Includes score and audio file for accompaniment. Three scores needed for performance.
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Review from Percussive Arts Society:
Drum and Grain
Paul Damian Hogan
This multi-section work utilizes unique soundscapes from both the ensemble and the accompanying track to create music that is as interesting to listen to as well as perform. It incorporates elements of strict notation and free improvisation that are sure to exercise several of the performance abilities of the trio who plays it.
The piece is divided into four distinct sections. The first is atmospheric, with the track and the trio performing a series of bowed sounds on cymbals, gongs, and a vibraphone. This setting gradually gains intensity through an increase of activity in the players and a thickening of the texture from the accompaniment. This segues into a portion that combines some of the ethereal texture from the beginning with sporadic drumming, as the trio plays strictly notated rhythms that work together, but that has no rhythmic support in the track. This aspect makes this first half of the work the most challenging, as the ensemble will need to be conscious of the different sounds, densities, and registers of the track, rather than a steady beat of some sort.
The second half is much more rhythmic. The third section consists of the trio playing almglocken, woodblocks, and tam-tams while the accompaniment uses a ratchet sound to provide an eighth-note beat. The players begin in unison in this section, but gradually become one beat offset from one another, creating a rhythmic inter-play. The last section features the toy pianos. The eighth-note pulse is still maintained here from every sound involved, but several different time signatures are used, and accent patterns from the trio only seldom line up, giving an odd sense of disjointed cohesion that is difficult to accomplish, but satisfying when heard performed well. The piece ends abruptly after a short sequence of patterns that do line up between the trio and the accompaniment.
This is a well-crafted piece of music. One of the challenges in making a work with a track is making it so both the prerecorded sounds and the live-action playing complement each other throughout. We sometimes see pieces in this genre in which either the performers or the track can stand alone, defeating the purpose of such an orchestration. Hogan has created a work in which every sound, through either electronic means or percussive ones, complements the big picture throughout the entirety of the piece. That is not easy to accomplish, and this composer has done it spectacularly.
This work is ideal for a trio of advanced players who perform well together and who have an interest in contemporary music. It will take time to work out the entrances in the first half so that all the major arrivals happen with the track, but when it happens, it will be satisfying for the performers and for the audience.—Kyle Cherwinski, 2020
Demo:
