Confession: I don't enjoy composing for percussion

Unless it's tuned idiophones

But for just "drums"...ugh.

I'm putting the finishing touches on my new album, which is orchestra but has some of the more modern cinematic sensibilities: Some electronic, world and rock music mixed in, and while I know a lot of people find the big "epic" drums and stuff stimulating and fun, I find it just such a slog. It's very hard to resist the urge to copy and paste drum parts. On most of my orchestral pieces, I actually try to avoid using drums save for where absolutely necessary.

It's not even a serious orchestration choice, it's just I find composing for percussion so boring and I don't even know why.

Hey Chris @AngelCityOutlaw

Don’t scare me off! I’m going to compose orchestral music haha!

Henry

I find percussion hard to apply. To get a better feel for the masses of samples I had I wrote a couple of pieces for percussion only and one for voice and percussion, far different from cinematic writing.   I think I may have submitted one of the pieces here - can't remember.  They seem more novelty pieces with a good amount of learning as a result.  Then suddenly a potential student applying for a course at the Royal Academy of Dance with whom I've worked before wanted a contemporary piece for her audition. She was rummaging through my stuff and found one of these pieces.