DEFINITE PITCH
DEFINITION
I spent my student days playing the drums, immersed in a steady diet of rock, jazz, jazz-rock, percussion and wind ensemble music. One night, while in the seventh grade, I had a strange dream of performing on a set of drums with a marimba stuck right in the middle of it. Upon awakening I thought, “Neat, but ridiculously impractical.”
You see, for the young percussionist, creating cool-looking instrument set-ups, regardless of practicality is a major preoccupation. During high school though, mallet percussion instruments did begin to encroach upon my drums. As I became more and more involved in various types of improvised and composed music, I started incorporating vibraphone and glockenspiel into nearly all of my performance set-ups.
During my high school years, I began composition studies and became very excited by Edgard Varese’s Ionization and Octandre, as well as Webern’s Op. 6. I composed for the school’s band members and played in percussion ensembles, but I wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about the usual percussion parts I was presented with. I was much more interested in the percussion playing of Jamie Muir, and Paul Motian, and the percussion ensemble masterworks of Iannis Xenakis. I wanted percussion to be an equal musical voice, both in ensemble and solo.
Looking back at my school years, I see that in fact my percussion music was originally more influenced by the work of pianist Cecil Taylor, guitarist Derek Bailey, saxophonist Evan Parker and filmmaker Stan Brakhage, not to mention Xenakis’ electronic works - and much more so than actual percussion music. I’ve found that the success of the wor of these masters came not merely from an intense focus on new ways of altering the tools and forms they worked within, but from new ways of producing and especially organizing musical materials.
Solo percussion is an area in which I became passionately involved back in 1985. At that time, I began regularly composing and performing solos as an alternative to my ensemble output. As is the case with many percussionists, my set-up was large and in addition to drums and cymbals it included an array of exotica including bottles, cans, hubcaps and other junkyard finds.
The impetus for a pared-down approach to music making was no doubt fueled by my growing disdain for lugging around all this gear. Many instruments were present in my set-up top produce only a single sound – “ding!” or “splat.” It just didn’t make sense after a while.
Ultimately, having too many percussion instruments around made me feel a bit guilty. It caused me to question my abilities as a musician. Did I use all of that excess baggage as a creative dodge? I sensed a palpable challenge to my creative abilities, reasoning – “If I can’t get it to happen musically on a single drum, then there’s a problem!” I would spend hours in the practice room challenging myself with painfully small amounts of equipment: a snare drum, a pair of bongos, a single cymbal, a glockenspiel, two mallets, and even some violin bows.
I sought music that made compositional sense and didn’t want the music to devolve into a concert of sound effects. In 1988 I gave a successful concert of works for solo vibraphone. Each piece featured a different sound world drawn from the instrument. Clamped keys that sounded like dead wood and gracefully bowing open keys to eliminate attack and allowing me to play truly legato phrases for the first time.
After several successful European and American tours I was soon completely hooked on the single-instrument approach. Extended techniques and instrument preparation had enabled me to produce a variety of sonic materials which could become textural and compositional elements. Plus, I was now traveling with a minimum of gear. I felt musically free again, for the first time!
By utilizing these new techniques compositionally, I found that I could create gradual or rapid transformations of sound without having to jump across the stage, change mallets, and strike a new instrument. I also found that my compositional interests began to grow in the direction of gradations of timbre, articulation, and sound masses were better served by the focused sounds of a single instrument. I feel strongly that this allows the ear to concentrate more readily on the musical concepts and not the attractive sounds alone – often a danger with large set-up, multiple percussion music.
I haven’t abandoned the traditional sounds of percussion instruments - rather, I’ve treated those qualities of sound as yet another aspect of my compositional palette. Consequently, when I do use a larger amount of gear, it’s always very clear to me now, what to include and why.
Performing opportunities with pianist Cecil Taylor and guitarist Derek Bailey only pushed me further and faster toward my goal of applying my extended vocabulary. In June of 1989, while rehearsing at Cecil’s Brooklyn home, another realization hit me: “Cecil has developed and formed extended piano vocabulary into a new musical language, and he is completely open to me bringing in my own approach!” It was a liberating moment, to say the least.
The honor of having two of my solo percussion pieces (“Entity” and “for Steve McCall”) on Cecil’s In Florescence album (A&M Records, 1990) was a watershed moment for my solo percussion music. A further result of that period’s discoveries is my 1992 composition, Lacerated Amethyst, for pianos - inspired by Taylor’s use of the piano as an instrument capable of creating large sound masses.
Definite Pitch consists primarily of solo pieces for the standard orchestral tuned percussion instruments, though there are a few exceptions. The chromatic boobam used on “RPF in Tuva” is a tubular drum keyboard made of two octaves of PVC pipes cut to different lengths to produce exact, bass register pitches. It is featured prominently on the soundtrack to Planet of the Apes by composer Jerry Goldsmith – another tremendous inspiration to me.
Definite Pitch features three multiple percussion pieces, “The Ephemerals,” “Estrellas,” and “Flazure.” Each demonstrates ensemble application of my solo sonic concepts. I’ve also included “for Steve McCall” for solo snare drum, played with rubber mallets and sticks. While the snare is not normally considered a pitched instrument, the use of soft rubber mallets allows me to create the long tones that open the piece, allowing me to explore pitch, register, partials, and texture. This piece acts as a kind of link or bridge to my subsequent works for solo drum set.
Definite Pitch defines the beginning of an expansive project – the fruits of which will inhabit my subsequent percussion ensemble music. “Sequoya: The Talking Leaves, for marimba quartet” incorporates five types of mallet articulation into the marimba group sound. “Gegharvesd,” for mixed percussion trio,”soorp,” a trio for bowed glockenspiels, and an expanded version of “for Steve McCall” for three snare drummers. All are intricately involved with extended techniques and augmented sonic vocabulary.
As the next century nears, I look toward continuously expanding this fertile area of percussion music.
Gregg Bendian, 1994
