Project 2 - Percussion Duets

Project 2: Duets

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This little duet explores a dialogue between two instruments, the side drum and the the Tenor drum. Because of the dialogue feature, I found easier to write both instruments for each bar as I was going along instead of writing the whole piece for one of them and fill gaps with the second instrument (I tried this but it didn’t work). I use a lot of up beat tempo for the tenor drum as it is interrupting the speech of the other instrument. In the first 2 bars, this happens in the first beat while in the next 2 bars this happens in the second beat. In Bars 5-6, both instruments alternate 1 beat each indicating that they are reaching to a agreement which happens in bar 7 when they basically play the same rhythm with one instrument filling the gaps of the other instrument.

Execution Day with Accompaniment

This is the piece I composed in the first project but in this case I have added a second percussion line that uses the tenor drum for accompaniment. The volume of this accompaniment line follows the main line but always slightly below.

Funny

This is a little composition where two instruments are used to play with a single melody. It uses a 5/8 metre. To reinforce the 3+2 time in the 5/8 metre, I use each instruments for durations of 1 or 3 quavers during the 3-quaver part and 1 or 2 quavers during the 2-quaver part. Therefore, a duration of 2 quavers with the colour of a single instrument is not allowed during the 3 quaver section (this keeps the music piece more symmetric and balanced). During the first 4 bars, the rattle and the ratchet pass ideas to each other and in most cases one of the instruments fills the silences of the other instrument creating a single melody. In the next 4 bars the rattle has a bit of a secondary role to end up in the last 4 bars where both instruments are protagonists with almost two phrases that complement each other.

No Escape

This piece has an ABA structure and uses a 7/8 metre. The idea would be for this piece to play along a persecution scene in a movie. In the first and last 3 bars, the grouping in each bar changes as 3 2 2 / 2 3 2 / 2 2 3 (therefore the motif is repeating the group 3 2 2 2) and could fit when the police is trying to find the suspect. The middle section has a grouping of 3 2 2/ 3 2 2/ 3 2 2. Because of this and the increased use of more semiquavers and demisemiquavers, this middle section comes across as a rounder section that could fit with the moment when the police identifies the robber and the persecution itself starts. The handclap has been used as an accompaniment instrument to reinforce the accents of the moving grouping pattern.