The Shendai Ceremonial Drums
 

The Original Shendai Set

After auditioning many kinds of hand drums, ethnic instruments, and some mallet percussion instruments like Vibraphone and Marimba, I was still dissatisfied.  I was just not finding the sound and character I was seeking in any existing instrument, and I eventually decided that the only solution was to create my own.

The first attempt to do so centered around a set of three Orchestral Timpani Drums (kettle drums) chosen mainly because they had great range, and were easily tunable and re-tunable to specific pitches.  Because of the multiple-pitched patterns I wished to play, I thought I would have to do some of this re-tuning between takes, or even "on the fly", and the timpani would allow me to retune quickly if needed.  But to get the sound character I wanted, the natural timbre of the heavy copper-bowled timpani would have to be changed considerably.

I began constructing special mallets from various materials, and experimenting with both organic and synthetic covering materials to dampen or partially dampen the timpani heads, thereby altering their harmonics and timbre, with varying degrees of success.  The picture above is from this period, showing me with an early version of what eventually became the full Shendai Ceremonial Set.  Unfortunately, many later and more elaborate versions of the set went unphotographed.

More Taiko-like

By 1995 several smaller single-headed drums had been added to provide higher pitches, and after more work with various drum head materials and mallets, I was finally able to produce a consistently desirable timbre across the full range of all sizes of drums.  Besides the extra drums, LOTS of small brass percussion instruments had also been added in the form of gongs, bells, chimes, cymbals, and "miscellaneous", even including a brass crank doorbell!

At this point the full set stretched nearly twelve feet across and looked like a veritable forest of stands on stage, and I was pressed to develop some interesting new dance skills and special approaches to music-making to accommodate this cluster of instruments, which then numbered about 45 playing surfaces.  At times the set also included Midi trigger devices, opening the door to the use of Electronic Percussion and other synthesized sounds, but the Midi Percussion Controllers of that era were resistant to being played with my soft mallets, and made their own clicking sounds when struck - not helpful when recording acoustically.  In the end the electronics proved too difficult to integrate smoothly and musically with the acoustic drums, and were finally eliminated.

With the timpani as the basis of the set, traveling was a bit difficult because of their bulk. By the time of the recording sessions for Tales of Kings, I had developed a more compact, "studio" version of the Ceremonial Set by setting aside the timpani and keeping only the other core essentials and the best-sounding small components. Pictured below at a more recent recording session, the current studio version uses only eight single-headed drums ranging in size from 6 to 22 inches, and about a dozen key brass instruments. This makes it much easier to transport and manage physically, while still keeping enough pitches available to allow a full range of musical expression. But all the components of the full set, including the timpani, still wait in the wings for their next grand performance opportunity.
 

Ceremonial Shendai

The name Shendai deserves some explanation. Sometime after I had already constructed and perfected this instrument I became acquainted with Japanese Taiko Drumming, and only then realized that what I had unknowingly created was, in essence , my own personal version of a Taiko drum set. The name Shendai, a functional title, had been given to me as part of a spiritual discipline that I was following some years earlier, and had been kept secret for many years.  But when this drum set made its performance and recording debut in its more or less final form, it seemed appropriate to give it a name, and Shendai fit perfectly from both the aesthetic and symbolic perspectives. The term "Ceremonial" arose because the drums were never designed or intended to create music purely for entertainment, but rather to honor, in a special way, the essence of that ethereal, mystical something we musicians constantly seek to express more and more perfectly.

Steven Miller, March 2002

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