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Confession: I don't enjoy composing for percussion

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Unless it's tuned idiophones

But for just "drums"...ugh.

I'm putting the finishing touches on my new album, which is orchestra but has some of the more modern cinematic sensibilities: Some electronic, world and rock music mixed in, and while I know a lot of people find the big "epic" drums and stuff stimulating and fun, I find it just such a slog. It's very hard to resist the urge to copy and paste drum parts. On most of my orchestral pieces, I actually try to avoid using drums save for where absolutely necessary.

It's not even a serious orchestration choice, it's just I find composing for percussion so boring and I don't even know why.

I find percussion hard to apply. To get a better feel for the masses of samples I had I wrote a couple of pieces for percussion only and one for voice and percussion, far different from cinematic writing.   I think I may have submitted one of the pieces here - can't remember.  They seem more novelty pieces with a good amount of learning as a result.  Then suddenly a potential student applying for a course at the Royal Academy of Dance with whom I've worked before wanted a contemporary piece for her audition. She was rummaging through my stuff and found one of these pieces. 

  • Author
On 3/30/2025 at 8:31 AM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Hey Chris @AngelCityOutlaw

Don’t scare me off! I’m going to compose orchestral music haha!

Henry

 

Well, you may only need some timpani and bass drums there which is at least not a ton of percussion

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