Fifteen easy snare drum solos for young musicians.
Percussive Notes Volume 42 No. 4, August 2004
Percussive Arts Society
This 48-page text contains 15 mallet percussion solos and 15 snare drum solos designed for young band students. (Solo books are available for all band instruments.) The snare drum/mallet book contains two CDs: one for the mallet selections, the other for the snare drum pieces, featuring play-along opportunities. The snare drum CD contains a demonstration of each solo. On the mallet CD, two tracks are allotted to each solo. The first presents the piece performed on bells with piano accompaniment; the second track contains the piano accompaniment alone. If a student wishes to perform the mallet solos with a live pianist, a separate book of piano accompaniments must be purchased.
Throughout the concert-style snare drum solos, accents, flams, buzzed strokes, rolls and the simultaneous performance of a right-hand and left-hand part are featured in a number of imaginative contexts. Dave Hagedorn, who contributed the snare drum material, uses a variety of styles, from Latin-inspired examples that utilize different playing areas of the head to a New Orleans-style street march. Special techniques (playing on the rim, stick clicks, cross-stick and "end of stick on drumhead") are all explained and illustrated. Also included in the snare drum section is a page of basic "rudiment studies" and the PAS International Drum Rudiments.
Mallet solos, which use melodic material from such composers as Handel, Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart as well as obscure individu-als such as Albert Biehl and Franz Behr, are written in the keys of ei-ther B-flat or E-flat. A page is included that presents scales and arpeggios in these keys for practice. Sticking suggestions are not provided. None of the solos requires the use of rolls. (Because rolling techniques are so important to develop early on, it would have been advantageous if pieces were included that contained rolls, played in both detached and legato versions.) Six pages of program notes, which provide informative and interesting commentary for each solo, is a valuable addition to the publication.
Fifteen easy snare drum solos for young musicians.
Percussive Notes Volume 43 No. 6, December 2005
Percussive Arts Society
The fifteen snare drum solos reveal a number of interesting features, around which Hagedorn develops his material. For example, in one piece the rhythm of "Reveille" is explored; another solo features the son clave rhythmn of the mambo, played by the snare drummer with a timbali-like technique. Other solos are based on a Habanera rhythmn, and drum rhythmns from West Africa and the Ewe tribe. Solos also focus on the training of the musician, focusing on counting triplets and sixteenth notes accurately and playing in different meters while maintaining a steady tempo.
Students interested in pursuing these solos should have a good grasp of roll styles (both multiple bounce and open double-stroke rolls are used), and a significant start on the diddle, flam, and drag rudiments. Other techniques include playing on the rim, using stick clicks, cross-stick technique and striking the head with the butt end of the stick. Several pages of "program and performance notes" contain interesting background information for each piece, performance related concerns and suggestions, and the PAS International Drum Rudiments.