Even the kitchen sink!

What do boobams, xylophone, pedal bass drum, congas, bongos, tomtoms, cowbells, woodblock, temple blocks, suspended cymbals, marimba, waterphone, sizzle cymbal, thunder sheets, junk metal, tambourine and vibraphone have in common?

If you read the last post, you will probably guess correctly that these instruments are somehow all involved in Adam Gorb's Elements - Suite for solo percussion and symphonic wind ensemble. In fact they are all played by one person, our soloist. I'm going to save talking about who is going to play all of these instruments for a later post and focus this time on what all of these instruments are.

You may know that percussion instruments can be divided into multiple different families. They are all, by definition, instruments that are struck in some way but the resulting sounds can be very different. One family of instruments is the pitched keyboard instruments. In this piece, our trusty soloist plays xylophone, marimba and vibraphone. The xylophone and marimba are both made of wood. The xylophone being the higher, little brother of the marimba. The vibraphone is a metallic instrument that has quite a long ring to it and is manipulated with a pedal to dampen the ring and a rotating fan to create a vibrato effect. These instruments are often confused and many people use the word xylophone to indicate any number of pitched keyboard percussion instruments.

We then have a number of metallaphones, or non-pitched (or more correctly - instruments without specific pitch) instruments made of metal. These include the cowbells, cymbals, thunder sheets and junk metal. these are all struck with wooden sticks or yarn mallets and, although they do not have a specific pitch, they do have a myriad of sounds and relative pitches. The cowbells and cymbals are common instruments but the thunder sheet and junk metal are more rare. A thunder sheet is a large piece of sheet metal that is shaken to imitate the sound of thunder. Junk metal is just that: pieces of metal of varying shapes and sizes, often scavenged from an auto wrecker. Trust me, when you go to an auto wrecker and ask for pieces of metal to play and jump into the dumpster with stick bag in hand, you get some strange looks. But you also get some very cool sounds!

Then we come to the family of instruments most commonly referred to as drums. In this piece, we have a bass drum from a drum set played with a pedal, we have congas, bongos, tom toms, a tambourine and boobams. The drum set bass drum, I'm sure everyone has seen. Congas and bongos are also quite common. They are the drums used in many Latin American styles of music. The congas are 2 1/2 feet tall and are played with the hands. Their little brothers are the bongos and they are quite a bit smaller, connected in pairs and played with the fingers. The tambourine is a universal hand drum with jingles mounted around the shallow wooden shell. Tom toms are often double headed drums most commonly found on drum sets. Finally, the boobams are the most rare of all of the drums that will be used. They come in sets and are best described as high pitched bongos with very long shells or tubes.

This leaves three remaining instruments. The woodblock and temple blocks are resonant wood instruments, the temple blocks coming in sets of relatively pitched blocks. The most interesting of all of these instruments is the waterphone. This doesn't really fit into any group of instruments and is best described by looking on the creator's web site. Essentially, a series of relatively pitched metal rods are attached to the perimeter of a metal disk that are then struck and bowed creating a quite eery effect.

It's truly an amazing array of instruments that will have to be heard live to truly get the full effect. The variety of sounds coupled with the almost dance like way that the soloist moves through and around them all to play is an exciting aural and visual experience. But, you have the chance to see and hear it all on October 18th, at Evergreen Cultural Centre!