III. Tambourine Duel
Here is the full performance of the third movement of Five Petite Movements, by Chris Roode.
To hear your individual part please scroll down!
The Full Performance
The Individual Parts
Play Along: Tambourine 1
Play Along: Tambourine 2
Play Along: Tambourine 3
Play Along: Tambourine 4
About the piece
From the publisher: Written for beginning percussion ensemble with approximately one month of experience, Five Petite Movements by Chris Roode is a great way to showcase new percussionists in performance. You have the option of choosing only a selection of movements (1–2 minutes each) or the entire suite (8 minutes). Additionally, different performers may be assigned to the movements to create a mini percussion ensemble concert.
Scored for four or more players, parts may be doubled, tripled, or otherwise multiplied to accommodate the group’s size. Available for purchase here.
From the Percussion Pal team: This movement presents us with the most uniform timbre of any in the piece because each performer is holding the same instrument. That being said, the timbre of different types of tambourines does leave us with some options to help spread the range of sound and allow for nuance in the overall presentation of the ensemble. There are so many options when looking at tambourines, and we realize most performers might be in the situation of “my school only has these tambourines,“ but for the sake of demonstration, we will outline some of the options out there when choosing tambourines.
Instrument manufacturers like Black Swamp and Grover offer detailed outlines about their instruments, and there are basically three elements to consider when choosing a tambourine: shell size, type of head, and type of jingle. We primarily chose to think about type of jingle because we were in a situation where we all had access to 10’’ shell and synthetic head tambourines. This movement pairs the material of Player 1 & 2, and Player 3 & 4, so we chose to pair the sounds of each of the duets. Player 1 & 2 are using German Silver jingles - very bright and direct sound, while Player 3 & 4 are using Phosphor Bronze jingles - a darker and warmer sound. In an ideal world, we could have Player 1 & 2 using 10’’ tambourines with synthetic heads and Players 3 & 4 using 12’’ tambourines with calf heads to distinguish the pairing of parts even more, but we had to work with what we had available! All that is to say, as performers we need to utilize all the tools at our disposal, and not simply pick up any old tambourine from the percussion cabinet in the band hall.
If you have any questions or comments about this, please don’t hesitate to contact us so we can talk more about this awesome piece!