Of course, not everyone uses these markings. Then I give the player seven and a half bars of common time at 72 bpm (about half a minute when you throw in the fermata) to tweak his tuning pedals. Right after the last note of bar 18, I indicate the change of the Bb kettle down four semitones to F#, and the Eb kettle up a semitone to E. In the excerpt below from the timpani part of my harp concerto, I write out the tuning of all the kettles at the beginning, even those which are not going to be used right away. Some composers will even make a little chart of the actual pitches in headless mini-notes – but I’ve found that it’s easiest just to write them out as technique text above the staff, in ascending order.
When composing for timpani, mark the required tuning at the start of your piece, and indicate changes in the score.
