Laurel Black Music

If there's anything more frustrating than moving a marimba, it's moving a marimba and realizing you've lost a felt or two.  Disappeared - like socks in the dryer.  Though I've been known to use a hair tie in a last-minute situation, I took 20 minutes this morning to make my own felts - 55, to be exact! That's what - less than 30 seconds each?!  Here's how I did it. Supplies - one piece of black felt ($0.40 at Michael's) - ruler - sewing machine (needle and thread works, too, but will take longer)  The brand of felt I found is called Creatology. Here's the label: Instructions 1. Remove a felt from the marimba to take some measurements.  I've found that most are really similar in size, but measure to be sure.   This one is one inch long on the folded edge, 7/8" wide. You'll also want to measure from the fold to the first row of stitching, if there is some visible.  This one is 5/8". You'll want ...

TAPS, ya'll. TAPS made me not hate excerpts. For those that know me, this is a huge deal. Let me explain. My undergraduate education began with assignments of only snare drum, and almost exclusively excerpts.  If you're looking for a way to get rid of a student, I suggest this route.  Not only was I not yet mature enough to have the focus and discipline to learn these, but they were killing my motivation to practice. I wanted  to practice; I was desperate to learn.  Sure, my buzz rolls got pretty good, but I hated the rest of it. I dreaded practice, which as we all know, really sucks. Luckily, my ornery side kicked in and I just started learning marimba pieces in my own time, so the music student was saved!  But that first semester of school has never left me.  Since then, any time a person mentions excerpts, I cringe.  With less self control I'd act like Michael from The Office. In grad school, the quickest way to get me to leave a room wa...

Tendons are like a muscle's alter ego: a superhero that manages to somehow make sure every scenario ends up ok, regardless of villainous plots.  They have undeniable strength, can hold on to just about anything, and save just about anyone. Like Superman and Clark Kent, tendons aren't separate from muscles. They are simply two kinds of soft tissue, gently converging to form one shape.  In a way, one without the other is functionless. Both are needed to form a cohesive whole. Any time a muscle attaches to a bone, a tendon forms the literal connection. Take a look at the diagram below. There's a tendon - drawn here in white - at each end of the bicep and tricep. Though it might be oversimplified to the MD's and DO's out there, each muscle in the body has a tendon at each end to anchor it to the skeleton. What is exceptional about the wrist is the number of highly active tendons running through such a small space.  Not only are there tendons for the wrist,...

Hi, friends! As announced last week, here is the first of two articles to appear in Rhythm! Scene , the online publication of PAS.  You can find my contribution on pages 18 and 19. Rhythm! Scene is edited by  @ percussion 's own Megan Arns. If you aren't the reading type, you can check out the demonstration video that accompanies the article below. I take you through some discovery exercises about how it really feels to move the wrist in different ways. Thanks for reading, everybody. More body info coming your way soon :)

Cool things are in the works, everybody. Publications I'm excited to let you know that I'll have two articles coming out in Rhythm! Scene : one in April, the other in June.  It's a two-parter about developing kinesthetic awareness and applying that knowledge to our wrists.   In the April issue: developing a kinesthetic mindset, discovery exercises for kinesthetic awareness, and discussion of two stabilizing ligaments in the wrist. In the June issue: tendons, common injuries, and a kinesthetic checklist to help avoid them. TAPS - June 6-12, 2016 This June yours truly will be part of the faculty at the Ted Atkatz Percussion Seminar (TAPS) on the East Coast at the Snow Pond Music Festival.  The seminar takes place in beautiful central Maine and it isn't too late to submit an audition tape.  Here are the guidelines .  TAPS is for college students looking to develop excerpts, audition skills, and musicality.  Several TAPS alumni have b...

Injuries occur from overuse and misuse.  Overuse is a depressing notion for percussionists, as it implies that we will eventually "hit our quota" in terms of how many strokes we get to play in our lifetime.  But hear the good news, brothers and sisters! - injury happens most often from habitual misuse of a joint, not overuse.  Hallelujah! In the words of a dear friend, "Praise Jesus and pass the biscuits!" Mismap = Misuse circle vs ellipse Misuse requires a mismapping of the body's structure.  It means repetitive motion of the body in a way that is incongruent with its design.  For example, if you think your wrist is a ball and socket joint (movable in 360 degrees) instead of a flexible hinge - technically, an ellipsoid joint - you will eventually injure yourself.  Why?  Because you'll be forcing the joint to overextend from an ellipse to a circle, resulting in tendonitis.  The anatomical difference is that a ball and sock...

Wrists intimidate the be-Jesus out of me. They're an unbelievably complex joint - an area where so many small moving parts converge into one tiny space. Not only that, but as percussionists wrists receive an overwhelming amount of attention, so there's a certain gravity to any information presented on them.  Hence why the wrist is a multi-part series of posts. There's much to say and even more to learn about this joint, but I thought that perhaps one of the most useful ways to begin would be to view some diagrams. Perhaps in viewing the joint from the many layers on the inside, we can rethink how we perceive its movement on the outside. source From the Inside, Out Skeletal Structure Just like other joints, the wrist is not a bone but a place of movement.  The diagram below shows the right arm if you turn your palm towards you, bend the elbow, and move your forearm in front of your body.  The wrist occurs in the space between the ends of the radius and u...