This “nerdy” tenor solo is dedicated to math geeks everywhere! This is multi-tenor drum etude #19 from The Art of Multi-Tenor Drumming. The main theme is derived from the Fibonacci sequence, and it focuses on developing sweeps, a.k.a. scrapes, around the drums.
Here are the performance notes from the book:
I originally thought of titling the next three etudes Sweep Fest #1, Sweep Fest #2, and Sweep Fest #3. (I ultimately settled on that title for etude #21 alone.) The idea was that each of the three etudes would focus on sweep patterns, but they would increase in difficulty. This idea still generally holds true, but a few ideas came to me based on mathematics, and they lent themselves to sweeps quite well. I think this gives the following etudes a very interesting structure, much more interesting than what I would have created if I was simply trying to write a sweep etude from scratch.
I was reading how the Fibonacci sequence is used in the music of Bartók, Debussy, Satie, and others. This gave me the idea to do a few experiments. The main theme of this etude, Fibonacci, is derived from the Fibonacci number sequence. In short, the Fibonacci sequence is a list of integers in which the first two numbers are added to get the third, the second and third are added to get the fourth, the third and fourth are added to get the fifth, etc. It looks like this:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, etc.
I created two more charts to make the Fibonacci numbers correspond to the five tenor drums. First, I started listing drums one through five and aligned them with every integer:
1 = drum #1
2 = drum #2
3 = drum #3
4 = drum #4
5 = spock drum
6 = drum #1
7 = drum #2
8 = drum #3
9 = drum #4
10 = spock drum
11 = drum #1
12 = drum #2
13 = drum #3
14 = drum #4
15 = spock drum
etc…..
Then I took the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence and found which drum corresponded to that number:
1 = drum #1
1 = drum #1
2 = drum #2
3 = drum #3
5 = spock drum
8 = drum #3
13 = drum #3
21 = drum #1
34 = drum #4
55 = spock drum
89 = drum #4
144 = drum #4
233 = drum #3
377 = drum #2
610 = spock drum
987 = drum #2
1597 = drum #2
2584 = drum #4
4181 = drum #1
6765 = spock drum
I tried this pattern more on a whim than anything else, but two interesting patterns emerged. First of all, with two measures of continuous 8th notes in 5/4 time, the first and second measures parallel each other exactly (drum #1 = drum #4, drum #2 = drum #3, and the spock drum lands in the same place of each measure; in other words, ascending phrases become descending and vice versa).
Another interesting find was that the 20-note pattern repeats if you keep going through the Fibonacci sequence. (For example, the 21st number in the sequence is 10,946, and it corresponds to drum #1 again, and the following numbers cycle through the same pattern.) Furthermore, the sequence generated actually produces a pleasant melody. If you’re wondering, yes, this took a long time to figure out. Once I started, I was not unlike Alice feeling drawn to follow the white rabbit. I felt I had to see where the sequence would lead.
Anyway, this 20-note theme is used in several ways throughout this etude. Various phrases, mostly utilizing sweeps, tie them all together. A few other singles and rhythmic patterns are also incorporated for musical variety. The tempo is fairly upbeat, but it’s very doable if you have worked through the different sweep exercises in this book. I think the phrasings and musical ideas are fairly obvious, so I won’t write much on them. Overall, I like this piece a lot. Once I completed the arduous task of figuring out the melody, everything else pretty well wrote itself. It has kind of a futuristic feel to me, and I hope you will enjoy playing it.