Mentacide (snare drum, audio track, video)

Mentacide, commissioned by Shaun Tilburg and published by Pocket Publications, is for solo snare drum(s) and digital audio, with the accompanying text drawing inspiration from Henry Giroux's 'The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America's Disimagination Machine.'

I have made available - at the store on this site - a bundled product: Mentacide : solo snare drum(s), audio track and optional video

The download includes

• Score PDFs (portrait and landscape option)

• Practice audio tracks with embedded click at 60/70/80/90/100/110/120 BPM

• Performance audio (the backing track and an isolated click for in-ear monitoring)

• A reference mix of the track with snare drum included

• An optional performance video

The performance video (by David Downes) spells out (literally) the words that are being generated in the digital audio (see below for the text).

This text is being recited, letter-by-letter by a child's toy (now a sample plug-in). A sound I remember from my early years. When composing this piece in London (one of the very few pieces I've composed outside of New Zealand) I was also remembering an amazing work by david Downes I heard in my university days, called Diagram. This piece had the 'electronic teacher' reciting words for rote learning.

When Shaun made contact about commissioning this piece he explained he was putting together a new collection of solo snare drum works that included a backing track. I thought this was a terrific idea, both for giving composers opportunity, and for percussionists as a new resource.

I've always felt the piece could be longer. Once it picks up a head of steam - just before it collapses in on itself - I sense it could really take off. One more thing on my to-do list for life #2.

There's a link to the accompanying video below, and you can hear my original demo (created in Vauxhall just down from MI6 Headquarters)......

Programme Note

mentacide
an erasure
of historical memory a deadening form

of historical and social amnesia has taken over
extreme violence and inequality are normalized

the marginalized are considered
entirely disposable
y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? y? ......the swindle of fulfilment......

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Performance Notes

In my computer rendering the piccolo snare drum sounds very high, certainly higher than a standard piccolo concert snare drum tuning scheme. These are the samples I fell in love with when writing the piece.

This sound is  possible to achieve on a piccolo concert snare drum, it would just require re-tuning the drum. Once the sticks come in, the sample almost sounds like a popcorn snare. Here's a video of a popcorn snare drum (this one is tuned a bit lower than usual).

The sounds in my MIDI renderings are usually the exact sounds I’d prefer, so I would suggest either tuning up a piccolo concert snare drum, or using a piccolo drum set snare drum (which tend to be smaller than concert piccolo snares).