‘Bending Bach’s Basslines’

Welcome to my book!  It is a collection of Bach chorales with their basslines specially adapted to be played on timpani.  You can play along to the accompanying CD of professional recordings.

The book contains 28 Bach chorales, the timpani parts from Bohemian Rhapsody (from We Will Rock You) and No Change by All Bluff and Porterage, and some chapters on general timpani playing.

Look inside:

You can now purchase Bending Bach’s Basslines from:

Southern Percussion for United Kingdom

Brandt Percussion for mainland Europe

Steve Weiss Music for USA & Canada

Optimum Percussion for Australia & Asia

For each chorale I have written three or four different versions of increasing difficulty, ranging from a few downbeats and cadences to playing the full bassline throughout. For an explanation of the notation have a look at the ‘look inside’ feature above.

This easy example has just a few pedal changes (indicated by crossed note-heads). Although the notation shows you how to play the  chorales on four timpani with ‘wedge-notes’ as the outer drums, most of them, such as this one, are easily playable on two or three drums.

The last example of each chorale closely replicates the full Bach bassline.  Some are easier than this, and some are a bit harder. Later examples don’t have crossed note-heads because there would be so many.

Faster chorales like this one have an additional slower track on the CD to play along to. Click on one of the buttons below to hear the slow and professional recordings of this chorale.

All proceeds from sales of this book are being donated to Cancer Research UK