The second movement is titled "Tikai" which is an ancient Mayan city with two temples. In my search of information about Mayan music, I came across a youtube example that uses flutes and drums imitating sounds from nature. My goal for this movement is to use this as a source of inspiration for a movement done entirely on marimba. It has been quite a challenge to do this, but I think I have been successful thus far.
The marimba uses three distinct registers. The high register is used for birds sounds, as if the marimba is a flute. The middle register is used for both drum sounds and middle register nature sounds. The low register is primary drum sounds. The contrapuntal nature of the youtube example is difficult to capture with just one player on marimba. I create the illusion of counterpoint by switching back and forth between ideas. I even use foot stomping as a counterpoint to the high bird sounds at several points.
I am leaning to keeping Guatemaya entirely for marimba. It would be tempting to add another percussionist as it would certainly make capturing some of these colors easier, but since the marimba is the national instrument of Guatemala, I want to focus on the versatility of the marimba and discover ways the marimba can imitate other percussion instruments through illusion.
The youtube url is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX2lsG1Lw_8. I suggest that you copy and paste this into a separate browser window so you can compare it to what I wrote.
To see and hear what is discussed, go tohttp://www.cooppress.net/guatemayablog.html
Dr. B
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