In November 2011, I visited Columbus, Ohio to work with my friend Noah Demland.

We had met at the Percussive Arts Society’s Convention (PASIC) in 2010 and over the next year, we both happened to be working on improvisation and composition in percussion and posting our results on Soundcloud. I think we were a bit inspirational to each other over this period: one of us posting something on Soundcloud motivated the other to go and record something.

Anyway, I was planning to be in America with Ensemble Evolution for PASIC 2011 so it was easy to plan on visiting Noah, but I had no idea what we would actually do.

When I arrived in Columbus, I found out that Noah actually has two personas. By night, he improvises and records strange, punk and post rock infused tunes with an old vibraphone and a new drumset. By day, he turns into Mr Demland, teaching at a high school called the “Arts and College Preparatory Academy” full of strange and wonderful young people…

Dave Gerhart posted an article recently called “A Question Concerning Electronic Percussion” by Norman Weinberg over on drumchattr.

I read this article in semi-disbelief and it wasn’t until I got to the end that I realised it must have been written quite some time ago (actually in 1990).

It is interesting to read such an old article to see how the world of electronic musical instruments has changed but I got stuck on one of Weinberg’s predictions:

“For better or worse, the knowledge and skills required to manufacture a good sampler, mallet controller, electronic kit, or drum machine are more complex… This means that electronic percussion instruments will most likely come from the larger corporations rather than the small home-factory.”

This has turned out to be absolutely not true, but I think it’s something the percussion (especially PAS) community isn’t necessarily aware of. While instruments like Roland’s V-Drums have stayed more or less stagnant in terms of design (but not in price or adoption!), creative performers have been making new electronic percussion instruments or innovative hybrids of existing ones…

Christina and I recorded a quick demo of Norra Vinter in Canberra just before I left for Sweden.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a pretty good work-in-progress snapshot!

Norra Vinter – October 2011 Demo by Charles Martin

(Sorry, the embedded version uses flash, if you’re on a non-flash browser, try my soundcloud page)

Christina’s favourite kind of percussion music is ragtime xylophone, so we’ve decided to start a duo project recording and performing the music of George Hamilton Green, Red Norvo and many others.

Our first demo is up on soundcloud now! It’s a bit rough because we had to record on the same day as we recorded some of my compositions and we were both tired. But it was important to get something up before I left for Sweden! So here it is:

Christina and Charles Ragtime Project by Charles Martin