Category: Instruments

My Musical Career| Part Sixty-Seven

Drums in Chicago

Have Drums, Will Travel – How I managed to get around with my drums The subtitle for this entire blog site is called “Have Drums, Will Travel. It is a tip of the hat to an old western entitled “Have Gun, Will Travel”, which starred the actor Richard Boone as “Paladin”. Eighteen or so years …

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My Musical Career| Part Sixty-Five

The Des Moines Metro Opera YearsThe Eventful 2002 Season The 2002 DMMO Summer Festival was one of those memorable seasons for more reasons than one. First, musically it was a blockbuster season. Three fantastic productions, all full of challenge. For this season, Dr. Larsen and the management decided to stage Puccini’s Turandot; Richard Strauss’s Salome; …

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Instruments| Ludwig Timpani

  Instruments| Ludwig Timpani I have performed on many makes and models of timpani, but I started out as an eleven-year old aspiring musician on an old pair of Ludwig pedal-tuned timpani. These dated from about the late 1930s, and were the template model for what Ludwig later developed into their Universal model pedal timpani. …

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My Instruments | A Timpanist’s Toolbox

Timpani Tool Box

    My Instruments | A Timpanist’s Toolbox NB: This post is mainly for those of you (and there are many) who wonder what a timpanist is and what is in that case (or cases) that he carries with him to rehearsals and concerts. To those of you who are already expert, consider this a …

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My Instruments – Timpani Sticks| Part Two

My Instruments -Timpani Sticks Ron Carlisle Mallets It wasn’t until relatively late in my career with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra that I heard of Ron Carlisle and his hand-crafted timpani mallets. The year was 1994, and it was during a tour of the USA by the orchestra that this came about. It happened in Pittsburgh, …

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My Instruments – Timpani Sticks| Part One

Feldman Mallets

  My Instruments -Timpani Sticks|Part One   You might think it a little strange for me to talk about timpani sticks (or mallets –call them whatever you will) in a blog post with the heading “My Instruments.” However, when you think about it, timpani sticks are the tools one uses in the hands to make …

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My Instruments|Chain and Cable-Tuned Timpani

Stotz-anheier 23 inch

My Instruments|Chain and Cable-Tuned Timpani I have played on pedal-tuned timpani for most of my career, which now spans a forty-year period and have always enjoyed the experience. However, whenever I have had the chance to play on timpani that were either hand-tuned, or equipped with an Anheier-like cable system or a chain system such …

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My Instruments | Part Two

Astro LT

  My Instruments – Part Two   In my previous post, I talked about the Light Mark XI timpani, which I use as my primary instruments. In this post, I’ll talk about what I call my secondary instruments, which I use for church gigs and pops concerts, as well as for the times when there …

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My Instruments |Part One

Mark XIs - 2002

  My Instruments – Part  One Over the course of my musical life, I have used many different types of timpani. Most of these have been of the pedal-tuned type, but I have had some experience with the hand-tuned as well as cable or chained tuned timpani as well. For the purposes of this post …

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The Timpani

Sticks and Coins

The Timpani Most musicians know what the timpani are, and so do many people, but I still get questions from quite a few, especially from those who are not familiar with classical music and young people who have not had exposure to the instruments of the orchestra. So, that being the case, I think that …

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