Percussion Ensemble

Chamber Music - the best way to develop your musical ear

Anders Holdar and Jacob Johannesson

Percussion Plus, Tallinn 2016

Where we workAnders:

• SMI, University College of Musik Education in Stockholm

• S.t Ilian school, Enköping. Music and music profile classes

Jacob:

• SMI

• Musikskolan in Upplands Väsby

• Roslagens kulturskola in Norrtälje

• anders.holdar@telia.com

• jacob.johannesson@smi.se

KroumataStarted in Stockholm in 1978. The ambition: • to play percussion ensemble music for fun.• to become known in the classical music field. Swedish Radio 2, Conserts at the Culture house in Stockholm• Co-operate with the best artists such as Keiko Abe. Perform at PASIC in the USA.• to become known for a non classical audience. TV, Filadelfia Church concerts, King and Queen, Killinggänget.

Other strategic thoughts and basic elements that made it possible:• we were employed in an orchestra with a monthly salary. Had the career as a group been possible if not?• good organisation (at least 60% office work). All members were responsible for specific fields.• brochures with the best photo artists and copy writers. Media strategies.• Always talk with the audience. Use microphone. Let them talk when you change instruments.

Kroumata shut down 2015. This happens now:• The instruments, own by the Swedish state, are taken care of by SMI, University College of Music Education.• SMI gets new localities 2017 at Södertörn University, 15 km south from Stockholm Centre.• A Kroumata Percussion Centre is ready to open. Please come and perform!• Percussion Plus in Stockholm 2018. Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm in a new house autumn 2016.

Chamber music• Your own wonderful possibility to shape the music and bring it to the audience.• Get rid of your prestige. Accept that even you can loose tempo, focus, sound…• Remember there are always thousands of musical solutions.• The one with the highest desire to create is the leader (of today’s rehearsal).• Shaping the music: It’s in the bridges and transitions you really show your artistic

capacity.• Chamber music as a basic idea in education make sense.• New beginners play ensemble from the start. • It’s more fun to be a team, we’re making friends.• Play together, teachers and pupils/students. The teaching methods are important

but never forget one of the best: to play and improvise together. On all levels, a lot!

The musician as an artist• Watch out for the academic illness. Get free again after your education.

• The notes are important. Have great respect for the composer. But…the notes are dead materia until you shape them. Make the piece to your own, change notes (for easier technique), prolong or take away notes (for form) etc.

• Attitude on stage. A quick entrance and then: Now listen carefully to what I say (play). It’s something in your eyes.

• How the professionals do it: use the contrasts and extremes. Loud is louder, soft is softer. Force the audience to concentration, surprise, irritation…

• The musician as an artist means: I am responsible for everything in my performance. More than the music: the clothes, light, scenography (meaning you must not do it yourself but always ask for it). The musician as musician: The light is too bad, the conductor is too bad, I slept poorly…

• Educate the ears: First you don’t think about sound differences. After a while you start to change instruments. Finally you never find the proper mallet: You are on the way to be an artist!

• With the pupils; ”This is real”. A professional attitude from start.

• Am I looking good when I play? Listen totally focused and concentrate 100% on the sounds you are producing and you look good naturally.

Percussion Ensemble• The advantage: Variation in sounds. Variation in styles, from

fundamental rhythms to complex soundscapes. A musical theatre. A short way from folklore to academic music.

• The disadvantage: Well, you all know it; pack and carry, unpack and carry. The non stopping need for new instruments.

• The best percussion ensemble piece is one where you don’t think of it as a percussion piece. Just as good music.

• Percussion is tolerant. As a new beginner you can start immediately.

Instruments and set-upAll is about sound.

• Nature skins as much as possible.

• Heavy sticks on big drums.

• Clean sounds in the instruments.

• Note stands in a proper position. The audience must see the main things; your hands (and the instrument you are actually playing on) and your face. A 3-4 cm gap between the instrument and the bottom of the note stand is enough. The audience hear and see it all.

• Instruments not needed any more to the side of the stage. The background must remain clean (and preferably nice lighted up).

Playing together• Ensemble = soft… Ensemble = soft… It’s the fastest way to play together. How can you

hear your neighbor when you play loud? One ear is for you, the other for the ensemble. Keep this in mind even when it starts to fit nice together. Then you have a bigger chance to play forte nicely, meaning strong but not stronger than you can keep a good sound.

• On stage it’s a long distance between the musicians. Don’t trust the ear. Look at the feet and body and exaggerate the phrasing.

• But still, with the most accurate playing you are lost without a message. The audience must feel that you want to give them something more than a technical show-off.

• Every piece, no matter style, must leave the stage and influence the audience somehow.

• Play percussion music combined with other instruments! It develops your skill for phrasing and nuances and takes you away from narrow minded percussion thinking; that percussion must be (metronomically) rhythmical and fast. It can and should be, but only some now and then.

Ok to fix the music?• The same play by Shakespeare can look as different worlds in two different

settings. Still it’s the same play by Shakespeare.

• In the music world we are taught that the compositions are almost holy and must not be touched.

• Today a lot of great contemporary composers write for percussion ensemble.

Two good reasons to intervene and make changes in a percussion score:

• First: Even the best composers write sometimes doubtful things due to the complexity and practical problems in percussion. Change, cut, prolong…

• Secondly: to do simplified or adapted versions of good pieces is often better used time than spending time with mediocre music. Think about how the directors treat Shakespeare. Remember you are an artist!

ImprovisationMany of us feel insecure…

• Which world of sounds are we dealing with? Create inner visions and pictures.

• The great freedom to decide on your own and feel comfortable with your choices.

• Develop your listening in ensemble playing. ”The clock” is a nice old way. The teacher holding the arm upright going down and up again in a circle showing a minute of playing. Long sounds, short sounds, ugly sounds etc. Make it more difficult; now only three beats in a minute for each one of you etc.

• ”The Circles”. One empty (pause), one with a single note, one with mmm, stars and moons (sounds), cars or horses (rhythms). Discuss and try out every circle. Let the musicians be involved as much as possible. Make a composition together.

• Keiko Abe improvise in the character of the music in the written score. A good idea.

• If the pupil is afraid of the audience: Only look, intensively at the drum, for instance in a small one minute long taiko solo; How does the drum sound today - some faster notes - now my favorite licks!

• Create a improvisation structure. For example in the free parts in Taira. Decide which sounds (3-4) you want to use and always go in the same order between them. Then you have time to listen to where they shall be played instead of using time to think of which sound you shall use next.

Pack and unpack• Try to make it to a positive part of your job.

• Let the practical work be a healthy way to relax from the intellectual work in practice and performance.

• Develop your capacity in organization and solidarity.

• Always use cases. Without cases you destroy both the instruments and your body.

• Don’t hesitate to ask the audience to help you carry after the concert. Don’t meaning to announce it for the audience but take use of those who stay talking a little afterwords. The love to help out, and the quicker all get’s a bier afterwards.

Thank youThank you Hanneleen, Vambola, Rein and all the other wonderful estonian friends who created this magnificent percussion event for us. You have done a fantastic job and given us all beautiful memories from Tallin 2016!

Yoshihisa Taira: Hierophonie VThis piece that we show you on this seminar Kroumata heard at a concert in Paris with the famous group Les Percussion de Strasbourg. We immediately decided to get the score and try with our group. It’s recorded live at our first CD BIS 232 in Gothenburg in 1983.

While rehearsing it we called it ”a primal therapy piece” (a therapy form much talked about those years) due to the reason that we all became husky in our throats. Yet we felt so happy after every rehearsal!

This is a piece that easily can be used even with younger or not so experienced percussionists. A good piece for to develop skills in graphic reading, improvising and musical breathing. The SMI teacher students have enjoyed a lot to work with it.

Please do as I often do; cut the piece down a little, or maybe even do a children version of it. The problem with good pieces is often the length. It’s simply is to much material to learn for those who haven’t played many years, but let them also play the best pieces (in shorter versions)!