DE Tamtam percussion technique advanced Support my free tools
- Abbreviation
- Tamt.
How is Tamtam played?
Strike the tam-tam at the effective point specified or found for the instrument, commonly about a hand-width from the centre rather than exactly at it, using the beater required by the passage. Soft mallets can soften the contact and slow the build-up; harder, wood or metal implements, scraping, rubbing and bowing create other results. A light preparatory warming stroke may help a large fortissimo entry bloom promptly, but it is not automatic, and rolls, long swells and friction effects require their own notation. Let the sound decay or damp it according to note value, ties and explicit directions.
How does Tamtam sound?
A deep, complex, unpitched roar that can swell from a barely audible shimmer to an overwhelming crash and decay slowly.
In context
The orchestral tam-tam is distinguished from a definite-pitch gong by its broad inharmonic, noise-like spectrum, but size, alloy, beater, striking point and force can produce colours from dark and soft to shrill or overwhelming. VSL places its early orchestral use in Gossec’s 1791 funeral march; later orchestration traditions, including Berlioz, associated it with mourning and extreme drama, while modern use is much broader. Schott, an independent scholarly instrumentation table and a composer’s legend each directly expand Tamt. to Tamtam, satisfying the three-source rule.
Music theory and score context
See also
- Gong / Tam-tam (Wikipedia)
- Glossary of musical terminology (Wikipedia)
- Orchestral terms — Italian, French, German (Frans Absil Music)
- Vienna Symphonic Library — Tam-tam
- Musicca — Tamtam
- Schott Music — Orchestra catalogue list of abbreviations
- Conductors Guild Journal — Zemlinsky instrumentation table
- Martin Torp — Work-list abbreviations
- Editio Musica Budapest — Standard Scoring Abbreviations