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Ominous drums
tastydonuts
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So there's a drum roll sequence (steel drums likely) that's in lot of movies and TV and I've been trying to find. The use of the drums is to set an ominous or establish tension vibe, so it rises and falls. Fortunately, in the movie The Killing of a Sacred Deer, it was incorporated into a portion of the released score (00:00 - 00:16 on the video below) but it's often just played some fashion w/o a mention:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sis06Y72JFc
Does anyone know the origin of that particular sequence? Trying to find the original playing of it, or just other samples.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sis06Y72JFcDoes anyone know the origin of that particular sequence? Trying to find the original playing of it, or just other samples.
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I think the excerpt starts around 14:45, if the timestamp doesn't work.
so I assumed the title was specific to the movie score. can’t check out the audio on that video as Im on the go atm. but if that’s it then awesome.
a. Those are timpani drums, not steel drums.
b. It's probably impossible to find an origin since the sound is made by using the tuning mechanism (usually a pedal) while striking up a quick and quiet rythm. Such mechanisms were developed during the late 19th century and I would guess that the method has been used since the beginning of the film industry.
P.S: You can see it in a lot of Bela Bartoks music (and those are from the 1910s-1940s), although his music is often used much later. For example his "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" is used in The Shining.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I poked around a little looking for the first composers that may have used that sound and both Carl Nielsen and Béla Bartók were requiring it in the early 1900s. Another page mentions Verdi requiring a timpani glissando in an opera in 1887. The pedal timpani itself was invented in the 1870s, prior to that a timpanist would have to laboriously turn each tuning lug to change the pitch of each drum.
edit: Fiendishrabbit got there while I was reading.
another musical mystery mostly solved. Thanks!
The first thing to note is that the instrument performing the roll is called the timpani, or perhaps more commonly the kettle drum. The effect you're hearing is usually called a glissando, meaning that not only is the performer switching from soft to loud, but he's going from a low note to a high note using the tuning pedal on the timpani.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timpani#Tuning
The mechanism that allows a percussionist to perform a glissando was only really invented in the late 1800s (1881):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_timpani_in_the_18th_and_19th_centuries#Dresden_model
That narrows us down from a lot of historical composers who may have used the specific roll you're referencing.
In researching the subject I found the following video which is not the roll you're asking about, but it does show you two sets of timpani in action including a look at the pedal:
I found the timpani glissando roll on youtube listed simply as a "sound effect", but of course that doesn't tell us the "origin"
I found a Bela Bartok excerpt using the timpani roll, but it was under some other instruments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bartók_-_Sonata_for_two_pianos_and_percussion_-_Assai_lento_-_Allegro_molto_(clip).ogg
The articles I've read thus far suggest that the kind of rolls we're looking for would have been "invented" in the early 20th century.
And a little more digging, and I think I have verified that yes, it is Bela Bartok that "did it first." This piece was part of the soundtrack of "The Shining", the title is Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta by Bela Bartok (movement 3). It was written in 1936:
Hope that helps!
Edit: dammit, fiendishrabbit beat me!
Does it tighten the cloth or whatever on the top of the drum?
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden