Author's posts

My Musical Career |Part Five

MSM

  My Musical Career | Part Five At this point in this blog, we have arrived at the point in my life where I had finished my high school education, and was set to embark upon my college career. My college years began in September of 1970, and lasted for almost five years, until I …

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My Musical Career – Part Four

My Musical Career – Part Four – From High School to College In my last blog post, I left off at the point where I was at the stage of my education where I needed to apply for and to be accepted into college. By this time, it was pretty clear that I was cut …

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My Musical Career- Part Three

  My Musical Career – Part Three 1966 was a seminal year in my musical education – this was the year that I not only entered high school as a freshman, but was involved in all three musical groups that the school offered. The school in question was Yorktown High School, which was completed in …

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My Musical Career – Part Two

A pair of Ludwig balanced action timpani - ca. 1935

My Musical Career – Part Two In Part One of this blog, I told you about the very beginnings of my musical career – from my youth and upbringing in the Bronx and more specifically, how my upbringing influenced my choice of career. To recap it briefly, my role as a choirboy in the church …

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My Musical Career – Part One

My Musical Career Many people have asked me over the years how it was that I came to take up the timpani, of all instruments. My answer is always that I was not really by chance as music played a big part in my upbringing. As a matter of fact, you can say that my …

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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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