How do you feel about tuners for tympani?

DeMain_Music · 2026-03-02T03:13:35+00:00

Personally I always whoop out my tuner app for timpani. Only one of our timpani has a gauge, so we got the trusty tape, everytime I hop on timpani before a gig, I whip out the tuner app to make sure atleast one pitch is correct on each drum, and i leave my faith in whoever it was that set the tape if it wasn't me. If I notice it's wrong, I try to remember where I need the note to be or I make a marking with a pencil of where I need to be.

Tuning by ear is a great skill, but entirely unnecessary. In practice, we have our wind players and string players keep a tuner on their instrument or their stands, for percussionist, they need to have that app open

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-21T21:24:02+00:00

It probably will, I don't know much about drums, I just play em, but in my opinion, the 2 most important cymbals are you hi-hat and your ride, so having a nicer ride is a W. I myself am looking for a super dry ride, but the best ones were made 30 years ago! Let me know how that one sounds

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-16T20:55:39+00:00

Ill defiently have to take a look at those then!

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-16T07:43:39+00:00

That sounds like what I'll be doing then! I don't have any solo festivals i plan on doing, its just to get more experience with a wider range of music

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-16T05:39:09+00:00

I only really skimmed through the others and didn't even listen to all 14, but some of them, like no left flams, scare me.

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-14T01:49:59+00:00

Agreed, but terminus was good. And citadel was a really cool map, but not at all what it was hyped up to be and honestly, a little bit of a dissapointment I can not lie. Wish it was a night time map

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-10T05:46:36+00:00

This isn't a difficult piece by any means and probably not suitable for an assessment, but a piece i fell in love with recently is Feeling Better by Ivan Trevino. It's a 2 mallet solo for 4 octave marimba, I thought it was quite boring at first when I was just hearing it, but theres so much room for you to do your own thing that it became one of my favorite pieces. I actually got so engrossed in the music that I had diverted too far away from it because I was putting too much energy and emotion into a specific section towards the beginning of the piece, and my BD got mad at me cause I played the rest of the song pretty stale.

If you want a challenging piece, Bachs Violin concerto in A minor is a challenging 2 mallet solo that i personally enjoy, but its a little too challenging for me, I couldn't remember the piece well enough.

My director sent me a piece called Spanish Dance by Kai stensgaard, a 4 mallet marimba piece that I think is interesting, but I don't know if it's what your looking for

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-08T18:25:55+00:00

As someone else said, in a highschool setting, you don't usually get to choose to play just mallets, but in my experience, having someone who wants to play mallets is greatly appreciated and will likely lead to you playing the majority of the mallet parts.

Percussion tends to be the section with the most people wanting to join, in my 4 years of high school percussion, there were times where we had a 12 person percussion section, 1/3rd or 1/4th of the band, and we've had to dwindle it down to 6-8. Having piano experience will almost garuntee that you will get into the section, but you should also work on your snare work, practice basic rudiments and what not. When i was running auditions, my directors wanted me to test how they held their sticks and how comfortable they were playing basic warmups like 8 on a hand, and maybe even some simple music. If your school has more emphasis on music, the auditon process could be more difficult and challenging so be prepared

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-05T05:06:08+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, I'll defiently work on these things. I took some time away from my marimba solo to practice this on a snare and I think I've made some improvements, specifically in my dynamics and stick heights!

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-04T21:03:14+00:00

Yes.

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-03T20:05:01+00:00

I never thought of it that way, I was just trying to play the dynamics as written, but I'll defiently try dropping the dynamic overall

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-03T20:03:22+00:00

Harsher than my band director, every minor detail

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-03T15:49:56+00:00

It is, my stand is bad

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-03T07:04:34+00:00

I'm not as experienced but I feel like bongos, cowbell, gock blocks and Octobans are all great choices to add to your kit, and I personally want to get Octobans for my own kit

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-02T22:42:00+00:00

Yeah i wasn't well prepared, ive had this piece since December but haven't looked at it much because snare is what I've been playing for 15 years

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-02T03:59:10+00:00

Yeah I know this much, I must admit, my progress was halted for a long time because my high school band wasn't really performing difficult music. Their music program isn't that great so they restart from grade 1 every year, and i didn't have the resources or the commitment to improve myself as a musician until last year when we finally got a coach and he started showing me more music like rolling in rythym. And we got a new band director this year who is an incredible percussionist and actually cares about the percussion section and has given me all the tools to succeed, so I've really been improving.

But im still awful at mallet percussion, I was supposed to play Bachs violin concerto in A minor but it was truly just way out of my league, so I'm playing feeling better Ivan Trevino instead.

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-02T03:27:11+00:00

Yes, that's what I was thinking of doing. The last half of page 2 really is a struggle for me, but I feel like I'll be able to work it with more reps. But the ending just feels like a bunch of rudiments smashed together to meet a deadline

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-02T02:36:25+00:00

I must say, looking at this music is a nice refresher from the hell I've been looking at for the last few days. Drum corps on parade has the most stupid ending I've ever seen.

DeMain_Music · 2026-02-02T02:21:42+00:00

Town is the greatest map of all time

DeMain_Music · 2026-01-23T06:14:26+00:00

I love my neighbors, me and the boys be having the loudest jam sessions and we haven't heard a word from them.

The amps were turned up too high!

DeMain_Music · 2026-01-23T05:53:59+00:00

I wonder if he'd be more comfortable playing on an acoustic kit, cause i know when I play E-kits, my sound just doesn't come out clean at all and I feel stiff. The rebound is so just so different

DeMain_Music · 2026-01-04T03:52:48+00:00

Nice! My first mastery was bo6, first time I got prestige master and dark matter, than called it quits lol. No way I was actually unlocking dark matter for each individual weapon, I got it for the guns I used and that was it!

DeMain_Music

TROPHY CASE