Timpani & sticks to beat them

[LeMartinPecheur]

At a splendid performance of Sibelius'd 2nd symphony tonight by the St Endellion Festival Orch I had a pretty close-up view of the timpanist and his activities. On a rack in front of him he appeared to have about a dozen different pairs of sticks, all pretty similar-looking with white (fluffy?) heads, and he seemed to use most if not all of them in the course of the work.

Del Mar's Anatomy of the Orchestra (c.1983) has a few paragraphs on wooden, felt, leather or sponge heads for timpani sticks but certainly doesn't begin to suggest such a vast battery of batterers!

'How long has this been going on', and why?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Decades - you can see them in many youTube videos of professional orchestras. (In my own semi-professional Timp-playing days, even I had four different pairs, all giving different timbres, ranging from ones best suited for a pianissimo drum roll, to the loudest flourishes. "A dozen" does seem a bit like "showing off"! )

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[Dave2002]

Do they all have the fluffy heads? No hard wooden sticks then?

A couple of family members have played timps - I'll have to check with them - as well as the views here.

[Bryn]

Do they all have the fluffy heads? No hard wooden sticks then?

A couple of family members have played timps - I'll have to check with them - as well as the views here.

HIPP timpanists often use hard heads on calfskin, IIRC.

[ostuni]

Yes, wooden heads on calf skins is pretty standard for HIP baroque & classical timps. For modern orchestral parts, wooden heads are more of a rarity (specified for special effects by composers from Berlioz to the present), so none of those pics show them - though the bottom one shows what I think are plain cork-headed ones at the front of the rack.

Vertical stick holders, as in the bottom two pics, seem to be almost universal for German-style players; UK players have traditionally used those little trays. The heads may all look similarly fluffy from a distance, but the thickness/density of the fluff, and of the cork cores vary quite a lot, giving a range from soft to hard.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes, wooden heads on calf skins is pretty standard for HIP baroque & classical timps. For modern orchestral parts, wooden heads are more of a rarity (specified for special effects by composers from Berlioz to the present), so none of those pics show them - though the bottom one shows what I think are plain cork-headed ones at the front of the rack.

Vertical stick holders, as in the bottom two pics, seem to be almost universal for German-style players; UK players have traditionally used those little trays. The heads may all look similarly fluffy from a distance, but the thickness/density of the fluff, and of the cork cores vary quite a lot, giving a range from soft to hard.

- the "fluffiness" in the photos are the result of use: most new sticks look "smoother".





My percussion teacher warned against using the vertical "racks", saying that they damaged the heads, so I always stuck with the trays - the raised edges essential for preventing hastily changed beaters from rolling off onto the floor. The racks obviously don't daunt many players, so either the design has changed, or my teacher was just being prejudiced. (It is from him that I've inherited my phobia of seeing the name written as "Tympani" .... brrrrrrrrrrrr!)

[LeMartinPecheur]

Yes, wooden heads on calf skins is pretty standard for HIP baroque & classical timps. For modern orchestral parts, wooden heads are more of a rarity (specified for special effects by composers from Berlioz to the present), so none of those pics show them - though the bottom one shows what I think are plain cork-headed ones at the front of the rack.

Vertical stick holders, as in the bottom two pics, seem to be almost universal for German-style players; UK players have traditionally used those little trays. The heads may all look similarly fluffy from a distance, but the thickness/density of the fluff, and of the cork cores vary quite a lot, giving a range from soft to hard.

Mr Del Mar says that the then-recent introduction of plastic skins saw timpanists drop wooden heads because they leave dents though balsa heads had been suggested as a compromise.

[LeMartinPecheur]

The issue of HIP timp-playing having been raised, seems I now need to seek out a modern recording of the Enigma Var's where Variation XIII is played properly with pre-decimal big brass pennies on calfskin heads

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Mr Del Mar says that the then-recent introduction of plastic skins saw timpanists drop wooden heads because they leave dents

Yes - in many a school you could see where the Rock Band drummers had "had a go" on the Timps. (Like this:



... that's a Bongo head, I think - either that or a Timpani head held by a giant).

HIP practitioners wouldn't be using the plastic heads, anyway - there is a real difference in sound from the calf-skin heads which cancels out the gains of using wooden-headed beaters.

[Richard Barrett]

My percussion teacher warned against using the vertical "racks"

Not only that, but trays are much more convenient if you have to make rapid changes between different sticks in the middle of a piece - admittedly not something that tym- I mean timpanists have to contend with very often, but for multiple percussion setups containing instruments of different kinds it's very often an issue.

[Richard Tarleton]

Yes - in many a school you could see where the Rock Band drummers had "had a go" on the Timps. (Like this:

....I remember seeing the Southern Rock band Blackfoot playing Belfast City Hall back in the 80s - at the end of their gigs the drummer Jakson [sic] Spires was given to firing his drumsticks into the audience - now there's a thing....a fitting climax to, say, the end of Mahler 3.....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

....I remember seeing the Southern Rock band Blackfoot playing Belfast City Hall back in the 80s - at the end of their gigs the drummer Jakson [sic] Spires was given to firing his drumsticks into the audience - now there's a thing....a fitting climax to, say, the end of Mahler 3.....

- you'll notice that some of the photos of the sticks clearly show something that looks like fabric sticking plaster on the handles. This is to help prevent what I think of as the "Oz" accident - so-called because, during a Timp roll leading up to a flourish at the end of Act One of a production of The Wizard of Oz, one of my sticks flew out of my hand and landed in the front row of the audience, resulting in a "drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-donk-donk-donk-donkdonk-donk-donk" effect. Weighing up the time needed to grab a spare stick, or attempt a one-handed flourish, my dilemma was resolved by a chap from the front row (a Munchkin's father, I later found out) coming to me with the missing stick and whispering "I think this is yours?"

[Flay]

...a fitting climax to, say, the end of Mahler 3.....

Or Mahler 6

[Simon B]

Anyone with enough money can equip themselves with 73 (subtly in some instances) different sounding timp sticks from just one manufacturer: https://www.timpanisticks.com/DMTPnew73models.htm.

These are at the more expensive custom made end of the market - the work of a well-known British craftsman. Many professional timpanists have at least some of these - examples can be spotted in at least two of fhg's photos above.

Choice of sticks has a profound effect on timpani timbre. That is, (i) in terms of choice from an available set at any particular moment, and (ii) in overall terms determined by manufacturer(s) and selections within their offering.