I'm very tired of griping about Napster. Could anyone make some suggestions for the mallets used for the three movements? (This might have been answered already on an earlier message.) I am seriously thinking about entering a concerto competition. Are there any other good concertos requiring around the same ability level as this one?

Julia

Ruth Jeannie (1949??)used yarn in the second movment but switched to rubber for the runs midway through. There is a nice artical in P.A>S> about it. I would suggest rubber for the first and Third as well. If you really want to try NON rubber, then try Cord, which will give you more deffinition.

Julia -

FWIW, when I played the Creston back in college, I used the same hard cord-wrapped mallets for both the first and third movements. The nice thing about this piece is, since it doesn't go below a 3-1/2 octave marimba's range, you don't have to worry about having one set of mallets that can cover a four or five octave range. Also, these movements are rhythmic as much as they are melodic, so a harder mallet (IMHO) is well-suited to them.

For the second movement, I used a graduated set of mallets (soft/medium/medium/medium-hard, left to right), and used the two medium mallets for the single-line sections in the middle. You don't *have* to use the same mallets for the four-mallet and two-mallet sections of this movement, but if you do, it helps to keep your sound quality consistent for the entire movement.

Just my $.02...

JW