idea how to write/notate percussion parts, and it gave me lots of tips on what to avoid. In return please stop giving us massive jumps and awkward fingerings.

I played viola in an orchestra.....all I have to say, if it didn't have a cue, I wrote my own after counting it out once. The librarian knee which music was mine and kept it labeled for the future for me. We did the nutcracker every year with the local ballet. I am with you my friend on it.

This is a good story that if you want more context for, let me know. Essentially there were 13 percussionists and only like 10 parts. 1 person sat on the floor, one person was standing by another’s marimba, and my friend was walking around aimlessly. Eventually, my friend gets bored, puts his hand on his head, and proceeds to do the Michael Jackson lean. My band director saw this, and got so offended that she stopped conducting and threw him out of class, only to begin scream crying at him in her office.

as an aspiring arranger, this is incredibly helpful!!

Yeah, I feel the pain of timpani tuning. I remember modern/contemporary pieces that involve rolling on one pitch and ending on another, because I didn’t have five drums to work with. My high school doing Armenian Dances had two of my peers switching a tambourine mid roll. But by far the most ridiculous thing I saw was a crescendo for a ratchet. That instrument is incapable of any dynamic range besides forte, it’s just frickin’ loud

10:30 Yeah not gonna lie, ive always been my ensembles "Percussion II" guy, so I usually end up with a pile of stuff in front of me lol. it gets stressful really quickly, but like a fun stressful. Thankfully we only ever have to switch intruments inbetween songs, so what we do is we actually just pick up some things and move the stuff around inbetween songs. So for example right now for one song im on the Timpani, one song im on the triangle, and another I have all the symbol parts (yes all of them) I keep the timpanis the whole concert. The triangle starts with the girl next to me, who is giving me a break from P2 parts for a song. While I focous on my Timapani. The second song the triangle moves to me, and I keep it. Then for the 3rd song every single cymbol has to move from literally one side of the stage to another. Every. Single. One.

I couldn’t agree more with the marimba and vibe dynamics. I’m playing Music for Prague on the vibraphone and the conductor wanted me to play as loud as humanly possible that I broke my mallets on the first rehearsal. And they were rocks

My sophomore year of highschool, my friend and I were brand new tenor players. (I had switched over from snare and he had switched over from bass) Our band was playing Thanks for the Memories by Fallout Boy for the halftime show. When we got the music, we were blown away at how difficult it was! For a song that is fairly straight forward and easy on drum set, this score was wild! It overwhelmed both of us since we were brand new to tenors and we had to dumb some parts down a little. Man do I wish I still had that sheet music so I could assess whether it really was super hard or if our inexperience on tenors made it hard

When I was in 7th grade, we played a Shadow of the Colossus piece and I had to play bass drum and sus cymbal at the same time because of a lack of percussionists; I was literally holding 3 mallets because I was required to do cymbal rolls in between bass drum notes.

I see you, The Licc Music companies don't care about saving paper. I just played a bari sax part that had a page 2 that was TOTALLY BLANK. Like, huh, everybody else is unfolding their part but I see a double bar, though I have a second page, maybe I need to uh nope. Love the running around in the percussion section. I got asked to sit in with a community orchestra so they would have three, and the main guy was locked to the timpani, so here's me (a SAXOPHONIST, remember) figuring out how to do polyrhythms on bass drum and tambourine. (And also learning you can't just drop the tambourine when the part is over. Whoops.)

My first or second year of percussion we had like 3 percussionist and I had to change 6 instrument changes, they were mostly small instruments like the tambourine or cymbals, but it was fun and I think it definitely helped expanded the range of instruments I could play somewhat well

It would be nice to have a percussion score so we can see everything that's being played and we can decide who takes what part.

When I was doing my undergrad my scoring and arranging professor had me take everyone on a field trip to the percussion suite and show them all the toys and let me talk about everything I hate when people who don’t know how to write for percussion write for percussion. Told them I didn’t want to see any parts with 150 measures of rest and a single crash cymbal hit or triangle ding or whatever. Talked about how to write for marimba and what the easiest intervals to write are, why we have so many mallets, and what a wing span is, lol. Using 8va if everything is in the ledger lines. We wanted everything to be basically sight-readable. Talked about our basic set up a little bit, and running around. I read one difficult piece where I had to do a one handed cymbal roll, hit a gong then play a slide whistle consecutively. And it was written by a percussionist! I was like, Dude! Marching band’s different though, love to see the rack kids run around. Keeps them entertained.

I know Maslanka Symphony no. 7 has a dobachi sound written at the very beginning of Movement 3, and I actually remember playing it too, so I can relate LOL

I like how he casually threw the lick into this video when he’s talking about switching instruments.

i once heard an arrangement of the piece 5 on 5 for marimba, it was called 6 on 5 and th4 6 percussionists were constantly changing positions on a 5 octave marimba

The timpani section was so relatable but as someone who has perfect pitch, it was tolerable. Except Havendance by David Holsinger, that was a nightmare I'll never forget

Oh! This is definitely a video I need to see. I always try to at least make page turns not awful, but learning other things to make playing my music less painful is very good.

Awesome video, I gotta bookmark this. Explains all the little unseen difficulties so well. I'll pull this out the next time I get pulled into one of _those_ arguments

:| I hate parts like the first one I had to count 493 measures just to play a triplet, hole note, and 4 8th notes

Happy 200K! Very well deserved!

Hello! I am a Middle School percussionist. Last night I had a concert, and there were judges. I keep tempo in all songs, and have the main percussion part. I got sick, and I couldn’t go, i’m still sick, but i really wanted to perform. I don’t know how the band did, but at least we had our conductor help with tempo. We have a UIL competition with those same songs, but I cant have my family come watch, so we missed the opportunity to listen. We also had sight reading, so I’m not sure what score we got. I’m sure I will be better by the competition, but I hope all goes well, and I can make it.

So true! Loving the videos and humor!!

Congrats for 200k EMC love your work

Thank you. I hate the way many of the parts for percussion are written. Especially the dang grace notes after a roll! Hopefully many more composers will take note!

As a composition major who doesn't know much about percussion this was very helpful for me. Great job I learned a lot.

I like to tell people how many instruments I switch from I'll tell them "so straight after this song I run over to the xylo to the snare then after that I have to step to the bass drum..."

I appreciate this video. I’m a composer, and learning to write for percussion has been the trickiest for me. I’m definitely someone who is prone to making these types of mistakes, so it’s good to hear someone call us out on it.

I remember when I did LGPE my sophomore year and played this piece on a crappy vibraphone. During my vibraphone solo, the pedal snapped off, and I’m not sure if anyone heard it. But I literally had to get down on my knees and readjust the pedal, as I had a bunch of rests. I was then sweating like crazy. Another complaint is how the school maintains the instruments, especially if a vibraphone has a loose pedal

I have this vibraphone part and it's somewhat difficult but it's at a part where the rest of the band is very loud. It's so frustrating because it feels like there no point in putting time and effort into learning it because it's not going to be heard anyway.

Happy 200k!!!!

congrats on 200k!!

11:12 SO much yes to this point! I remember running to this problem quite a bit in brass bands (I'm from the UK). We ended up sometimes having to completely rearrange the percussion parts to just get all the timpani on one part, as originally they were spread across 2 or 3 for no good reason whatsoever. There's definitely a special place in hell for composers and arrangers who do this, especially when it's timpani!

i took one look at the thumbnail and instantly related

Congrats on 200k!

As a non-percussionist, I can confirm percussion sheet music is different from normal sheet music

That flute cue is definitely something you communicate to your conductor about from the 1st rehearsal. It's quite normal to listen for cues. Symphonic gig approach is different than dutdutdutdut.

CONGRATS ON 200k!

Congrats on 200k!!!!

You know, I found a case of Conductor 1: Rest Counting. And as soon as I did, it reminded me of this video. Love the content

CONGRATS ON 200K!!!!

Found your channel by chance, thanks for creating this!

just discovered your channel. absolutely hilarious. love from the rack section

Congrats on 200k 🥳

Congrats to 200k straight!!!

When I did my masters in composition one of the things that was drilled into me was the fact that if you want people to play your music, you have to write for PEOPLE. That means avoiding stuff that is impossible or very, very, difficult unless you can justify it as an effect or something. There is no reason to write a part that is unreadable if what you're going for is actually simple. Also, if you don't know if something is possible, have somebody who plays that instrument try to play it, or ask them... Nobody is going to program your piece if it is literally impossible to play.

I literally have a Snare part this semester that has several rolls that lead into flams/grace notes. It's so annoying! It's even by Sousa! Also, I played a piece last semester that was written by a flautist, but the piece was supposed to feature a huge tenor part... the rhythms were so annoying, janky, an unnecessary.

I currently have a part in wind ensemble where I switch from one snare stick in each hand playing on concert snare to one stick in my right hand and two brushes in my left hand using Stevens grip, where the left hand plays a little piccolo snare drum lick and the right hand plays a field drum note two counts later. Granted the part is meant for multiple people, but I have to make it work on my own.

My school has it where drum line is cut, basses start on the 45 of side one and go out towards the end zone, and then the snares and tenors on side two, on the 40, and it causes a lot of confusion until the blocks condense

Congrats on 200k

In a song that my concert band is playing right now, I have play four different mallet instruments. The switching can be difficult in some spots, but most of the time I’ve got it under control.

I remember when I did all district we had a piece that had instrument changes every few measures for all parts, so we carefully planned out and choreographed the handing of instruments and others in a big collection of various instruments with tray tables in the middle for everyone's sticks and mallets. fun times.

Just found out about this channel and I really enjoyed this video. You've earned a subscriber :D

Great delivery EC. You are sooo entertaining.

The switching instruments is particularly real for me. I was playing a piece several years ago and had a switch from bass drum on one side of the stage to tubular bells on the opposite in the space of 2 bars. This was one hell of a sprint down the narrow percussion riser dodging the cymbal stands and other percussionists. Come performance day some of the other percussionist decided to pull out chairs for their rest parts of the concert. Turned my sprint into hurdles on the spot. Felt damn sure I could compete with some olympians after that concert.

Omg I'm so glad I presented visual loudness during festival last week! I had this roll on triangle during a piece called 'raptor rides the whale', (I was on auxiliary) and my director told me to hold the triangle up while I was playing. I thought it looked really goofy at the time but I understand now! Thanks emc!

Congrats on 200K Eric!

200K - CONGRATS

FR I played the chimes on a music piece, and I didn't play most rehearsals because I only played a few parts.

I'm not a percussionist but I really enjoyed how you presented this material. Well done.

Weird percussion? I got ya, fam. Some setup is needed for this, and it took me down memory lanes that were thirty years forgotten. Thanks, EMC. These are pretty good memories. My high school band director was really something else (in awesome ways IMO). He was in his second or maybe third year in our district when I started my freshman year and he had a whole bunch of ideas, some of which were actually pretty good. For marching band (we were a competitive district), he always seemed to prefer to hire as instructors former members of World Champion corps; while I was in high school we had at one point or another a total of three from Scouts 1988, two from Star 1991 and IIRC two from Cavaliers 1992. It might sound a little weird for a high school band of not more than seventy members on the field (I know it was less at its most but I can't recall how much less) to have what amounted to caption heads with staffs of their own, but we had a hell of a booster program at the time and that let us do a lot. Concert band was just as unconventional at time. Alongside the high school band standard rep- Second Suite in F, Irish Tune from County Derry, Mars from The Planets, Armenian Dances (the fun, more frequently performed one), Cake Walk by Robert Russell Bennett, Sleigh Ride (God yes THAT one), The Stars and Stripes Forever, etc., etc. ad nauseam- he would also have us rehearse some really interesting modern pieces for each concert. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't, but we had fun regardless. Some of it was pretty out there and wouldn't often be found even in university ensemble rehearsals and concerts, let alone concerts given by a "class B" high school program. We had Eliot del Borgo in for one or two rehearsals when we performed his *Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,* (*) which was super cool for us all to experience (he did attend the performance), we did Russell Peck's *Cave of the Winds*- yes, in the dark, with a lighting "part" and the whole nine other flamboyant yards... and we did some stuff that was really *really* out there, such as John Paulson's *Epinicion* which you can hear here: link: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gr2cetmmvcyve2w.html IIRC the percussion score in that fun little ditty calls for a water gong. Ours was nowhere near this elaborate but here's what that is: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/kMmkpMuEstulZmQ.html I know it's not the weirdest thing ever, but for a high school it was definitely something new. --------------------------------------------------------- (*) We were performing del Borgo's piece in memory of a member of our student body who died just down the street from where I lived in a violent and fiery drunk driving accident coming home on prom night. He got behind the wheel completely sloshed, didn't wear his seat belt, put his foot on the gas on a country road, and hit a telephone pole head-on at over 50mph less than a half mile from his own front door. del Borgo's piece, a tone poem reflecting the poem of the same name by Dylan Thomas, was written in 1978 following the exact same kind of incident involving two other students. Kids, DON'T DRIVE DRUNK OR EVEN A TIT BIPSY- call an Uber or a cab or yes even your parents! Call a friend's parents! Adults remember being stupid! ASK FOR HELP! We're much, MUCH happier screaming at living children than sobbing over the graves of dead ones! Link to the original poem by Dylan Thomas: poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night

I, Igor Fyordorvich Stravinsky, believe that the greatest line ever composed went something like this: “DEFGECD”

Good morning

For percussion (I always run it by my band director for playability and being not painful to play) I try to implement them a lot and give them similar parts for bass lines

Congrats on 200 k

I had a concert piece where I had the bass drum. I only had one note out of the 100 measures. Thankfully I had other parts written in the music paper. And now I can read 3/4 rests better

congrats for 200k subscribers!

I feel like I need to send you beard manicure items.

I remember in concert band, we in the percussion section would re write our music to make it easier to switch.

heyo i saw you yesterday at the WGI Regionals in new jersey, i was bass 4 in Lower Dauphin’s “Red”, it was so cool seeing you, highlight of my day

11:38 the idea of boxing people out someone like a basketball drill is honestly hilarious

We had one fantastic piece I remember playing my Junior year of high school. It had 4 percussion parts. My percussion part covered marimba, bass drum, crash cymbals, suspended cymbal, and bass drum. Another part was timpani and triangle. Another part included vibraphone, suspended cymbal, wind chimes, gong, and bass drum. Another part featured chimes, marimba, crash cymbals, slap stick, glockenspiel, and wind chimes. So the bass drum, marimba, suspended cymbal and wind chimes repeated. No part had more than a 2 bar transition between instruments, so what our percussion section did after hours of trying to figure out ways to share instruments, we decided that each of the 4 parts would have all we needed in a little cage/area. My school was fortunate enough to have so many percussion instruments that we could set up these 4 sections that took up most of the stage, and then still have a few other setups made for the 2 other pieces we had for the concert without having the majorly rearrange the stage during the concert. Fun times!

Congrats to 200K subs! 🎉

In a percussion ensemble piece I have gong, temple block, triangle, suspended cymbal, crash cymbal, claves, and tambourine... i have 3 pairs of mallets to switch between, 1 pair of sticks, and that many instruments to move around between.

Last year for marching band I was playing timpani and I had every single problem the players can have as you listed, there was even a part where it wanted me to play 6 different notes in under 2 measures. I could never go more than like 8 measures before running into a problem, it took an extremely long time to work out the logistics for which drums to tune and when

We did it! 200k subscribers!

How dare you put the lick in to represent the percussion 🤣🤣🤣

I really felt that marimba one. I'm glad to have only performed on a marimba with my teacher on a dual marimba arrangement.

I once had an accented rest in one of my parts🤣 so when it was time for my rest I just yelled rest out loudly

There was this one song where I had to play toms, triangle, and crash cymbals, all in the same beat. Obviously I don’t have 5 arms so I had to get two people from out other band to cover for me.

The tom gap on the house set was hilarious! Haha!

I wish there were more videos like this. I have yet to find a resource which tells you the quirks for the dozens of instruments in concert band.

I had one piece that I played drum 2 the whole time and the drum line played the exact rhythms

00:18 Man ! That Music Sheet is Awesome ! More Of That Is What Is Needed In The Music Industry These Days !

This reminds me of our sheet music for adeste fideles. The piano part has literally nothing. The percussion part is just one phrase at the end

I am not even close to ever being able to play percussion of any sort, but I still found this video to be incredibly entertaining.

As a tubist I relate so hard to the long rests problem, especially when playing new compositions

I'm currently preparing Angels in the Architecture by Ticheli for my college wind ensemble, and uh...I play a million different things so, when you brought up switching instruments, I could not relate more lmao

i have a concert coming up where i have to switch between 6 insturments but we do get 6 measures to switch so its fine

The last one- we played Selections from the Music Man and I played bells. I later found out that the chimes part was written on the timpani part, and it had some similar parts to the bells part. So I’m like, well why didn’t the composer just write the bells part AND chimes part together? 😑

Yes, I had logistics and instrument problems in high school concert band. We were entered into the Music Festival, sometimes called Solos and Ensembles, and sometimes called Contest. I couldn't play trombone due to a facial accident and broken teeth, so I played the keyboard instruments: chimes, marimba, triangle, and glockenspiel. Glockenspiel was mercifully short for our piece ( _Novena_ by I don't know who), and so was the marimba-whose part was played at a mostly bare part of the piece. What my favorite part was the chimes. We had a beautiful set of chimes that would ring forever! The notes had a wonderful crescendo like ring ring ring RING!!! and the chimes would ring forever, filling the transition part of the piece, I think a dal signa. It was a glorious sound. We went to Solos and Ensembles and played our piece. I wondered where our chimes were. There was one on stage. I inspected it: it was old brass with the damper dropped, which meant every note was going to be very short. I hated it. Instead of ring ring ring RING!! It went clunk clunk clunk CLUNK. I was mortified! How did people use this in concerts?! I was devastated. I thought for sure that would lower our evaluation. I was wrong: our rating was "Superior," The highest rating possible. Still, to me, my memory of that day will always be as tarnished as the stage chimes.

We were playing the great locomotive chase and I had no rests to switch from the train whistle to the suspended cymbal to do a roll, so I was tought four mallet technique so i could roll with one hand and blow in to the train whistle with the other.

I don't play any percussion (or anything else for that matter) but trying to move a set of tubular bells into an orchestra pit in a theatre which requires going down a flight of stairs to access as said rack of tubular bells didn't fit in the only lift (which was just big enough to move 1 timpani at a time)