by Shawn Goretsky (8th)

Problems of Percussion Music: Why You Need to Be a Percussionist to Write Percussion Music

I am a percussionist and I have seen all sorts of music. I have seen some of the most outlandish snare drum parts to some ridiculous drumset parts and they have all had one thing in common. They weren't written by percussionists. In this article I am going to go over a bunch of problems with percussion music and how to fix them.

The first piece of music is a snare drum part. The piece was about 150 beats per minute which is give or take about 2.5 beats per second. They had a full measure of 32nd notes which means there are 8 notes in each beat. So you had to play more than 16 notes per second. That is already really hard especially for a highschool level piece. 

To make it even harder, you had to alternate between hitting the rim of the drum and the actual drumhead. This is an impossible tempo for playing 32nd notes and splitting them. So how do you fix it? First off if you want the 32nd notes played you need to slow down the tempo, but I understand that might throw the rest of the music off. What you can do instead is change the rhythm. Don’t make it so you have to play 8 notes per minute. Change it to 16th notes so it is half the speed and you can play the splits even easier. Or just change it to a roll. Granted for the second option you won't be able to hear the rim but you could play it in the tempo of the 32nd notes.

The second outlandish piece I have seen is another Snare drum part with a completely different problem. The piece was about 70 beats per minute which is a little over a beat per second. It was a very slow song and not fit for a complex snare part and to the composer's credit it was a very simple snare part. Too simple. The song was over 80 measures and you had to wait the whole song to play the last note. You read that correctly: the whole snare part is one note at the end of a long song. 

Either make it so you play something throughout the song whether it is rim clicks are quarter and eighth notes or just cut the snare part. That percussionist has something better to do in the piece than wait for the whole song to play 1 note. Cutting the snare part would give that percussionist the chance to do something like play a xylophone or triangle part instead of standing there. 

My third problem that I have seen is a drumset piece. Playing the drum set requires a lot of coordination and speed because you have to switch between many drums and cymbals. The piece was fast and it was about 2 beats per second so you have to play fast which is OK. Most drumset players have to play fast anyways. 

The real problem came in the drums you had to hit. The reason I know a percussionist didn’t write this is that it required to hit the floor tom, crash cymbal,  and snare drum all at the same time. This is impossible. You only have 2 hands so you can’t hit 3 different instruments that are all at different parts of the drumset at the same time. 

The icing on the cake is that half a second later you have to hit the hi hat, crash cymbal and snare drum at the same time. So not only do you have to grow an extra hand to hit one beat but you have to use that 3rd hand for another impossible hit. Let me say this again. YOU DON'T HAVE 3 HANDS!!!! 

This is so easily fixable. Just extend it by a half a second. Every beat you can use 2 of the cymbals or drums in the set fill. For example to fix this the first beat you can hit the crash and snare drum. The second beat you can hit the snare and floor tom and then the 3rd beat you can hit the hi hat and crash cymbal. Granted this is all happening in 1.5 seconds but most drummers that will be playing this are good at playing fast and even though it is hard, it will definitely be doable with practice.

To sum it up, when percussionists don’t write percussion music, there are a bunch of problems. Make sure you can and want to play the piece before you make it official.