Favorite music for the instrument you play?

All Things Music
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I figure we can all do to get some inspiration from each other as to how their instruments should sound in a good recording.

So, I suppose I’ll start. For me, a Percussionist, it’s gotta be:

Drums: Katana of choice by Ben Reimer off the album Katana of Choice
A wonderfully recorded and mastered recording of a kinda avant garde drum set focused Percussion ensemble. I really love that whole album.

Marimba/mallet percussion: Sleep by Smoke and Mirrors Percussion Ensemble off the album Smoke and Mirrors Percussion Ensemble
This is exactly what you think it is- the Eric Whitacre song played on marimbas. I actually saw Sleep performed live by my school’s chior last Thursday and it’s amazing how similar this sounds. If you’ve ever heard this live, you’ll know the ending features an interesting sound formed by two singers cancelling out each other’s sound waves to give it a ‘wavy’ sound; it ebbs and flows. Smoke and Mirrors have recreated this with marimbas, and wonderfully so.

And hell, I love marimbas so here’s another one. off the same album, called Nagoya Marimbas.
If you’ve ever heard anything Steve Reich before, you know his whole spiel. He wrote a good amount of content for Percussion ensembles. This piece features 2 Marimbas playing rhythms together and play off each other to form a wonderful Melody.

Other Percussion instruments:

Same album again. This time, Music for pieces of wood.
This is another Reich sextet which I have performed. It involves 6 players using claves (or simply tuned woods) that overlap to form a rhythm and as it builds it grows closer to the end rhythm. I love this stuff.

Lastly, Juego de Relojes by smoke and mirrors off their album Smoke and Mirrors: Vanish.
This song is written by a guy who makes tango music or something like that. Well someone commissioned him to write music for Percussion ensemble and he did. This masterpiece is what we got from it. I know not how many people play for it, but it’s got all the tambres of Percussion- from cymbals to wood sounds to drums to mallet percussions. This is, in my opinion, the definitive “if I want to introduce someone to Percussion Ensemble” song.

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@Prole_2000 Have you heard of the binaural percussion album titled Explorations in Space and Time? If not I’d definitely recommend it; it offers an amazing listening experience for sure (it was a recording session where several percussionists got together for an experimental, unrehearsed, improvised session). I purchased a copy of the album at HDtracks.com (not sure if it’s available other places).

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You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman

Being memey aside holy shit that’s amazing. Thanks a ton for that. The track rhythm especially is amazing!

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Glad you enjoyed it! I haven’t tested out the Soundfield version using speakers yet but the binaural version in headphones is definitely eargasmic.

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Yeah I’m pretty hyped to go home and listen to itm I just listened to it on my friends AKG in ears that come with the Samsung’s. Can’t wait to hear it on my headphones.

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But I’m not.

I first was looking at Ocarina - which I sort of play. And then Flueaphone, which I had in grade school. I really do play recorder, but now I have something new for inspiration.

–Always willing to scrape the bottom of the barrel for a laugh.

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Banjo: Alison Krauss & Union Station “So Long, So Wrong”
The Grascals: “Before Breakfast”
The Boxcars: “The Boxcars”