UM professor records for DVD drum tutorial

ORONO – Music professor Stuart Marrs, in conjunction with the University of Maine Office of Research and Economic Development, has begun a unique recording project that could become a novel new business venture – interactive DVD tutorials for classical instruments.

Marrs, who is chairman of the music division of the UMaine School of Performing Arts, collaborated with staff in the university’s departments of new media and industrial cooperation on June 13 to record the complete collection of “Eight Pieces for Four Timpani” by American composer Elliott Carter.

It will be only the second recording of the complete set of Carter’s eight timpani pieces on the market – and the first interactive timpani DVD. The project was filmed and recorded on the Maine Center for the Arts stage with four digital cameras to offer multiple viewing angles that can be changed on the fly with the DVD remote control.

It is designed for music instructors and students of timpani, or kettledrums. Viewers may choose a camera angle, as well as listen to an optional voice-over narrative in English, French or Spanish, in which Marrs discusses his playing technique, the music and how he achieves the complex rhythmic patterns and pitch changes in the music.

“This is being created as a teaching device for students who can’t come here to take a seminar,” said Marrs, who, as a Yamaha Performing Artist, used four new, state-of-the-art timpani drums provided by Yamaha in support of the project.

“With the DVD, students have access to many camera angles, and when used on a computer with Internet access, they also can connect with a user forum and take advantage of links to Yamaha, [drumstick manufacturer] Vic Firth and the Percussive Arts Society,” Marrs said. “The DVD-ROM section of the disc contains scholarly articles written about this collection of pieces, which can be accessed with Adobe Acrobat.”

The interactive DVD concept has been used for instructional purposes in popular music, according to Marrs, but nobody has done this in classical music, so far as he knows.

“Nobody has the time to prepare them all at once, even professional musicians,” Marrs said. He took a semester sabbatical in September 2003 to learn the music.

Traditionally, timpani provide the deep rumbling percussion for an orchestra. In “Eight Pieces for Four Timpani,” Carter takes the instrument farther into a solo performance mode through extended techniques, including playing on different places on the drum head to produce different kinds of sounds, and through rapid pitch changes by tuning pedals.

Development of interactive DVD tutorials for classical instruments, Marrs added, “could be a great boon to music education. If the business model works, I intend to expand it to other instruments.”

The project could lead to a DVD series that a team of students could help turn into a new venture, said Jake Ward, executive director of the Office of Research and Economic Development at UMaine.

A market study currently is being done by student business interns Kerrianne Falco and Jennifer Roberge in ORED’s Target Technology Incubator. Renee Kelly, ORED’s business and economic development liaison, is coordinating student involvement in the filming and business planning as a pilot project for the soon-to-open Innovation Center at UMaine.

“Assisting with the commercial development of this project is part of UMaine’s mission to help bring research and creative achievements to the public,” Ward said. Students are using the new media equipment, funded by the Maine Technology Institute, to create the “TimeLab” for just this kind of project, he said.

Marrs intends to release the DVD officially at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in November in Columbus, Ohio.