Idle Hands - Tips For An Engaged Percussion Section
The percussion section. You either have too many, or not enough. The section that often gets overlooked during rehearsals. How do you engage your percussionists during rehearsal so they aren’t bored or worse, lighting something on fire...
1. Consider doubling wind parts on keyboard instruments. If the percussion writing on a particular piece is sparse, this is a great option. Take a march, for example. Typical percussion needs are a bass drum, snare drum, crash cymbals, and maybe bells. If you have more than four percussionists and don’t want 8 people playing snare drum, you can copy a flute part and put it on xylophone. You can copy a bassoon part and put it on the lower octaves of the marimba. You can copy an oboe part and put it on the upper octaves of the marimba.
2. Ask them “what measure did I stop at?” while they’re counting rests. As a percussionist, so much of what I do in rehearsals is listening for musical cues from other sections while I’m counting my rests. If you help your percussionists develop “listening landmarks,” they’re rest counting becomes much easier. (e.g. “Listen for that clarinet entrance at m. 70”)
3. Involve them in your warm-up. While playing a long tone in a percussion instrument isn’t really possible, playing rudiments on a snare drum or practice pad is. Have students play 8-on-a-hand while the rest of the band is doing Remingtons. Maybe try the first page of “Stick Control” by George Lawrence Stone to build hand-to-hand independence. The introductory pages of “The Rudimental Cookbook” by Edward Freytag also have some great exercises to use. The possibilities are endless.
4. Try to program a percussion-heavy work each concert. It may not always be easy to find one, but programming a percussion-heavy work gives your percussion section something to look forward to each rehearsal. While counting rests for extended periods of time and waiting for a huge cymbal crash is the bread and butter of percussion playing in band and orchestra, no one wants to only “eat their vegetables” every rehearsal. The percussion-heavy work helps balance the percussion section’s diet, if you will.
5. Give them other projects to work on. Consider allowing your percussionists to work on student led chamber music. Row-Loff and Tapspace both have tons of great literature at all grade levels for small, chamber percussion ensembles. You can do buckets, snare drum duets, boomwhackers, mallet duets and trios.
As they say, idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Give them something to do. Engage them as if they weren’t at the back of the room.
By Andrew McDonald
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