Shrek - Keith Wilson
Keith Wilson's percussion setup for Shrek at Bensalem High School, Bensalem, Pennsylvania.
Keith's write-up and gear list below photos.
Above: The Donkey Head was part of the Donkey costume and they didn’t want to use the head, so I just incorporated into my setup! Just for fun! Hahaha.
Keith:
"This was a lot of fun to perform and I had a lot of fun creating the setup for Shrek the Musical. It has a lot of hand drumming, quick changes and some tricky mallet parts.
There were three big challenges with this show.
The first is space. The set-up for the auxiliary percussion book is pretty big. However, there was limited space in the auditorium in which we were performing, so I had to make a couple of decisions on what to include in the set-up. The book calls for concert bass drum and tam tam. However, these instruments are only used once in the show, so I omitted the concert bass drum and played the roll on the lowest timpani. Fortunately, the tam tam part was cut from our performance.
The second challenge was that the book definitely calls for three timpani, however, I only had two timpani (29” and 26”). The third timpani (32”) plays mostly rolls and big ensemble hits, which could be substituted with tuning the 29” timpani down to its lowest note. Not ideal, but for space it worked.
The third challenge was that there were several sound effects that needed to be figured out for the show. For Pinocchio's nose, I used the slide whistle, which is used twice in the show and are both in the first act. The second were the farts and burp sound effects for Shrek and Fiona. The actual sound effects are written in one of the piano books, but it was decided that I would trigger these effects using the Yamaha DTX-MULTI 12 and it worked out great! I was able to find fart and burp sound files, which I then put into Apple's Garageband to edit the files. The big issue was editing them down so that there was no dead time before the effect played. It had to be to the point where the pad was struck and the sound effect played right away. There are some offbeat burps that Fiona does that need to be exactly in time.
There are several quick changes in the show mostly involving the triangle, TreeWorks Chimes, and clave. I used two Miller Machines for this show, one for the 4” triangle, which is placed near the Djembe and another for the finger cymbal also located near the Djembe. However, I definitely could have used a third Miller Machine for a second triangle that needed to be located near the mallets. I used a small Ron Vaughn woodblock for the clave part and I had two sets of mounted bar chimes. One over near the hand drum section and the other near the timpani and mallet section."
Percussion:
- Ludwig 26” and 29” timpani (a 32” for low D, and low E flat, would be better suited)
- Musser 3.0 Xylophone
- Musser 2.5 Octave Glockenspiel
- Ludwig Black Magic 100th Anniversary Snare Drum
Cymbals:
- Sabian 18” HHX Evolution Crash
- Sabian 16” AAX Crash
- Dream Cymbals 16” Contact Orchestral Hand Cymbals
Hand Drums:
- Remo 14” Djembe
- Meinl 12” Doumbek
- CP Congas
- Toca Bongos
Hardware:
- Gibraltar Double Conga Stand
- Pearl Pro Djembe Stand
- Remo Doumbek Adapter Ring
- Toca Bongo Stand
- Steve Weiss Liberty One Rack
- Black Swamp RecPlate (for 18” Gong)
- DW 9000 Foot Pedal
- Gibraltar Concert Cymbal Cradle
Aux. Percussion:
- TreeWorks Chimes
- LP Dream Wind Chimes
- Alan Abel 6” Triangle
- Miller Machine with 4” Alan Abel Triangle
- Miller Machine with Eastern Finger Cymbal
- Ron Vaughn Woodblocks (High, Medium, Low)
- LP One Shot Shakers (four taped together)
- LP Black Beauty Cowbell
- LP Cyclops Tambourine attached to LP Gajate Bracket
- RhythmTech Drumset Tambourine/Brass Jingles
- American Slide Whistle
- Steve Weiss Sleigh Bells
- BlackSwamp Rosewood Castanets
- Handheld Bell Tree (mounted)
Electronics:
- Yamaha DTX Multi 12 Pad
- Apple iPad running Yamaha DTXM12 Touch Controller
- Powerwerks PW50 amp
Sticks/Mallets:
- Malletech Bob Becker BB34 Medium Xylophone Mallets
- Artifact Percussion Phoenix 1” Ember Glockenspiel Mallets
- Artifact Percussion Broadway Swizzle Sticks
Misc:
- DrumWallet Dampener for Snare Drum
Shrek - Regional - Keith Wilson
