Program Notes:
My doctoral research includes the construction of a body movement in order to avoid injuries by marimba playing, to expend the marimba repertory by arranging existing music, by commissioning new music and by composing own works. The spring recital will present to you new works for solo or chamber music and the music of Bach on the marimba.
The Prelude of Suite No. 2 consists of two parts, the first of which has a strong recurring theme that is immediately introduced in the beginning. The second part is a scale-based cadenza movement that leads to the final. The subsequent Allemande contains short cadenzas that stray away from this otherwise very strict dance form. Sarabande sounds richer than it is, mixing melody with broken chord to suggest a strong harmonic support. The first Menuette contains demanding chord shifting. The powerful Gigue is probably the most challenging movement. It requires a fluent melodic line on the right hand; the left hand gives the pulse. When both hand meet together will have to bring a light and dance feeling in order to keep a good balance.
After I have written “Café without sugar” the second movement of the work Kaleidoscope, I started to write The cappuccino lovely. I wanted to compose another piece for marimba solo with three movements with three different styles. In the first movement I want to have a jazz feeling to escape from a strict tempo and to bring the listeners an image like having a night walk in New York Street. Following movements have a minimalism structure: you will feel the relaxing sunshine at the beach in front of the Queensland Conservatorium in Brisbane and in the last movement I handled the French accordion music style which gives the impression walking around the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I grew up with American Starbucks coffee. Therefore, I reflected my preferred tastes like choco, milk and vanilla cream into the music with three different musical styles.
The ”Fusion 4 one” is commissioned by me and the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp. This piece is a mixture of many styles merged into one format. Here you will hear ethno, minimal rock, romantic, pop, jazz, atonal and even a little hip-hop. The 1st movement, “Ethno Prism” is basically built on a pentatonic scale with a touch of minimalist repletion, yet moves from a “rock” to a “romantic” style. The 2nd movement “Classic retro mix” is exactly this- classical looking back (12 tone row) mixed with a choral-like tonal theme. The 3rd movement “Game play” is just having a little bit of musical fun and the game is actually to fusion together the styles of fantasy, hip-hop, popular and jazz.
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Memo for composers
- What are the possibilities with the instrument:
The instrument is from 4 octaves, or 4 1/3 octaves or 5 octaves (C2 – C7). The 5 octaves instrument is often used in the university level, the 4 1/3 or 4 octaves are used for the children due to the length and the range of the instrument.
The marimba is tuned in 442 hz, but they can be also tuned in 443 hz or 440 hz.
The instrument can be percussive but also can be lyrical, smooth, warm and powerful instrument
Nowadays, the manufactory makes the marimba adjustable in which is better for the tall persons.
A wide variety of mallets (about a dozen gradations) are available between very hard mallets which in the high range would produce a xylophone-y quality (hard mallets in the lower range produce a very brittle quality and can harm the instrument if played with loudly) — to very soft mallets which bring out the richness of the bass notes (and which don't "speak" at all in the upper range). If you have a certain type of mallet in mind to achieve a special effect or timbre, it's best to simply write out what you're after, with a foot-note if necessary.
A roll (tremolo) can be executed by the two mallets of one hand or the other while the other hand is doing something else. This can be a roll on one note or between two notes encompassing any reachable interval. However, this is difficult to do much beyond mf. It is also difficult to play one-handed rolls for any length of time. Interspersing rolls between the two hands (i.e., alternating strokes) can alleviate the muscle fatigue of continuous one-handed rolls. In general, when you use two fingers (the thumb and the index finger) from each hand on piano and that will probably be the suitable way to write for the instrument.
- What is the difference between xylophone and marimba
In an examination of the process of tuning the marimba, it is relevant to contrast its predominant overtone with that of the xylophone. In the case of the xylophone, the overtone which is most readily perceived and has the most effect on the listener's perception of pitch and timbre is located an octave and a fifth above the fundamental . This corresponds to the third mode of vibration (second overtone) of the bar.
The marimba, however, has its most significant overtone two octaves above the fundamental, at the fourth mode of vibration. Therefore, when tuning the marimba, it is particularly important to ensure that this overtone sounds at the appropriate frequency, or the marimba's characteristic timbre may be lost.
The introduction of a resonator to a system causes a great deal of interference among sound waves. The end result of this is that while the initial intensity of the sound is greater, since two sources are resonating rather than one, the decay is more rapid due to the proximity of the two vibrating elements.
In Neville Fletcher and Thomas Rossing's The Physics of Musical Instruments, also illustrates a principal, presented in the same book, that could account for the widespread misconception that resonators prolong the sound of a vibrating bar. In the graph, we observe the sound pressure levels of the two types of marimbas over time. While A is greater at the outset and remains louder for much of the duration of the experiment, it eventually crosses B's line and is the first of the two to fall silent. However, assume that the dotted line is a threshold of hearing, elevated by background noise or the sounds of a performing ensemble. In this case, the marimba with resonators could seem to have a longer duration of sound, since it hits the threshold after the unresonated marimba.
With this in mind, the tuning process may begin. Essentially, the marimba is tuned in the following manner, as defined in Neville Fletcher and Thomas Rossing's book The Physics of Musical Instruments (page 541):
- An arch is cut, as shown in Example I, so as to leave the bar approximately a semitone above the desired pitch.
- Material is removed from the regions marked A to lower both the fundamental and first overtone. Moving toward the center lowers the fundamental more rapidly; moving toward the ends favors the first overtone.
- If the overtone is tuned and the fundamental is too high, a notch can be cut at B. If the fundamental is too low, material must be removed from the ends of the bar.
- If the fundamental is tuned and the overtone is still high, notches can be cut near the ends of the arch (just beyond point A).
-Music examples:
Reflection on Japanese Children’s Song III – Keiko Abe
Midare – Ton de Leuww
Ripple – Akira Miyoshi
Monovalence I – Shin-ichiro Ikebe
Velocities – Joseph Shwantner
Merlin – Andrew Thomas
Un Chien Dehors – Jean Pierre Drouet
Five Scenes from the snow Country – Hans Werner Henze
Convergence I – Youshihisa Taira
The instrument is from 4 octaves, or 4 1/3 octaves or 5 octaves (C2 – C7). The 5 octaves instrument is often used in the university level, the 4 1/3 or 4 octaves are used for the children due to the length and the range of the instrument.
The marimba is tuned in 442 hz, but they can be also tuned in 443 hz or 440 hz.
The instrument can be percussive but also can be lyrical, smooth, warm and powerful instrument
Nowadays, the manufactory makes the marimba adjustable in which is better for the tall persons.
A wide variety of mallets (about a dozen gradations) are available between very hard mallets which in the high range would produce a xylophone-y quality (hard mallets in the lower range produce a very brittle quality and can harm the instrument if played with loudly) — to very soft mallets which bring out the richness of the bass notes (and which don't "speak" at all in the upper range). If you have a certain type of mallet in mind to achieve a special effect or timbre, it's best to simply write out what you're after, with a foot-note if necessary.
A roll (tremolo) can be executed by the two mallets of one hand or the other while the other hand is doing something else. This can be a roll on one note or between two notes encompassing any reachable interval. However, this is difficult to do much beyond mf. It is also difficult to play one-handed rolls for any length of time. Interspersing rolls between the two hands (i.e., alternating strokes) can alleviate the muscle fatigue of continuous one-handed rolls. In general, when you use two fingers (the thumb and the index finger) from each hand on piano and that will probably be the suitable way to write for the instrument.
- What is the difference between xylophone and marimba
In an examination of the process of tuning the marimba, it is relevant to contrast its predominant overtone with that of the xylophone. In the case of the xylophone, the overtone which is most readily perceived and has the most effect on the listener's perception of pitch and timbre is located an octave and a fifth above the fundamental . This corresponds to the third mode of vibration (second overtone) of the bar.
The marimba, however, has its most significant overtone two octaves above the fundamental, at the fourth mode of vibration. Therefore, when tuning the marimba, it is particularly important to ensure that this overtone sounds at the appropriate frequency, or the marimba's characteristic timbre may be lost.
The introduction of a resonator to a system causes a great deal of interference among sound waves. The end result of this is that while the initial intensity of the sound is greater, since two sources are resonating rather than one, the decay is more rapid due to the proximity of the two vibrating elements.
In Neville Fletcher and Thomas Rossing's The Physics of Musical Instruments, also illustrates a principal, presented in the same book, that could account for the widespread misconception that resonators prolong the sound of a vibrating bar. In the graph, we observe the sound pressure levels of the two types of marimbas over time. While A is greater at the outset and remains louder for much of the duration of the experiment, it eventually crosses B's line and is the first of the two to fall silent. However, assume that the dotted line is a threshold of hearing, elevated by background noise or the sounds of a performing ensemble. In this case, the marimba with resonators could seem to have a longer duration of sound, since it hits the threshold after the unresonated marimba.
With this in mind, the tuning process may begin. Essentially, the marimba is tuned in the following manner, as defined in Neville Fletcher and Thomas Rossing's book The Physics of Musical Instruments (page 541):
- An arch is cut, as shown in Example I, so as to leave the bar approximately a semitone above the desired pitch.
- Material is removed from the regions marked A to lower both the fundamental and first overtone. Moving toward the center lowers the fundamental more rapidly; moving toward the ends favors the first overtone.
- If the overtone is tuned and the fundamental is too high, a notch can be cut at B. If the fundamental is too low, material must be removed from the ends of the bar.
- If the fundamental is tuned and the overtone is still high, notches can be cut near the ends of the arch (just beyond point A).
-Music examples:
Reflection on Japanese Children’s Song III – Keiko Abe
Midare – Ton de Leuww
Ripple – Akira Miyoshi
Monovalence I – Shin-ichiro Ikebe
Velocities – Joseph Shwantner
Merlin – Andrew Thomas
Un Chien Dehors – Jean Pierre Drouet
Five Scenes from the snow Country – Hans Werner Henze
Convergence I – Youshihisa Taira
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