DCM 003 - Sky Side full Of Echoes – Drum music, Dm 3

Sky Side Full of Echoes - Drum music Dm 3 - my 3rd Album. The first of three Volumes of Drum Studies, wholly recorded at my own new studio, the ‘Drum Studio.’ Best Known for its title piece ‘Sky Side Full of Echoes’ – Rh 16

Albums 2 and 3 overlapped a bit as I came to a new sense of myself - as a Composer recording now under my own name - dropping my old sidelining handle of Perpetuum Mobile. "Now in a Time of Music" my Art is music. With my own new facilities - I could master my second album myself and the first boxful of my own recordings would become a third album. These pieces – just percussion at the time, or Rhythms – hence ‘Rh’ – would eventually seed three albums, Drum music 3, Metal Percussion music 1 and the Environmental music. I marked in them the distinction of Drum and Metal percussion as separate Genres. Drums, as a Speciality and ‘Percussion on Anything other than Drums’ as a Generality. ‘Drum music’ - as the first Genre or Tranche, I collected first – making the first of three volumes of adventurous studies for Solo drum. The remaining, earliest pieces, collect by Genre into Metal Percussion 1 – my 8th album, by Genre. Still others, uncollected, wound up with an album of their own – Environmental Music. On that page I reproduce the first part of the Rh catalogue.

Having my own Studio, meant I didn’t have to fit into anyone’s schedule, I didn’t have to wait on anybody being free to let me rent their equipment, I was free to work at my own pace, and what a Pace I set. Recording and editing hour after hour, Day after day and digital recording meant an endless supply of tape. One thing about a studio is that you can do remarkable things with sound, like the Printers studio had been to me as an Artist - I was a printmaker with sound - and the collected results I call The Drum Studio Studies. I began to introduce Electronics to drumming extending my possibilities enormously. My first drum- electronic realisation was ‘Sky Side Full of Echoes’, giving the title to the first collection of these studies. The title ‘Sky side Full of Echoes,’ is after the title of a work by a favourite Composer of mine, Robin Holloway’s ‘Sea surface Full of Clouds,’ itself after a poem by Wallace Stevens.


Back Step – Rh 6 - take a step back – back stepping music.

Roll – Rh 13 - roll with it – Parts separating and calling back.

Skin Tight – Rh 14 - a drum skin of course – a tight fit. Intense interplay – on a solo drum !

Vale – Rh 15 - an Essay in Pitch modulation and skin control.

Sky Side Full of Echoes – Rh 16 - first piece of mine to use electronics of any kind. The timing is very precise – it could almost be a live recording ! An early landmark for me – more music per square inch than I could imagine. But what was it – Electronic music or Drum music ? I decided at this point that it would be Drum music and that to be fully Electronic, a piece should Modulate from its acoustic source considerably and not merely extend it, as here. When I had such pieces, they would begin a genre Trance of their own - Em.
Shaker Loops – Rh 17 – literally shaking itself to pieces.

Rain Dance – Rh 34 – Experimenting here with an American Frame Drum – the one I used on my First album – ‘Inventions for Shamanic drum Dm 1’ an appropriate title for a Shamanic Drum piece. Here the placing of the microphone is a part of the piece – almost, as in Stockhausen’s ‘Microphone one’. A lot of water and other metallurgies passed between the last piece at Rh 17 and this piece at Rh 34 – but this album only collects Drum studies. This is the first of three volumes of such studies - Dm 3 – 5 and this volume’s material, overlaps slightly with the first two Dm albums - Dm 1- 2 – when I was still ‘Perpetuum Mobile’ - heady times !

In a Moment – Rh 40 - technique study for a large frame drum. The first of three pieces preserving a session with that drum.

Band Width – Rh 41 – Vibration and ostinato for Frame Drum. A ten minute performance with smooth modulations of timbre.
Into the Fray – Rh 42 – rolling into a line of fire – a FrameDrum tecnique that would not have disgrased Jimi Hendrix.

Take 9 – Rh 44 – Playing into a whorl of echoes – I anounce ‘Recording no. 9, 9, 9, 9 . . .’ of a now forgotten set. Echoes – I lived for echoes – here I disolve into echoes - echoes ad absurdum !


An early reorganization of my music research interest defined my music into dedicated sets of Albums. This way things of a kin got heard together - as one type of album or another - by Genre - or Tranche as I styled them. In this Case Drum music – Percussion on Drums of various kinds 'Percussion specifically on Drums of many kinds - as a speciality’
– Dm by convention.

Albums 1 - 7 collect together first seven Dm albums, placed in a block, one of 5 blocks, placed like books on a shelf. in an in an overarching 'Group' of my first 27 albums. Five Blocks for the Five Tranches - as they were founded (more of less) - five sets of studies and pieces, as my Foundational Group 'Blue Cherry' [after a friend]. The foundation stone the rest of my music is built on - in four further Groups.

The Seven Dm albums in the Blue Cherry Group are Dm 1 - a set of inventions for an American frame drum: Dm 2 – in a landmark set of the first 5 of my 12 Drum sonatas: Dm 3 - 5 are three volumes of Drum Studies; Dm 6 is in aother landmark set, the first of my 6 sets of Inventions for Djembe; finally Dm 7 is a fourth set of Drum studies.

The DCM album numbers list volumes in a [for the most part] chronological edition.- The DCM Broadhurst Edition - Prepared for the British Library in 2019. The Volumes or Albums themselves were actually released as and when it was possible. The Edition though, was planed from the start to stand on the 'foundation Stone' of the Blue Cherry group.

The Rh catalogue, numbers my works in order of Completion.

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