What a 10 Minute Gong Solo Teaches Us About Drumming
There’s an important practicing truth that is the key to really mastering anything on the drums. Without following this key truth, you’ll never fully learn something to your best ability. What’s interesting, though, is that a percussion piece written for solo gong actually teaches us a lot about this piece of “practice wisdom.”
“Having Never Written a Note for Percussion” by James Tenney is a solo percussion piece consisting of one note:
The instructions are simply to play a roll on any instrument for a “very long" time. Generally the instrument of choice is a gong because of how interesting and complex its tones are. So most of the time, a percussionist will sit down on the floor in front of the hanging gong, poised to play a very, very long single stroke roll with two large mallets on the face of the gong. Here’s a video of a good performance of the piece if you want to check it out.
So what can this piece teach...
