On Grading Difficulty

Grading the difficulty of any music, especially percussion music, is no easy feat, as “difficulty” can just as easily mean the technical challenges present in a piece as well as the logistical and instrument-specific challenges that percussion instruments present (e.g. we all know how difficult playing even simple music on chimes can be, or how awkwardly difficult bowing any percussion instruments is). As a full-time educator myself, it is very important to me to have a concise, relevant, and accurate way of describing the difficulty of the music on this site.

First, there are three broad categories of pieces: beginner, medium, and advanced. Pieces with a “Beginning” designation have a typical middle school percussionist in mind (both in ability and the instruments required), pieces with a “Medium” designation have typical high school students in mind, and “advanced” pieces best suit collegiate or professional musicians.

However, to acknowledge the wide range of skills and development stages among students, pieces published here include additional in-between levels—beginner/medium and medium/advanced—as well as extremes, including very beginner and very advanced, to provide more granularity. Each piece is labeled with these verbal indicators and, to aid in selection, individual product pages feature a difficulty slider. This tool visually represents the piece’s relative difficulty within its category, allowing for easy comparison (i.e. when comparing two “medium” pieces, a piece with the slider slightly to the right of the other is considered more difficult than the other.)

I hope this helps your browsing experience on this site. Let me know if I can be of any further help to you in selecting a piece to play!