The Elements (Percussion)
A new percussion show (unrelated to my orchestral suite) written for the 2009 Kapolei High School 'Hurricanes' Winterline by Matthew Cadirao and battery by Fred Mariano. In four movements: Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth.
I am a graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a degree in music composition. This goes without saying but I love music (listening, composing, studying, performing).
Story behind the song
This is a multi-movement percussion suite I wrote this year for the 2009 Kapolei High School "Hurricanes" Winterline. Like last year, I created the majority of the musical decisions and the mallet/auxiliary parts, while Fred Mariano wrote a marching battery part for the music I had written.
The show is basically a tone poem in four movements, with each movement illustrating each of the four elements: Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth. The first movement, Fire, uses an odd pitch collection and is characterized by its frequent buildups to symbolize fire's constant changing nature.
The second movement, Water, is a pit percussion-only (no marching battery drums) movement. I used a repeating line similar to my piece "Quantum Leap 1" whose dragging quality I thought suited water. Following this is a more minimalist section where I tried to portray a more quick yet flowing nature of water. Throughout the entire movement, there are short two-note motifs (e.g. upward or downward octaves) symbolizing drips.
The third movement, Wind, I actually wrote first. It's meant to be very light and playful hence its more upbeat nature. It doesn't literally portray air, but the general "fluffy" intention (which turned into something else as I continued to write and as the battery part was added) served to reference air, in the light windy sense. Oh yeah, and there's a slide whistle.
Immediately following the last note of the third movement, a bass drum section feature serves to transition into the final movement, Earth. I had no idea how to portray earth in one minute with percussion instruments (without using huge thundersheets and stationary drums), so I used a 6/8 percussion sketch I had written in my sophomore year of high school. I tried to reference the other movements and then wrote a short coda, ending the show with an earthquake and a big "wall" of noise.
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