Cart is empty
Kids These Days…
Brian Blume’s rousing snare solo with audio accompaniment Kids These Days... was inspired by his young children and the toys they enjoy playing with. The sounds some of these toys make were recorded by Blume and ingeniously cut, spliced, and manipulated and ultimately became the audio accompaniment. These sounds are used to help create the sudden shifts in the music, much like a child’s attention suddenly shifts when playing. The overall effect of the piece is a wild and high-spirited ride that will definitely win over any crowd at a performance.
Kids These Days... comes with a full, bound score and includes the audio accompaniment tracks as well a full reference recording of the piece.
• Concert snare drum (sticks/brushes)
• Amplification system (for included audio accompaniment)
The clearest picture I can paint of Brian Blume’s “Kids These Days...” is that it is a shorter and more whimsical close relative of Andy Akiho’s “Stop Speaking,” with more emphasis placed on child-like fun and less on the mind- and ethics-bending ramifications of self-aware artificial intelligence. In fact, judging by the aesthetics of delivery alone (and not the concept), there seems to be a clear line of influence connecting the former to the latter, and one could even envision a successful recital bookended by the pair of pieces to great effect.
The composer’s message is that children are quick to leap from one activity (or toy) to the next, and he captures this sentiment perfectly in his well-paced use of electronics drawn entirely from children’s toys. Perhaps this is more a reflection on my own current adventures in parenting than anything else, but the overall concept, for all its cuteness, struck me as very effectively communicated, and I connected with the piece as a listener more strongly than I do to most snare drum pieces. A weaving narrative manages to peek its head out between distracted bursts of childlike energy, and the musical ideas are developed with far more maturity and sophistication than the title appears to suggest.
The difficulty of the snare drum part is nothing to scoff at, and although the publisher lists the piece as “Medium-Advanced,” any piece that uses 5:3 polyrhythms as a recurring motive earns the distinction of “Advanced” in my book. The technical challenges will provide performers with plenty of satisfying opportunities to show off, including several rudimental passages that seem to have been swiped directly from the DCI warmup lot, but Blume’s use of atypical playing spots and techniques to produce an extremely interesting sonic palette, especially when blended with the electronics, is where the five-minute piece really shines.
I would absolutely recommend this piece to anyone looking for a challenging, attention-grabbing snare drum solo to add to a recital at the university senior level or above.
—Brian Graiser
Percussive Notes
Vol. 58, No. 6, December 2020
Brian Blume’s rousing snare solo with audio accompaniment Kids These Days... was inspired by his young children and the toys they enjoy playing with. The sounds some of these toys make were recorded by Blume and ingeniously cut, spliced, and manipulated and ultimately became the audio accompaniment. These sounds are used to help create the sudden shifts in the music, much like a child’s attention suddenly shifts when playing. The overall effect of the piece is a wild and high-spirited ride that will definitely win over any crowd at a performance.
Kids These Days... comes with a full, bound score and includes the audio accompaniment tracks as well a full reference recording of the piece.
• Concert snare drum (sticks/brushes)
• Amplification system (for included audio accompaniment)
The clearest picture I can paint of Brian Blume’s “Kids These Days...” is that it is a shorter and more whimsical close relative of Andy Akiho’s “Stop Speaking,” with more emphasis placed on child-like fun and less on the mind- and ethics-bending ramifications of self-aware artificial intelligence. In fact, judging by the aesthetics of delivery alone (and not the concept), there seems to be a clear line of influence connecting the former to the latter, and one could even envision a successful recital bookended by the pair of pieces to great effect.
The composer’s message is that children are quick to leap from one activity (or toy) to the next, and he captures this sentiment perfectly in his well-paced use of electronics drawn entirely from children’s toys. Perhaps this is more a reflection on my own current adventures in parenting than anything else, but the overall concept, for all its cuteness, struck me as very effectively communicated, and I connected with the piece as a listener more strongly than I do to most snare drum pieces. A weaving narrative manages to peek its head out between distracted bursts of childlike energy, and the musical ideas are developed with far more maturity and sophistication than the title appears to suggest.
The difficulty of the snare drum part is nothing to scoff at, and although the publisher lists the piece as “Medium-Advanced,” any piece that uses 5:3 polyrhythms as a recurring motive earns the distinction of “Advanced” in my book. The technical challenges will provide performers with plenty of satisfying opportunities to show off, including several rudimental passages that seem to have been swiped directly from the DCI warmup lot, but Blume’s use of atypical playing spots and techniques to produce an extremely interesting sonic palette, especially when blended with the electronics, is where the five-minute piece really shines.
I would absolutely recommend this piece to anyone looking for a challenging, attention-grabbing snare drum solo to add to a recital at the university senior level or above.
—Brian Graiser
Percussive Notes
Vol. 58, No. 6, December 2020
