Excerpted from How To Write For Percussion by Samuel Solomon

Idiomatic writing for mallet instruments

Thumbs and pinkies
Composers often write with a piano and are therefore thinking with ten fingers. A percussionist
can hold up to four mallets comfortably and has quite a bit of freedom, but certainly not as much
as a ten-fingered pianist. The dexterity that composers enjoy on piano can easily result in the
composition of keyboard percussion music that is extremely difficult. By composing on piano with
just thumbs and pinky fingers, the logistical problems that keyboard percussionists face will become
immediately apparent.
One will first notice, when playing piano with only these fingers, that only four notes can be
articulated simultaneously. This may be obvious, but with ten free fingers, composers can forget
and occasionally slip in a five or six-note chord. Playing a simple scale with one hand is not nearly
as easy - C major with alternating thumbs is actually appropriate. If the four-fingered pianist wants
to pivot between two adjacent minor thirds in one hand (e.g., C-E and D -F ) the whole arm has to
swivel back and forth. In addition to these limitations, imagine that each thumb and pinky are 16
inches long and the piano keys are three times as wide!
As silly as it may sound, this thumbs and pinkies technique is rather accurate. One is able
to imagine how percussionists move across the keyboard, and this can help the composer write
idiomatically for these instruments.
Percussionists can, however, play larger intervals than the thumbs and pinkies will usually allow.
The interval stretch in one hand varies with instrument (the largest interval on a vibraphone will
be much less than the largest interval on a glockenspiel) and with placement in the range of the
instrument (the bars get wider on the low end of the instruments). For these reasons, it is hard to
give an exact limit on interval size. The limit in the lowest octave of a five-octave marimba where
the notes are largest is about an octave, comfortably. Larger intervals are possible as one moves up
in the instruments range, but it is best to speak with a percussionist about a specific example.

 keyboard percussion

Below is a list of the largest intervals in one hand for each instrument. Slightly larger intervals are
possible but should be used carefully.
marimba and vibraphone - octave
xylophone and glockenspiel - 11th
crotales - major 6th
Percussionists can play any smaller interval down to a unison. Articulating two adjacent notes with
one mallet is not practical.
The composer must keep in mind that mallet instruments are large and awkward. A five-octave
marimba is over eight feet long! The size of a fifth on the low end of a marimba is about equivalent
to two octaves on a piano, so one can take what is known about accuracy problems with large leaps
and runs that quickly span large distances on piano and apply that four-fold to keyboard percussion
instruments.
There is one important limitation that the thumbs and pinkies technique does not address: mallet
instruments are never touched like a piano so the performer has no way of feeling his or her way
around the keyboard. Percussionists rely entirely on being able to see the keyboard to locate the
correct notes. Of course muscle memory is in play which helps with interval sizes and distances
across the keyboard, but this is very abstract. Most percussionists are required to play on many
different instruments - not just marimba, vibraphone, xylophone, and glockenspiel but different
brands of marimbas, vibraphones, xylophones, and glockenspiels where bar size can vary slightly.
This has a considerable effect on ones ability to become truly familiar, as a pianist would, with the
distances between notes and the sizes of intervals. There are some solo marimbists who play nothing
but marimba and always play on the same instrument; for the rest of the percussion community, the
ability to see the instrument is very important.
As a result, if the two hands are playing very far apart from each other, accuracy problems are
created. The reader may try the following exercise: sit at a piano with your eyes focused on middle
C and notice the span of your peripheral vision. Without moving your head, observe the range you
can comfortably move your hands in both directions and still see what notes you are playing; now,
divide that interval by four. This is the range in which a passage could comfortably fit on a mallet
instrument - probably not much more than an octave. The composer can, of course, expand beyond
that but must keep in mind that the player may only be able to look at one hand at a time. For this
reason the composer may want to have difficult large leaps in only one hand at a time while the other
plays tighter passages.
Here are some more specifics that one can discover with the thumb and pinky technique:
Fourths, fifths, and sixths are the most comfortable intervals.
Just as in piano playing, shifting ones whole hand around is difficult while figures that
move each hand smoothly around the keyboard are much easier.
Keeping one hand on each keyboard - naturals or accidentals - at a time is preferable
(like the piano part in Stravinskys Petrouchka).
The reader may try the following passage (Figure 6.8) on piano with thumbs and pinkies to get a
feel for keyboard percussion playing. This passage is very idiomatic. Mallet indications are 1, 2,
3, 4 from left to right (see Figure i.1) - that is, 1 is left pinky, 2 is left thumb, 3 is right thumb, and
4 is right pinky. R and L mean right and left when both mallets (fingers) of the same hand are used
together. (Mallet indications are rarely included in scores.)

Excerpted from How To Write For Percussion by Samuel Solomon

[Figure 6.8]

Excerpted from How To Write For Percussion by Samuel Solomon

 keyboard percussion
[Figure 6.8 continued]

[Matthew Fuerst]

Excerpted from How To Write For Percussion by Samuel Solomon