Percussion in Everyday Life

Percussion in Everyday Life

Toolbox Percussion cherish the belief that rhythm resides in routine activities. The initial stage of rhythm creation is achieved by making a sound with knocking, scratching, shaking, scrubbing, or patting whatever substance: various body parts or any object.

During our everyday life, we are unconscious of sounds with all different tempos and textures that encapsulate us. Let’s uncover them from the short film of Toolbox Percussion.

Re-creating Sound Art in Daily Lives

Let’s Clap!

Everyday objects and individual parts of our body can serve as practical tools for producing sounds. Let’s get ready and create your rhythm with your hands.

Ways of clapping

Your hands are the most convenient instrument with unlimited potentials. Their nuanced changes are already able to manifest versatile sounds and tempos.

Listen meticulously to the differences among the sounds produced by using the following parts, curves, and gestures.

Tips

Jot down the quality and association from the sounds created by each manner of clapping. Find out your favourite style.

Warm-up Exercise

60 Claps Per Minute

Use the stopwatch of your cell phone or any other device with the same function. Practice clapping at a rate of 60 times per minute. This will be the most fundamental tempo.

Percussion Quartet with 8 Hands

Let’s conduct a mini-percussion ensemble concert with your own hands. The following tables illustrate four disparate kinds of tempos. In a group of four, each person may create one of these tempos. Written in a four-four beat (1, 2, 3, 4), the verse consists of half-beat (+) occasionally.

Round by Fung Lam

Fung Lam, a contemporary local composer, is a recurring partner of Toolbox Percussion. Their collective endeavour in 2016, namely Round, was an attempt to blur the rigid boundary between arts and day-to-day events by utilising a traditional tile-based game – Mahjong – as its instrument.

Round premiered at a concert hall for classical music. During its debut, a Mahjong table was erected on the theatrical stage. Four musicians positioned themselves in the four directions as if playing a Mahjong game.

The score was divided into three movements. The first, foretelling the winning in the finale, bore a stronger resemble to conventional performances. The second, by shuffling of titles, gradually constructed a multiplicity of rhythm. The finale was an impromptu. Specific indications were assigned to titles of assorted suits and numbers. The musicians made unusual improvisation by following the indication received from each title. Excerpt of Round

Vast Arrays of Music John Cage (1912 – 1992)

John Cage, an avant-garde composer from the U.S., has his magic of redefining music. Initially exposed to classical music’s training, Cage was wholeheartedly engrossed with sounds, music, or even “silence” in quotidian life and the nature. His most renowned piece 4’33” (1951) is a work of a sheer silence. Without a single note of music, audience could casually perceive the ordinary sound beyond the silence or long-omitted inner voices of their own.

Cage’s another legendary piece – Branches – has a unique “sheet music” on which there are only words without any intonation. The instruments Cage mentioned include speakers, cacti, and seed pods of royal Poinciana. 4’33” Performing Unit: K2Orch

Branches Performing Unit: Trondheim Sinfonietta