Percussionist Stuart Marrs Taps Technology for Unique Timpani DVD
Contact: George Manlove at (207) 581-3756
Music professor Stuart Marrs, in conjunction with the UMaine Office ofResearch and Economic Development, recently completed a uniquerecording project that could become a novel new business venture –interactive DVD tutorials for classical instruments.
Marrs, chair of the music division in the School of Performing Arts,collaborated with staff in the university’s departments of new mediaand industrial cooperation last summer to record the completecollection of “Eight Pieces for Four Timpani” by celebrated Americancomposer Elliott Carter. It is only the second recording of thecomplete set of Carter’s eight timpani pieces on the market, and thefirst interactive timpani DVD. The project was filmed and recorded onthe Maine Center for the Arts stage with four digital cameras capturingmultiple viewing angles that controlled by a remote control.
Designed for music instructors and students of timpani, or kettledrums, viewers can also listen to an optional voice-over narrative inEnglish, French or Spanish, in which Marrs discusses his playingtechnique, the music and how he achieves the complex rhythmic patternsand pitch changes in Carter’s music.
“This is being created as a teaching device for students who can’t comehere to take a seminar,” says Marrs, a Yamaha Performing Artist.
“With the DVD, students have access to many camera angles, and whenused in a computer with Internet access, they can also connect with auser forum and take advantage of links to Yamaha, Vic Firth (drumstickmanufacturer) and the Percussive Arts Society,” Marrs says. “TheDVD-ROM section of the disc contains scholarly articles written aboutthis collection of pieces, which can be accessed with Adobe Acrobat.”
The interactive DVD concept has been used for instructional purposes inpopular music, Marrs says, but nobody has done this in classical music,so far as he knows.
Traditionally, timpani provide the deep rumbling percussion for anorchestra. In “Eight Pieces for Four Timpani,” Carter takes theinstrument farther into a solo performance mode through extendedtechniques, including playing on different places on the drum head toproduce different kinds of sounds and through rapid pitch changes bymeans of the tuning pedals.
Marrs recorded the Elliott Carter pieces from memory, an accomplishmentmade particularly difficult due to the rhythmic and metric complexityof the music. Typically, musicians play or record one, two or threeindividual timpani pieces from Carter’s collection, but not all eight.
“Nobody has the time to prepare them all at once, even professionalmusicians,” says Marrs. He took a semester sabbatical in September of2003 to learn the music.
Development of interactive DVD tutorials for classical instruments,Marrs adds, “could be a great boon to music education. If the businessmodel works, I intend to expand it to other instruments. What I’m doingis taking advantage of all of the interactive technology that a DVDoffers and applying it to pedagogy instead of students passivelywatching an instructional movie at home. ”
The DVD is commercially available at the UMaine Bookstore. Borders also is expected to carry it.
With the first DVD complete, Marrs, Jake Ward, executive director forResearch and Economic Development at UMaine, and student techniciansfrom the Department of Industrial Cooperation are exploring acollaboration that could become a new business venture.
A market study is being done by student business interns KerrianneFalco and in the Office of Research and Economic Development’s TargetTechnology Center in Orono. Renee Kelly, ORED’s director of economicdevelopment initiatives, coordinated student involvement in the filmingand business planning as a pilot project for the soon to openInnovation Center at UMaine.
“Assisting with the commercial development of this project is part ofUMaine’s mission to help bring research and creative achievements tothe public,” Ward says. Students are using the new media equipment,funded by the Maine Technology Institute, to create the “TimeLab” forjust this kind of project, he says.
Others involved in the timpani DVD project were Bill Kuykendall,professor of new media, Mark Wellman, assistant professor of music whoteaches recording arts, Evan Richards, a graduate assistant and newmedia producer at ORED, and Olney Atwell, an ORED student intern. DavidAdkins, facility production manager for the School of Performing Artsand Jeff Richards, technical director for Maine Center for the Arts andhis staff assisted with the lighting.
This article originally was published July 14, 2005.