Timpanist Enthroned

This week I met with percussionist Joe Howe.  He showed me what it’s like to sit behind the tympani, and he stressed the importance of playing with presence and power, in manner that shows ownership over the ensemble.  Upon further research, Joe’s observations rang true.  Conductor, author, and professor of the Royal College of Music in London, Norman Del Mar (1919-1994), wrote that a timpanist “appears to be enthroned, presiding as it were over the orchestra.”  I’ll let you decide whether I possess the powerful stance of a true timpanist; just check out the video.  And in the interview below, you can read more about timpani tasks and troubles.

Interview:

Tashina: When did you first start playing percussion?

Joe: I started playing in 5^th grade, so when I was about 11.

Tashina: Was it like a school band program?

Joe: Yeah, school.  It was an intermediate school.

Tashina: Why did you choose percussion over other instruments?

Joe: Um, I don’t really remember.  I was originally going to do euphonium, because I thought it had a cool name.  And I don’t really remember why I chose to do percussion.  But when I showed up for school that year, I just decided to do it.

Tashina: What is the biggest challenge of being a percussionist?

Joe: I think the biggest challenge is that there are so many different things you need to learn. Um, and there’s so much different depth you can go into.  Like I learned a certain extent in high school, and I thought I knew some cool stuff. And then I came here [Southern Utah University].  And actually, I’ll never forget my audition for Dr. Vartan.  I played this snare drum piece, and I thought it was pretty good.  And then the first thing she said to me was, “Do you know how to roll on the snare drum?”  And I was like, “I think so.”  And I tried to roll, and she’s like “We’ll work on it later.”  And so, there are so many different levels, and that was just the snare drum, you know.  And I didn’t even know how to play the mallet instruments until I came to college.  And um, there’s so many different things.  Like I thought I knew how to play timpani, and I didn’t.  Now I realize that there’s so much further I can go with all these different instruments.  And there’s so many different levels.  Like just playing the John Cage piece, Third Construction, there’s so many different things that he did with layering, and different kind of rhythms, and stuff like that.  Just crazy.  There’s so much stuff to take in.  It’s kinda hard to pick what you want to do.

Tashina: Why are timpani different sizes?

Joe: They are different sizes so you can get the different pitches. Um, these are the four normal sizes, starting at the bottom: it’s a 32” (it goes up by three) and then the next one’s 29”, 26”, 23”.  And the bottom range goes from a ‘D’ to a ‘G.’ The second goes to a ‘F’ to a ‘D.’ And then the third one goes from ‘Bb’ to ‘Gb.’ And the top one goes to ‘D’ to ‘Bb.’ But that’s what they should be able to do, but not all of them can get that high. Like the third drum over there only gets up to a Bb.

Tashina: How do you tune timpani to desired pitches?

Joe: If you’re really good, you can go by ear.  I don’t.  Most of the time what really good timpanists do, is they know their intervals really well. And they can get usually the ‘Bb’ off the band, or an ‘A’ if they’re with the orchestra. And just sing the intervals, and be able to do it that way.  They do have gauges on them now, a lot of the new ones actually have gauges that you can set. But those are only relative, because the orchestra changes, obviously. So that’s how you’re supposed to do it.

Tashina: Which orchestral composers write the best timpani parts?

Joe: My favorite is Beethoven, personally.  Because he writes the timpani as part of the bass line, kinda, but also kinda as a drum.  And I think that nowadays, most composers think of it more of as part of the percussion section.  When he actually thought of it as more of a bass line.  Even though back then, they didn’t have the capability to actually tune them, as much as they do now.  Actually in the old days, if the different movements went to different keys, they wouldn’t tune the timpani to different keys, because it would take too long.  And so it would actually be out of tune.  But nowadays, they do obviously. Beethoven wrote, probably the best, I think.  Some other good ones are Mahler.  Mahler actually wrote some pretty good timpani parts too.  But Beethoven’s the best in my opinion.