The last fortnight has been so surreal but also immensely rewarding. I feel more confident about my approach to percussion repairs and now have a roadmap for how to turn this into a robust career.

The second week of my fellowship focused on more involved repairs, moving from servicing into restoration and even a bit of fabrication. Although more advanced than projects that I’d attempted on my own, I relished the challenge to expand my skill set.

Same as my previous post, I’d like to share some highlights from the second and final week of my fellowship

It’s been amazing getting to focus in such a concentrated way on percussion repairs and servicing. Apart from developing a huge shopping list of tools and products to buy upon my return to Adelaide, this fellowship has been incredibly beneficial and confidence building.

Learning from my mentor, Dave Egan aka The Sydney Drum Doctor, has allowed me to fill gaps in my knowledge base, clarify underlying principles and review previous projects. To help make sure all the new info sticks in my memory, I thought I’d share a little about what I’ve been working on this week.

Following on from last month’s post about timpani, a colleague asked me to do a deep dive into tuned percussion. All too frequently school teachers are asked to run curriculum units on percussion with it being assumed they know the ins and outs of these instruments. Which is a bit unfair given that I’ve spent 18 years specialising in the subject and am still figuring things out!

So today I’d like to provide an introduction to all things tuned percussion – enjoy!

The first person to teach me timpani was a violist in my first rehearsal with the Adelaide Youth Sinfonia. My introduction to these instruments boiled down to “Here’s the head, pedal, and gauge. Hit one, move the other, and keep an eye on the third”. This was technically an accurate description of how timpani work, but back then I wished I had a map to help me navigate these drums which were (at the time) twice my size!

So, that’s what I’ve decided to do today. Consider this your beginner’s guide to all things timpani – enjoy!

Picture it: you’ve been presented with the opportunity to buy some new percussion equipment but you aren’t sure where to start. What brands should you get? How much should you spend? What are crotales?

It’s a difficult situation. But I’ve got some tricks you can use to help figure it out!

One of the main reasons I started Fulcrum was because I kept seeing the same instrument care mistakes over and over again. It’s easy to forget as a percussionist that not everyone knows the best way to care for these instruments. So, to help remedy that, here are five easy thing you can do to care for your percussion instruments, prolonging their lives and reducing the need for expensive maintenance!